Test-Basher Arithmetic

By Richard P. Phelps

Are U.S. students overtested? Just how much standardized student testing is there? How much of the average student's career is spent in activities related to standardized testing? How much of the average teacher's school year is spent in preparing for or monitoring the administration of standardized student tests?

To people outside the field, these questions may seem tedious and the topic mundane. Within the field of education, however, this anxiety-producing subject spawns tense arguments. If one believes that test-taking and test-preparation time have no intrinsic value, as some standardized-testing critics do, it matters a great deal how much time testing and test preparation take up. The more activities one can categorize as "test preparation" and the more time spent in test-related activities one can count, the greater the waste of instructional time can be claimed in criticizing standardized testing. Some strong language has been employed to convince us that our students are overtested.

The number of standardized student tests and the amount of student time spent taking them each year should be pretty dry facts, easy to come by. One could, after all, spend less than a day and make a few telephone calls to test-development companies and the offices of the Council of Chief State School Officers and...