Testing More, Teaching Less - American Federation of Teachers

FINDINGSTests in the United States can be categorized intoseveral groups, including:• Large-scale standardized tests, usually summative,mandated by states primarily for accountabilitypurposes;• Interim/benchmarking tests used by districtsto improve performance of low-achievingstudents on the state-mandated tests throughtargeted instructional interventions, review andreteaching, regrouping students, identifyingstudents for tutoring and sharing results withstudents; and• A variety of locally determined tests, includingsummative, diagnostic and miscellaneoustests, or formative assessment techniques byteachers.Based on a detailed grade-by-grade analysis of thedirect costs and the time costs of testing in the twoschool districts’ assessment inventories, our studyfound:• Pervasive testing. One of the districts in ourstudy had 14 different assessments given toall students at least once a year in at least onegrade. Some assessments are administered forseveral subjects multiple times a year resultingin 34 different test administrations. The otherdistrict’s testing inventory had 12 different assessmentsbut 47 separate administrations overthe course of the year.• Test-taking time. Students in one district ingrades 3-10 spent approximately 15 hours ormore per year (about three full school days)taking state-mandated tests, interim/benchmarkingtests and other district academicassessments. Students in the other district ingrades 6-11 devoted up to 55 hours per yearto taking tests (about two full weeks of theschool year).• Time for administrative tasks with students.This includes giving directions, passing out testbooklets and answer sheets, reading directionson the computer, etc., before and after eachtesting session. These administrative tasks withstudents took more than five hours annually—one full school day—in one of the districts. Inthe other district, administrative tasks with studentsused up more than 10 hours of the schoolyear—two full school days—in the most highlytested grades.• Direct budgetary costs. Several national studiesshow that the direct cost of purchasing,licensing and scoring state-mandated tests isaround $25 per test-taker, and the annual costof interim/benchmark testing is about $20 pertest-taker. But when considering the cost of allthe tests in a school district’s inventory, thedirect budgetary costs of the district testingprogram ranged from $50 per test-taker in onedistrict to over $100 per test-taker in the otherfor grades 2-11. The direct budgetary cost ofstate testing represents less than 1 percent ofK-12 per-pupil education spending. Nationally,education spending averages about $11,000per pupil and reaches $20,000 per pupil in thehighest-spending states.• Logistics and administrative costs. Estimatedat $2 per student per hour of testing (up to $80per year for students in several grades in onedistrict), these are costs associated with managingpallets of testing boxes; verifying andaffixing data labels to test booklets, which couldinclude three versions of the test at each gradelevel; and placing testing materials in securelocations before and after each round of testingto prevent cheating. After testing is completed,each school has to collect booklets, pack themand ship them off for scoring.• Test preparation time. The detailed researched-basedrubric narrowly defined “testpreparation” to include giving practice testsand teaching test-taking strategies, but does notcount review, reteaching or tutoring. Studentsin grades 3-8 in one district spent at least 80hours per year (approximately 16 full schooldays) preparing for state-mandated tests, the6 American Federation of Teachers