Testing can be taxing

If you wondered whether students are "tested to death," consider this: They could spend up to 19 hours on state-mandated tests their junior year alone.

Seniors might devote as many as 15 hours to filling in bubbles on answer sheets for the state.

Even fifth-graders could sit 8.5 hours taking state-mandated exams, and first-graders, 4.5 hours.

That's according to calculations from the State Office of Education, which is expected to spend $15.5 million on testing this year.

The state office calculated the numbers following concerns about testing overload coming from the community, legislators and State Board of Education, State Superintendent Patti Harrington said Thursday.

"We'll pore over that data," and may ask the Legislature to streamline test requirements down the road.

The numbers show the maximum amount of time a student could spend testing in those grades. About an hour and a half of that testing in each grade is only for non-native English speakers, so it doesn't apply to everybody. The number provided for juniors and seniors includes 4 1/2 hours worth of retakes on the Utah Basic Skills Competency Test, which most students pass as sophomores.

And big-picture-wise, state tests take up a sliver of a student's time — less than 1 percent for elementary and middle-school students, and 1 percent for sophomores, 1.8 percent for juniors, and 1.4 percent for seniors, maximum.

Then again, the figures don't include all the tests districts or classroom teachers require.

"Almost every single class period we have a test, and then every month it seems like we have a major test," Highland High junior Samantha Jensen said. "I think kids get really stressed during state tests, so I think it kind of hurts you in school work."

State testing falls mostly under U-PASS, Utah's program for holding schools accountable for student achievement.

• All students but kindergartners take language arts, math and, in upper grades, science CRTs, which assess their understanding of the state core curriculum and double for No Child Left Behind requirements. Time: three hours for first- through third-graders, and 4.5 hours for upper grades.

• Sixth- and ninth-graders take writing exams. Time: 45-60 minutes.

• A sample of fourth- through eighth-graders take the National Assessment of Educational Progress, used for the Nation's Report Card. Time: 90 minutes.

• Third-, fifth-, eighth- and 11th-graders take the Iowa skills tests, which shows how Utah students stack up against a national norm group. Time: four hours for 11th-graders; 2.5 hours for all others.