A once a year test which takes no more than 2 hours on one day.
One hour to measure each students’ Language Art progress and one hour to measure each students’ Math progress.
That’s it—no quarterly tests, no fluency tests, no teaching to the test, no following the test calendar, and no evaluating teachers using test scores.
Any professional educator, after a just a few weeks with his or her students can tell each students' strengths and weaknesses, needs and areas for growth. No paperwork--no testing.
The rest is pure education including time for review and remediation, challenge and enrichment and even a little fun. All subjects are covered. Teachable moments are realized.
When the one day, two hour annual test is scored you will know just as much about each students’ progress as you do after the monthly plethora of tests and the superfluous end of the year tests.