Standardized Testing

Okay, if there is anyone out there who reads this and SUPPORTS standardized testing, read on and please answer my question. Everyone else just read on. Feel free to respond, but if you agree with me that standardized testing is stupid, wasteful and has nothing to do with real education, then your comments are appreciated, but can't answer my following question.

First, the set up: I have just completed proctoring over four hours of a standardized "End of Course" test for Biology that was taken by students in Biology classes over two days (from 7:45 a.m. to about 10:00 a.m., yesterday and today). While these students, approximately 200 of them, were taking the exam, the other 1000+ students were NOT IN SCHOOL. They had a delayed opening. This is across the state of New Jersey, by the way, not just in my school.

Besides the strangeness of having an "End of Course" exam in mid-May when school ends in mid-June, how is this benefiting anyone's education? (That's the question.)

Here are more details to support my argument against it:

1.) Why does it take over four hours to test students on one year's worth of Biology when the AP exam, which is meant to test students on a college level, is only 3? Not only that, but students have been taking assessments all year anyway, so why do we need this? Also, who decides what the standard level of learning in Biology is? Is there a minimum amount of Biology that I should have learned before I graduated from high school? (NB: I was an AP Bio student.)

2.) By giving this exam, we have reduced every other student's academic time by a whole day. In mid-May, this is crucial time, particularly when teaching seniors, to trying to keep them on task and learning as much as possible, but when they get to sleep in and wander into school around 10:00 or later, they don't want to be there even more than any other day, so they don't focus on the tasks at hand. Senioritis isn't a real medical disorder, but it exists nonetheless, even in the best of students.

3.) Once the scores are tabulated, and, if this test actually counted -- did I mention that this is only a "practice" exam? -- toward something, then what? Students who scored below average, or whatever minimum marker some one comes up with, won't pass the class and have to retake Biology before graduating? Really? What if several students don't "pass"? Then there becomes a pile up of students taking Bio like the George Washington Bridge at rush hour. Classes will get bigger, which means less learning in those classes, which, in turn, would mean lower test scores. See where that leads?

4.) Finally, and this ties to #3, New Jersey wants to have these tests in ALL SUBJECTS. This means that there will be several days, not just two halves, cut off of teaching time for testing. It means more back-up into classes as certain students fail the tests. It means more apathy of students to actually learning something rather than just the "right answers" for the test. And all this adds up to a DECLINE in education.

So, I ask again, who benefits from all this standardized testing, other than the companies that make up the tests?