Let's say for talking purposes that you have 7 periods each day. For argument sake, you have tests each Friday. If you have 7 periods a day, you in essence meet 180 times minimum for each subject. Let's do some subtraction.
The average school will lose one day per school year for Homecoming activities, Christmas parties, some kind of assembly or field trip. Just those days will add up to at least 5 days. That now leaves you with 175 days.
Some more subtraction. Tests on Fridays will subtract 36 days of study time to write answers down. You have now lost 36 days plus 5 days plus an additional 3 days for unforeseen circumstances. That is a grand total of 44 days. That gives you now only 136 days of school learning.
Here is my proposal to offset such waste of time. Throw away the idea or notion that you have to test everything you teach. That is totally ludicrous and it is almost barbaric to keep this tradition going. Here is another alternative for tests. According to Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman from http://www.delaneykirk.com/2008/10/how-to-take-goo.html, taking notes for yourself is the single best way to engage in and remember the lecture.
The key to this is remembering the lecture. The idea is for our students to remember what was taught to them. Therefore, grade the notebook and see if they are taking notes. The idea that you have to test the student to see if they remember the material is asinine. What if that student had problems in the car before attending school? What if they had problems with parents, or siblings and their mind just isn't into the test? A student studies all week and then has one bad day and gets a bad grade and we label them by the test.
Throw away the tests and grade the notebooks.
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