I am one angry and exasperated special education teacher. I recently made it through the most excruciating time of year for me as a professional. I just know the majority of my colleagues feel the same. We are trudging through the annual torture of administering the Maine Educational Assessments to the kids at elementary and high schools throughout the state.

I cannot begin to describe how disruptive and inappropriate these tests are for the children I serve. It is important to try, however, because we need to have a conversation about the utility of these evaluations.

The assessments are administered over a week for a total of nine hours. It is hard to rationalize nine hours of testing for 8-, 9- and 10-year-old students. By way of comparison, the exam for would-be Maine lawyers is 12 hours over two days, and the MCAT (admission to medical school) is a seven-hour test given in either one or two days. But these young children with disabilities take nine hours of testing that includes two math tests, two reading tests, two language assessments and one essay.

The quality of these tests – especially the language and essay portions – is concerning. As far as I can tell, the language test evaluates students’ grammar proficiency. But the test is unbelievably tedious.

On one item kids are asked to correct awkward sentences within long passages by choosing replacement sentences from a choice of four. The problem is, the replacement sentences all sound and look the same. Yes, if you look closely, there are very slight differences among the sentences. A student with attention issues will surely miss this nuance.

If I ever gave any of my students a task like this, my colleagues would call that bad teaching. Good teaching builds on success – it does not set up students to fail. These questions on the language portion seem as if they are trying to trick the children, and I say shame on them.

In my opinion, the worst of the tests is the 90-minute essay. Eight- and 9-year-olds are asked to sit in front of a computer and compose an essay for 90 minutes.

I don’t know about you, but I could never sit for 90 minutes and type up a high-quality essay. This is developmentally inappropriate for all children, and especially those with disabilities. This is not how writing is taught in schools and does not produce the best quality work from beginning writers.

The most agonizing part of the experience for me, though, is watching my students as they take the test. Understand that students with disabilities take all the tests at their grade level, even if they have not yet been taught the material or are not ready for it. If they are a fifth-grader and read at the third-grade level, they take the fifth-grade reading test. If they are a fifth-grade student who is working on third-grade math concepts, they take the fifth-grade math test. Try to imagine how a 9-year-old student who already knows that he or she is very behind experiences this injustice.

The final educational malpractice is the delivery of the scores. The scores for the MEAs generally arrive a year later. The kids are in a different grade, with different teachers and in some cases at a different school. How can the score report possibly be of any use to anyone? It says nothing about the student’s learning needs – only if he or she meets, partially meets or does not meet the standards in a certain area. This is of no help to teachers, parents or students.

I plead with all those in the position to affect educational policy to end this approach to assessing and reporting on our students with disabilities. It is cruel and serves no purpose. It is a waste of time and resources. It takes valuable time from instructing. It is damaging to children, teachers and the school culture.

Those who understand children and schools need to come to the table and provide alternative ideas. Too much is at stake to squander precious resources and precious children on something that provides so little in return.