"Final exams in college don't take two weeks. SATs don't take that long. People who are applying to medical school go for one day," says Josiane Hudicourd-Barnes, a former bilingual teacher in Cambridge. "This test interrupts kids' lives for two weeks."

Hudicourd-Barnes says the test has already affected course offerings, meaning broad courses are offered in ninth and tenth grade to prepare students for the variety of material on the MCAS.

For example, she says, many ninth graders who used to take a course in biology and a United States or European history class now take a science survey and a course in world history.

In addition to covering too much material, King says the MCAS takes too long in general.

"It pushes aside a lot of culmination activities," she says.

At the Graham and Parks school, which her two children attend, students end the year by creating a portfolio--a "rigorous and quite prolonged" process that culminates, she says, with teachers asking students questions about their work in an elementary school version of a dissertation defense.

"It's not a fluffy, let-them-off-easy assessment," she says.