Is Georgia requiring students to take tests that are too long?

Thousands of metro students are taking Georgia Milestones Assessments this week, but are the tests too long for young students?

That is the contention of many of the parents opting their kids out of the tests, including Carol Kirshner who maintains the 60-90 minute tests are developmentally inappropriate for her third grader and others.

Writing in the AJC Get Schooled blog, Kirshner says research suggests average students have a sustained attention span of 3-5 minutes for every year they’re alive. So, the average 9-year-old in third grade would have an attention span between 27-45 minutes. It is not until seventh grade that a child at the higher end of normal (roughly 20 percent of students considering a traditional bell curve) would have a 60 minute attention span, she says.