In response to concerns raised by principals at both the elementary and intermediate levels regarding the amount of instructional time consumed by students taking tests which were not related to day-to-day instruction, a study was conducted of the amount of time spent preparing to give such tests and actually administering them, and the manner in which the test results were being used. The average number of hours spent preparing for and taking these tests ranged from 6.0 hours in Grade 6 to 29.5 hours in Grade 3. These results indicate that the amount of periodic testing is not large and in fact consumes less than 2 percent of the available instruction time. Nonetheless, three areas of concern emerged from the analysis: (1) the status of locally-developed curriculum-related tests, given teacher uncertainty about their usefulness and quality; (2) the misuse of achievement test data by using results to place individual students in particular programs and classes; and (3) questions about the reliability and validity of the measures used, especially at the intermediate level. (BW)