It has been some time since I've been in school, but I still remember that horribleness of the standardized test. You spend weeks hearing how important it is, and we spent days sitting there still, in silence, filling in the correct multiple choice answer on a sheet with a #2 pencil, hoping the teacher didn't think we were cheating if we were stretching. For hours and hours at a time. The tests took a few days. They told us (perhaps wrongly) that we couldn't miss school during that time. Sometimes we were told we'd be deducted for having a wrong answer, sometimes not. I'd rather do college finals each year or split the stuff up over the course of the school year so it is less of a burden.
The reason teachers can't grade them is because the schools use them to grade the school and the teacher - some states, it determines funding for the schools. Too low of a grade and you lose funding, meet the goals and you gain.
This is from a child's point of view, as my memories were from being a child, so a few hours a day was a really long time. The actual math works out, however. They did these over 3-4 days. 4 days is 2.5 hours a day: 3 days is 3 hours 22 minutes, approximately.
A day of testing, the SAT for example, wasn't quite that rough at a much older age. 2 months ago I took official language exams here (immigrant). The main portion was about 4 hours. I had a couple hour break, then the last portion took about half an hour. The main part of the test was somewhat tiring for me as an adult - I very highly doubt the testing week is less tiring for children.
Sure, but 10 hours over 900 hours in the school year, this is not a major part of it.
I remember taking standardized fill-in-the-bubble tests in the 60's and 70's. They were mailed off to some central location to be graded by computer. It just wasn't a stress filled, onerous thing, even though they were used to assess school performance.
I was in school in until the mid-90's. They used them as placement tests when I took them. Do well, and it meant you were smart enough for the 'advanced' stuff. Do poorly, and you have to take summer school and/or redo the grade. Do poorly on the test, regardless of how well you do the rest of the year, and it affects your opportunities. I remember hours of boredom, only compounded by the fact that I tend to work quickly and was stuck sitting there quietly waiting. My sister, however, always did poorly taking tests and they never reflected what she knew. Some teachers gave some accommodations which improved her regular scores, but the state test did not. Even then the curriculum was changed to reflect tests, and the testing has only increased in importance since we've been in school, to the point that the amount of help you get from your teacher in some areas depends on how your test scores were last year.
The reason teachers can't grade them is because the schools use them to grade the school and the teacher - some states, it determines funding for the schools. Too low of a grade and you lose funding, meet the goals and you gain.