Testing is rearing its ugly head once again. To schools, this means the hectic month they have to teach kids the subjects they barely touched on during the rest of the year. To the less-advanced kids, testing brings the miserable month they try to learn these subjects. Then, of course, there are the advanced kids. I can say from experience that the month of testing is the most tedious and dullest month of school for the advanced students.

We unwillingly sit through some four-and-a-half hours of "educational instruction." In other words, the teachers have to lecture us on things we've known for years.

This will be the fourth time I've gone through these days of school in which most kids sit through class biding their time until the end of the school day. And every time, I think how much good it would do if no one had to worry about testing.

Testing causes problems year-round. Teachers have to teach to the grade-level standards of the test, so kids who are already above that level learn almost nothing all year. We go to school for six hours a day and, on the average day, due to the standard curriculum, get nothing out of it.

If teachers had the weight of teaching the required curriculum for testing off their shoulders, they could teach fun and interesting topics. For example, my school's fifth grade goes to Catalina Island every year as part of our outdoor education program.

My science teacher used to teach marine biology, a fascinating subject, for many months beforehand. But this year, due to teaching for the standardized tests, she had to radically cut down on how much she taught.

Preparing for the fourth-grade writing test is also a problem. This test requires students to write a summary, response to literature, or a narrative. The amount of writing kids are required to do to prepare for these tests discourages kids from writing on their own time.

Writing summaries and responses to literature stifles kids' creativity in writing. And, in the end, you never really need to write a response to literature in real life, so kids are discouraged from creative writing for no use.

Testing is causing kids to dislike school, which should be fun. Some kids just tune out from school completely. This means on the odd day the teachers get to teach something interesting and out of the curriculum, those students miss out on learning it.

Fortunately, in middle school, testing has a lower impact on the curriculum. But because of what's happening in elementary school, too many kids have already lost interest by middle school.

Matthew Goodkin-Gold is a fifth-grader in a Ventura public school.