DENVER, Updated 1:38 p.m. MST January 18, 2001 -- A group of Denver parents took a preview CSAP test that their children will take next month and said that it wasn't easy.

Patricia Starr took the test and said she is happy with it. "I think it’s a very good test. I just think it has a lot of reading," said Starr. "That's what's really getting me … whether or not the kids will be able to put it all together in the time that's allotted."

Lynn Anderson-Thayer took the Colorado Student Assessment Program, or CSAP, on Wednesday at a long wooden table in the Merrill Middle School lunchroom sitting next to her son Brandon.

For Brandon, a fourth-grader at the school, the CSAPs are old hat.

While she listened carefully to the teachers who gave parents test instructions, Brandon whispered, "Mom, I know all that."

Anderson-Thayer is skeptical of the value of CSAPs and the demonstration did not sway her opinion.

She said the tests are an artificial way to measure knowledge and worries that children who have test anxiety or tend to be "visual learners" may be shortchanged.

That apparently won't be a problem for Brandon, who told his mother some of the answers.

Linda Carney was one of the few test-takers whose children do not have to take the tests. Her children have already graduated from the Denver Public Schools system.

"I came out of curiosity to see where these kids are expected to be," said Carney, a substitute teacher in the Cherry Creek School System.

She took the test along with 36 other parents at Merrill, where she was a full-time English teacher in the 1960s.

But the questions were what she expected.

She anticipated short paragraphs with little circles to fill in the multiple-choice answers. Instead, she found herself reading through a longer story about Charlie and Greg, a painter and his friend.

Carney said she had not taken a test like this since college.

"I was really surprised that it was as detailed as it was," Carney said.