Social studies teacher here. You know why we don't teach the "classical" education model anymore? Because it relies on memorization and lacks any real critical thinking or analysis. It whitewashes history and devalues the contributions of anyone outside the white, European mainstream.
Just looking at the available sample questions for the grade 8 test, there is no real analysis beyond simple textual understanding ("what it says in the text"). There are no sample questions that actually require a student to write. The writing questions are almost entirely correcting grammatical mistakes. On a complexity scale, there are generally 4 "levels" of questions, with 4 being the most complex, which typically would require an essay response. None of the questions asked go above a complexity of level 2.
And don't get me started on the inherent biases of the texts chosen. The "literature," "historical/founding documents" and "philosophy/religion" texts chosen are all by dead white men: Kipling, Plato, Cicero, Jefferson, Kempis, Eisenhower. The only author who wasn't a dead white man is a dead white woman: George Eliot.
Both science passages have to do with modern medicine, the contents of which are far from controversial: antivenom and cardiovascular health. That isn't to say that there is anything wrong with this, but again, there is nothing that even allows for critical analysis here.
So... yeah... definitely glad I'm not in Florida