New Jersey parents are up in arms after their third-graders were asked, on a standardized test, to reveal a secret about their lives and explain why it's hard to keep.

About 4,000 students found the question on their version of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge test earlier this week, The Asbury Park Press reports.

"That is an outrageous question and totally inappropriate to ask schoolchildren," said Richard Goldberg, 41, whose twin 9-year-old boys told him about "the secret question" after school Tuesday. "I guarantee you some children will be writing things family members and parents would have rather not revealed to the state. They want to answer a question; they don't want to fail. I think somebody should be held accountable for putting children in a difficult position in the middle of a test."

Goldberg said the boys mentioned the question after he'd asked them what the hardest part of the test had been, the Press reports.

"If my children had said, 'It's none of your darn business,' (on the test) I would have been perfectly OK with it," Goldberg said.

New Jersey Department of Education spokesman Justin Barra confirmed that some version of the question had appeared on the language arts portion of the standardized test. Barra said the question is being field tested and won't count toward the students' scores, the Press reports.

The exam tests third- through eighth-graders on their proficiency in math and language arts. Third-graders took the test for the first time this week from Monday to Thursday.

Test scores could help determine whether a student ends up in basic skills classes and also are expected to be included in teacher evaluations planned by the state.

(Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly suggested that the NJEA was testing the question.)