Due to the profound impacts of the national high school graduation exam, high school teachers tend to design test items that are similar to the sample items designed by the Ministry of Education and Training. Employing the principles of test item design by Brown (2004), this study attempted to analyze the quality of the objective multiple-choice grammar and vocabulary test items written by high school teachers. The research drew its data from 24 test papers submitted by teachers from three provinces in Vietnam. The findings revealed that a number of test items violated the principles, having unclear testing purposes or having more than correct answers while no needless redundancies in the stems and distractors were recorded. Also, the participants gave reasons for their difficulties in test design. The paper concluded with several resolutions to address the issue.