What Are Standardized Tests Stressful?

Once students come into the school system teachers and peers start talking about standardized tests, such as the ACT the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Often people describe these tests as being essential for high future standing or essential in order to ensure a spot in a decent college. This extreme emphasis on the importance of these standardized tests leads, both students and teachers to fail in and out of the classroom. Stress is abundant in schools, and as Marian Wilde states, It is no wonder students today are under debilitating amounts of stress. High-stakes standardized tests, such as the TAKS in Texas and the FCAT in Florida, are particularly stressful, for students and teachers alike. These tests are emplaced so that students have to
reach a certain benchmark in order to advance to the next grade.
In Florida, children as young as 8 years old face the prospect of being held back if they fail the test (Wilde 2016). Everyone has his/her own way of measuring stress, depression being one measure, but the consensus is that there are more stressed-out kids. As a health news study states, 70 percent of students say they are stressed and 45 percent of students say that stress negatively affects their performance. The biggest reason cited by students was the weight standardized tests carried. Of the 25,000 students questioned from 31 different schools, students that reported stress had a .85 lower grade point average than the non-stressed students. Michael Garcia is one student at Winterset who feels the impacts that standardized tests have. In an interview, Michael Garcia said, “ I get anxious when I think about standardized tests like the ACT, I worry that despite my
success in school, failing on this test could result in getting a poor college and potentially ruining my future.” Regardless of how students like Garcia feel the Department of Education is continually pushing for more standardized tests in order to provide government oversight in schools. With standardized tests only becoming more common in school, students will continue to see both debilitating health and educational impacts.
Not only are the students being negatively impacted. There is consistency in the research which implies that standardized testing has a negative impact on classroom instruction. The Center on Education Policy reported in 2007 that 44 percent of districts cut time from activities such as social studies, science, art and music, physical education, lunch, and recess after No Child Left Behind. While, in general it may seem good to focus on certain areas of study which may be deemed 'weak' by government standards, there are only so many hours of in-class time. The hours allowed to educate are a kind of zero-sum quantity which means, more hours spent on topics like math or reading means fewer hours available to things like social studies, art, music, creative thinking, and similar non-target study areas. Only 30% of students have strengths in the specific areas that standardized testing focuses on. It would be more beneficial to both the student and the education system as a whole for students to focus on their strengths instead of taking away time from other classes to focus on test subjects. Furthermore, teachers reported that a large amount of class time was spent on test preparation. At times, instruction was abandoned completely and prepared practice tests were given to students. Further to the idea that class-time is a zero-sum quantity, a report by the National Council of Teachers of English makes the claim that teachers can lose between 60 and 110 hours per year on test related administrative tasks. These kinds of duties produce an unnecessary added burden which consumes time that could be better spent getting on with the business of teaching students.
Another massive problem with standardized tests are merit based pay systems.
32 states have adopted merit based pay in which teachers pay increases are based on student improvements on standardized tests. The exception to this is rule is teachers who educate k through 3rd graders. Their pay is based on the improvements of students in their district, creating a motive to not educate students early so it is easier for them to improve. As the National Association for the Education of Young Children reports in 2015, early educators in recent years, have begun the practice of not teaching students early, thereby setting the bar low, creating a student that will improve easily in the future thus increasing their own merit based pay (NAEYC 2013). The National Association for the Education of Young Children later states that early educators have been caught doing this in 28 states and in hundreds of schools in the U.S. (NAEYC 2013). Students that perform poorly in kindergarten through 4th grade are doomed to underperform in the rest of their student career, but the only option with standardized tests for some teachers to get pay raises in the current system involves undermining the education of young
students.
Students should not be judged based on a single test. There is so much more to a person such as soft skilled and decision making. Current standardized tests only look at core concepts such as math and reading. Students spend way too much time preparing for an arbitrary test instead of developing their character. Overall it is easy to say that students spend far too much on standardized tests and should instead change their goals on character development and specialization. With how important standardized tests are there seems to be a great need to focus on them within schools. However, this focus has taken away from a broader education and can cause serious health issues. A better path would be to work with each student as an individual and not try to group them up to meet some arbitrary standard. Overall standardized tests have failed in the American school systems and should be reduced if not entirely cut.