scholarly journals Testing, Stress, and Performance: How Students Respond Physiologically to High-Stakes Testing

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-50
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Heissel ◽  
Emma K. Adam ◽  
Jennifer L. Doleac ◽  
David N. Figlio ◽  
Jonathan Meer
Keyword(s):  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Physiological Stress ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Regular School ◽  
The Difference ◽  
And Performance

We examine how students' physiological stress differs between a regular school week and a highstakes testing week, and we raise questions about how to interpret high-stakes test scores. A potential contributor to socioeconomic disparities in academic performance is the difference in the level of stress experienced by students outside of school. Chronic stress – due to neighborhood violence, poverty, or family instability – can affect how individuals' bodies respond to stressors in general, including the stress of standardized testing. This, in turn, can affect whether performance on standardized tests is a valid measure of students' actual ability. We collect data on students' stress responses using cortisol samples provided by low-income students in New Orleans. We measure how their cortisol patterns change during high-stakes testing weeks relative to baseline weeks. We find that high-stakes testing is related to cortisol responses, and those responses are related to test performance. Those who responded most strongly – with either increases or decreases in cortisol – scored 0.40 standard deviations lower than expected on the high-stakes exam.

scholarly journals The Political Legacy of School Accountability Systems

1998 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherman Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Standardized Testing ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
School Accountability ◽  
Political Support ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
High Stakes Tests ◽  
Perverse Incentives ◽  
And Performance

The recent battle reported from Washington about proposed national testing program does not tell the most important political story about high stakes tests. Politically popular school accountability systems in many states already revolve around statistical results of testing with high-stakes environments. The future of high stakes tests thus does not depend on what happens on Capitol Hill. Rather, the existence of tests depends largely on the political culture of published test results. Most critics of high-stakes testing do not talk about that culture, however. They typically focus on the practice legacy of testing, the ways in which testing creates perverse incentives against good teaching. More important may be the political legacy, or how testing defines legitimate discussion about school politics. The consequence of statistical accountability systems will be the narrowing of purpose for schools, impatience with reform, and the continuing erosion of political support for publicly funded schools. Dissent from the high-stakes accountability regime that has developed around standardized testing, including proposals for professionalism and performance assessment, commonly fails to consider these political legacies. Alternatives to standardized testing which do not also connect schooling with the public at large will not be politically viable.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road: Rethinking the Connection Between High-Stakes Testing Policy and Classroom Instruction

2007 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Classroom Instruction ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
The Road ◽  
Collegial Interactions ◽  
Instructional Content ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Testing Policies

In this article, the author examines the link between high-stakes testing policies and classroom instruction. Using data from classroom observations and interviews with teachers, he argues that these policies influence instruction but are mediated by teachers and filtered through their collegial interactions. He shows that teachers link the influence of high-stakes testing policies to instructional content (the knowledge and skills that they emphasize) more often than pedagogy (how they engage students around instructional content). As a result, didactic instruction dominates, especially in predominantly low-income and African American schools, in a policy environment that encourages addressing racial and class achievement gaps by increasing the use of interactive forms of instruction. The author concludes that researchers should be cautious not to overstate the impact of these policies on pedagogy and educational equity.

Academic Tracking, High-Stakes Tests, and Preparing Students for College: How Inequality Persists Within Schools

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (7) ◽  
pp. 907-935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Giersch
Keyword(s):  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
Public High School ◽  
School Students ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Academic Tracking ◽  
State University System ◽  
High Stakes Tests ◽  
Academic Track ◽  
The Difference

Academic tracking is a common feature of school organization, but it produces inequalities in student outcomes. High-stakes testing policies offer new opportunities for assessing students’ progress, but the instruments raise concerns about relying on such narrow measures of learning. This study utilizes a longitudinal data set that follows one cohort of North Carolina school students from public high school through the state university system to examine the difference in outcomes associated with academic track. Results show that upper track students do better in college even when controlling for achievement on high-stakes tests and that such tests are a stronger predictor of college success for upper track students than they are for lower track students. Interviews suggest that these differences can be attributed to different methods of instruction in each track.

scholarly journals Does high-stakes testing increase cultural capital among low-income and racial minority students?

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Won-Pyo Hong ◽  
Peter Youngs
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Minority Students ◽  
Low Income ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
Racial Minority ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Student Dropout ◽  
Racial Minority Students ◽  
Curriculum Instruction

This article draws on research from Texas and Chicago to examine whether high-stakes testing enables low-income and racial minority students to acquire cultural capital. While students' performance on state or district tests rose after the implementation of high-stakes testing and accountability policies in Texas and Chicago in the 1990s, several studies indicate that these policies seemed to have had deleterious effects on curriculum, instruction, the percentage of students excluded from the tests, and student dropout rates. As a result, the policies seemed to have had mixed effects on students' opportunities to acquire embodied and institutionalized cultural capital. These findings are consistent with the work of Shepard (2000), Darling-Hammond (2004a), and others who have written of the likely negative repercussions of high-stakes testing and accountability policies.

Beyond the Tyranny of Testing

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Gergen ◽  
Scherto R. Gill
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
League Tables ◽  
Individual Potential ◽  
Schooling Process ◽  
Student Test ◽  
Teachers Professional Development ◽  
International League

This book starts by highlighting the different purposes of evaluation in education, including its contribution to student learning, teachers’ professional development, the school community’s progress, and the informed participation of parents and other stakeholders. However, largely owing to the current educational system that structures schools as factories, the pursuit of these goals has led to increased reliance on assessment devices such as exams, grades, and high-stakes testing. Functioning as a form of quality control, such practices now dominate the schooling process. Students are tested more than ever before, teachers and schools undergo measurement on a continuing basis, and nations compete for places on international league tables. The result is student test performance becoming the only aim of education, turning the measurement into the goal itself. Furthermore, standardization as such masks individual potential and suppresses creativity. Combined with mounting stress on students, teachers, and school leaders, alternatives to assessment must be sought.

Executive Functions and Performance on High-Stakes Testing in Children From Urban Schools

2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah P. Waber ◽  
Emily B. Gerber ◽  
Viana Y. Turcios ◽  
Erin R. Wagner ◽  
Peter W. Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Executive Functions ◽  
Urban Schools ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
And Performance

scholarly journals He who dares only wins sometimes: physiological stress and contest behaviour in Xiphophorus helleri

Behaviour ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 149 (9) ◽  
pp. 977-1002 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Boulton ◽  
B. Sinderman ◽  
M.R. Pearce ◽  
R.L. Earley ◽  
A.J. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Stress Responses ◽  
Acute Stress ◽  
Physiological Stress ◽  
Coping Styles ◽  
Physiological State ◽  
Stress Coping ◽  
Contest Outcome ◽  
Cortisol Levels ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Contest Behaviour

While many factors influence contest outcome and social dominance in animals, there is increasing interest in behavioural-physiological stress-coping styles. Causality, however, is often ambiguous; is physiological state determined by contest outcome or vice versa? Furthermore, experimental protocols may themselves induce stress responses that impact individual behaviour and, thus, potentially contest outcome. Here we test whether latency to recover from acute stress, measured both physiologically and behaviourally, predicts who initiates and who wins dyadic contests between pairs of male green swordtails (Xiphophorous helleri). In line with our predictions, animals that recovered faster (behaviourally) from disturbance created by the experimental protocol prior to meeting an opponent were more likely to initiate contests; however, they were not more likely to win and, contrary to expectations, had higher pre-contest cortisol levels than their opponents. They also showed greater physiological stress responses to the experiment as determined from the difference between pre- and post-contest cortisol levels. Moreover, stress response was independent of whether a contest escalated. In contradiction to evidence found in other taxa and fish systems, the suite of traits that we measured were not correlated in a manner that allowed classification of the animals into the usual reactive and proactive stress-coping styles. Our results suggest that coping style may play a key role in determining which individual initiates a contest, but that other factors govern contest outcome.

scholarly journals Are High School Students Accurate in Predicting Their AP Exam Scores?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Ober ◽  
Maxwell Hong ◽  
Matt Carter ◽  
Alex Brodersen ◽  
Daniella Alves Reboucas
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Parental Education ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
School Students ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Overconfidence Bias ◽  
Ap Exam

Are high school students accurate in predicting test performance? If so, do their predictions explain variation in performance, even after accounting for other factors? We examined these questions in two testing contexts (low-stakes and high-stakes) among students enrolled in a high school advanced placement (AP) statistics class. We found that even two months before taking the exam, students were moderately accurate in predicting their scores on the actual AP exam (κweighted = .62). When the same variables were entered into models predicting inaccuracy and overconfidence bias, results did not provide evidence that age, gender, parental education, number of math classes previously taken, or course engagement accounted for variation in accuracy. Overconfidence bias was associated with the students’ school. Results indicated that students’ predictions of performance were positively associated with performance in both low- and high-stakes testing contexts. The findings shed light on ways to leverage students’ self-assessment for learning.

Pedagogies for the Poor? Realigning Reading Instruction for Low-Income Students With Scientifically Based Reading Research

2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (9) ◽  
pp. 564-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Cummins
Keyword(s):  
No Child Left Behind ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Reading First ◽  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
Reading Engagement ◽  
Low Income Students ◽  
Phonics Instruction ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Reading First Initiative

In this article, the author argues that there is minimal scientific support for the pedagogical approaches promoted for low-income students in the federal Reading First initiative. In combination with high-stakes testing, the interpretation of the construct systematic phonics instruction in Reading First has resulted in highly teacher-centered and inflexible classroom environments. By privileging these approaches, Reading First ignored the National Reading Panel’s finding that systematic phonics instruction was unrelated to reading comprehension for low-achieving and normally achieving students beyond Grade 1. Also ignored was the significant body of research suggesting that reading engagement is an important predictor of achievement. Alternative evidence-based directions for rebalancing reading instruction for low-income students are suggested in the context of the impending reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind legislation.

scholarly journals Testing, Stress, and Performance: How Students Respond Physiologically to High-Stakes Testing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Heissel ◽  
Emma Adam ◽  
Jennifer Doleac ◽  
David Figlio ◽  
Jonathan Meer
Keyword(s):  
High Stakes Testing ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
And Performance
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