Test Stress
These last few weeks at SAA have been full of testing. As a school, we administered the MAP standardized assessment to students in grades two through eight, a school-wide writing assessment, and myriad other smaller tests like the fourth grade science test and the end-of-unit test in Geometry class.
What is the reason for all these tests? In education, testing has two main purposes: measuring achievement—how much a student knows or can do—and measuring progress or growth. Both motives are important, but measuring achievement exclusively can foster a fixed mindset in parents, teachers, and students. A fixed mindset is the enemy of learning and growing because it is centered on believing that success is the affirmation of our fixed abilities, which is very different from believing that making mistakes is an opportunity to grow.
A fixed mindset can work against students. This mindset can quickly make kids think they are not competent or good at a particular subject. At SAA, our students face distinct challenges. They already know that they are gifted, and this knowledge can create unreasonable expectations of achievement, obscuring the value of making mistakes and the resistance to growing through adversity.
Multiple studies have highlighted that a hyper-focus on achievement scores leads children to believe that their achievement is valued more than who they are as people. Psychologists call this conditional regard, which means that our opinion of our kids changes based on how well they do across different achievement measures. For some, this can be sports-related; for many SAA students, it has to do with how well they perform on standardized tests or how far they are above grade level.
Educators and students already face so much pressure to succeed that the stress associated with testing adds fuel to the fire. At SAA, we recognize the crucial role of educators in creating an environment that maintains our students' mental, emotional, psychological, and physical health. By fostering a caring culture, teachers can make students feel safe, welcomed, and understood at a place they come to almost every day. This can help lower stress and create a culture of understanding and unconditional regard.
We often say in education that we want our students to fail early and frequently because school is a safe, low-stakes place, and failure provides valuable insight into what we need to teach and the areas where we can improve. In promoting a growth mindset, we can empower our students to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and see effort as a path to mastery.
Both at home and school, we should monitor progress and communicate in ways that foster a growth mindset, encourage improvement, and demonstrate how we value our children no matter what is essential. Together, we can show our students that the distance traveled is more important than a grade or standardized test score.
Conrad
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