Mental Impacts of State Test

Standardized testing has been a tool used in the education system for centuries, all across the world. First seen in earlier imperial countries as a means to understand a group of students’ comprehension and absorption skills, it has been present throughout the growth and foundations of achievement tests. While in modern times, standardized tests look very different than they used to, the goal of them has proved to stay somewhat linear throughout time. 

In the US, individual states often have tests that are inclusive to that state, while some tests, like the ACT and SAT, are taken and measured across the whole country. Standardized testing is something teachers are instructed to prepare their students for, sometimes claiming that the scores received by the students represent the teacher’s ability to comprehensively teach and provide. State tests usually fall in the spring, almost as a deadline for students’ to stress over and psych themselves out over. While these tests are used to measure a student’s intelligence, they have proved to be more stressful than useful to the taker and are becoming less accurate in their intended predictions. 

The setting of a test, and the pressure surrounding it has a very impending and calculating effect on students. The knowledge that themselves, teachers, and colleges are able to see their scores puts unregarded pressure on their backs. They think they have to do well, and they aren’t smart if they do poorly, while their scores can often just be a reflection of how well their brain was functioning and how much it was fueled in the specific moments that made up their testing experience, rather than their actual intelligence. With the organization and administration of state tests, students are expected to be judged academically based on something very rigid and expected. And while having time to prepare for tests such as these is helpful, when it comes time to take them, students often still feel unprepared or psych themselves out and perform poorly and uncharacteristically. 

Seen in multiple studies and experiments, students experience higher than average levels of stress during standardized testing or times before and after, their cortisol levels spiking and negatively affecting their performance and confidence in their intelligence. Even with this biological evidence, how students perform on state tests, especially the larger ones such as the ACT and SAT, can greatly affect their transcript and how colleges view their application and comprehensive intelligence. 

Most of the stress that is related to standardized tests starts before, and occurs during the few days or weeks before the test takes place. Students overly study, stress, and cram information they are told they need to know and have comprehended in the weeks before the scheduled test, often burning themselves out and only further increasing their cortisol hormone and putting more mental weight on their body and academics. The studying needed for state tests also occurs simultaneously to their normal classes, homework, and outside activities, causing an overloaded

schedule that severely impacts their mental stability and abilities to perform well on the certain test they crammed for. 

While state tests are important in their goal, the pressure they surround students with is becoming more and more unnecessary and irritating for scholars and administrators alike. 

Ahsan, Yusha. “Standardized tests prove nothing – The Howler.” The Howler, 6 March 2023, https://thehowler.org/18293/opinions/standardized-tests-prove-nothing/. Accessed 3 August 2025. 

Miller, Lara. “List of Standardized Tests by State.” Education Advanced, 3 June 2022, https://www.educationadvanced.com/blog/list-of-standardized-tests-by-state. Accessed 3 August 2025.

Terada, Youki. “The Psychological Toll of High-Stakes Testing.” Edutopia, 14 October 2022, https://www.edutopia.org/article/psychological-toll-high-stakes-testing/. Accessed 3 August 2025.