Students have always experienced test-taking anxiety but in recent years the problem has gotten worse, says Dr. Janani Krishnaswami, a Texas physician who helps students overcome these stresses before high-stakes exams such as the AP, SAT, or ACT. 

Krishnaswami, who is also a content author for UWorld, a test-prep service, shares best practices and tips for educators looking to help their students reduce their test-taking anxiety. 

1. Reducing Test-Taking Anxiety: Make Sure Your Students Practice Test Taking

“Test taking is an art and a skill that's independent of actually learning material,” Krishnaswami says. “So it's very important for teachers to understand that while they're doing a great service by teaching this material with enthusiasm, a lot of emphasis has to be placed on test taking itself.” 

Test-taking strategies should be covered in class and educators should give students test-taking practice. “Test taking itself has to be taught as almost a separate skill,” she says. However, that doesn’t mean these strategies can’t be incorporated into the class material. “You should use test taking itself as a way to learn material; they work synergistically,” she says. 

2. Help Students Shift Their Mindsets  

Part of preparing for the day of the test is making sure you go into it with the right mindset. Teachers can help students establish this by showing empathy and helping students recognize all the challenges they’ve successfully overcome previously. 

“Typically, human beings tend to have negative cognitive biases, we tend to over-emphasize the things that have happened to us that haven't gone exactly according to plan or where we feel deficient,” Krishnaswami says. “We tend to overlook those things where we'd actually done a good job or actually did better than we thought."

Overcoming those unconscious biases is essential. “That's where teachers can actually help guide that student in understanding, ‘Hey, what have you done well? What do you think your strengths are?’” she says. “Then when we start to do a lot of catastrophizing and get into what-if scenarios and worst-case thinking, let's counter that with, ‘What would you like to see happen? What's your ideal vision for yourself?'” 

3. Remind Students to Focus on What They Can Control  

Educators can remind students to focus on what they can control leading into a test, which includes their preparation on the material and test-taking strategies, and their mindset. 

“Once you've done those two things, there is an element that is going to be outside of your control and that is something that we all have to accept,” Krishnaswami says. “You don't know exactly what assortment of questions you're going to get. Maybe you didn’t sleep that well the night before, and you definitely can't control what that result is going to be.” 

Despite these elements beyond their control, students who know they prepared properly can take solace in that. “That is a great tool to help with anxiety when you realize that, ‘Oh, I can't control everything that happens to me, but I'll put in my best work,'” Krishnaswami says

4. Use Technology to Help With Mindfulness  

Healthcare professionals can help students learn how to cope with anxiety spikes in the moment. Something as simple as a student wearing a rubber band on their wrist and snapping it when they feel anxious to remind themselves to calibrate can be helpful, Krishnaswami says. 

Technology can also assist in providing mindfulness practice. “I really love Insight Timer,” she says. “It’s an app that has everything from breathing practices to guided body scan meditations.”

Much of it is free and it incorporates a wide range of mindfulness practices from different cultures as well as offering music-based meditations. Other apps with similar features that Krishnaswami also recommends include Open, Calm, and Headspace. 

Whatever app or mindfulness practice a student uses, repetition and consistency is key. “The more you use them in a routine, the more effect you'll see,” Krishnaswami says. “Rather than just using it sporadically or right before a test, it's going to have more effect when you start building that daily practice.” 

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Read the following story then select the best answer. 

The SAT is: 

A. Increasing less important

B. As relevant as ever

C. Already dead 

A. None of the above 

Wondering if the SAT is dead and suggesting it might not be important for college admissions would have been laughable a few years ago, however, policies around entrance exams such as the SAT and ACT are changing rapidly. 

The pandemic accelerated a trend among higher ed institutions to make the SAT and ACT options in the applications of prospective students. Currently, more than 1,800 universities (or close to 80 percent of the institutions in the nation) are test-optional or test-blind for 2022 admissions, and more than 1,400, or about 60 percent of these schools, have already said they will keep these policies in place at least for the class of 2023. Prior to the pandemic, only about 40 percent of colleges were test-optional or test-blind. 

Given these changes, it makes sense for students and the educators who guide them to wonder whether devoting time to the SAT  and ACT is worthwhile.

Is The SAT Dead?  

“The reality is that despite the growth in test-optional policies, the SAT/ACT is not dead or dying. It is more like on life-support,” says Brennan Barnard, director of college counseling at Khan Lab High School and co-author of The Truth about College Admission. “Until we find another more equitable and effective means of assessment that can be standardized, our current testing options will likely remain.” 

Robert Schaeffer, executive director of FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing, does not believe the SAT will ever die/disappear completely, but does think its prominence could continue to diminish. For a long time, The College Board (which administers the SAT) offered a second tier of tests, the SAT Subject Tests (formally the Achievement Tests and SAT IIs), before dropping these last year. 

Schaeffer believes that eventually the SAT and ACT will occupy the space on college applications once occupied by Subject Tests. “A handful of schools required them and kids who wanted to add to their portfolios would take them, but they were not a fundamental part of the admissions process,” he says. 

Should Students Still Take the SAT? 

“I do still recommend that students take standardized tests because, like it or not, the ACT/SAT are still required by some schools and state systems,” Barnard says. 

However, the question is more complicated than it once was. “College counselors are all over the map on this and as with everything in college admission, it depends,” he says. “If you are a counselor in Florida or Georgia, or in a state where standardized testing is used for merit scholarships tied to testing, then your views are likely very different than if you work with students from California where the UCs are test-blind.” 

Neha Gupta, author and founder of College Shortcuts, an academic mentorship program, says students should only take the SAT or ACT if they have time to take the exams multiple times. “Studying for these exams to take them once is not the best use of any student's time,” she says, noting that students with good scores are often taking it at least two or three times. Instead, she advises students to focus on honing the non-test side of their applications. “I am proud that admissions officers are going to look at more of the human aspect of the application. When it comes to the essays, the resume, what are they passionate about? Why do they want to go there? What are their values,” Gupta says.

Despite the test's decrease in prominence, there are still other reasons to take it.

“Many scholarships still ask for standardized testing results as part of the criteria for completing scholarship applications,” says Dr. Aliber Lozano, vice president of regions support for AVID, a nonprofit that helps schools shift to a more equitable, student-centered approach. 

Lozano adds that taking the test has other benefits, including improving students’ test-taking abilities and helping prepare them for college. 

“The College Board and the SAT were founded to increase access to college and that remains our core mission," Priscilla Rodriguez, vice president of College Readiness Assessments at the College Board, said in an emailed statement. "During the pandemic, colleges have introduced more flexibility and choice into the admissions process. Some students may decide their application is stronger without test scores, while others will benefit from sending them, including the many thousands of underrepresented students whose SAT scores strengthen their college applications. Evidence shows that when colleges consider SAT scores in the context of where students live and go to school, as with our free admissions tool Landscape, the SAT helps increase diversity. A recent report from the University of California shows this clearly. As we emerge from the pandemic, the SAT will remain one of the most accessible and affordable ways for students to distinguish themselves. Preserving a student’s choice to submit scores is important.”

Equity & Student Reactions 

Gupta says students she works with fall into two camps in their reaction to test-optional policies. 

“Students who are interested in more technical fields, or tend to be more academic, or booksmart, are not very happy that they're not able to showcase their test-taking skills and show a great score as a barometer of some of the things they're capable of. And now they're getting asked to write a vulnerable, heartfelt essay about their passions and interests and emotions, and they're realizing that that is going to determine their ability to get in,” she says.  “Then there's other students who aren't great test takers, or they hate studying for the SAT, and they know that they don't have to work so hard at it. And so they're very happy that now they can focus more on their essays.” 

Regardless of student reaction, test-optional policies do promote greater equity. 

“The evidence is better than we had predicted,” Schaeffer says of test-optional policies. “Schools found they got more applicants. They got better academically qualified applicants. And they got more diversity of all sorts. The college class that started a couple months ago was the most diverse in history.” 

One reason for this increased diversity is that students who got lower scores were reluctant to apply to selective schools in the past. “Kids would see that average score, and say, ‘Well I’m below average, so I shouldn't apply.’ While half the kids who were accepted in the past were below average, that's what average means, but the teenage brain didn't understand that,” Schaeffer says. 

“Regardless of where the test-optional movement goes, we need colleges and universities to be as transparent and articulate as possible with their policies,” Barnard says. “There tends to be a lot of anxiety, mistrust, and confusion about the role of testing in admission decisions. While standardized testing might be useful for some schools in assessment, we must continue to acknowledge how unlevel the playing field is and ask ourselves if what is best for young people is spending unspeakable amounts of time and energy preparing for a test that only serves one purpose.” 

Correction 11/22/21: The ACT is administered by the nonprofit ACT, Inc. not the College Board as this article originally stated. 

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Asked about federally required standardized testing during his senate confirmation, Miguel Cardona said it’s important. 

“If we don’t assess where our students are and their level of performance, it’s going to be difficult for us to provide targeted support and resource allocation in the manner that can best support the closing of the gaps that have been exacerbated due to this pandemic,” he said.

As Secretary of Education, he has stood by those words, and testing has begun in many districts, although the department has also been considering requests for waivers from parents as well as states. The move has drawn criticism from educators and researchers who say there is no evidence the tests help, even in non-pandemic years. 

Standardized Tests Get a Failing Grade  

“Test-driven education reform is a faith-based policy, it is not an evidence-based policy,” says Robert Schaeffer, executive director of FairTest: the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. 

Jack Schneider, professor at UMass Lowell, spearheaded a letter to Cardona signed by 548 scholars and academic researchers urging the Education Department to reconsider its mandate to administer federally mandated standardized tests this spring. The testing “will exacerbate inequality and will produce flawed data,” the letter said. 

“What the research tells us about standardized testing is that there's a strong relationship between demographic variables like student race, family income, parental educational attainment, and students' standardized test scores,” says Schneider, who is also co-founder of the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment. “School is not the primary influence on student academic achievement as measured by standardized test scores. Out-of-school factors play a greater role. And therefore the use of standardized tests to hold schools accountable doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense.” 

Andrew Ho, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, says evidence that federal standardized testing helps student achievement is “limited and theoretical.” However, he adds that it makes sense that we would want to monitor student proficiency in math and reading, and perhaps even things such as their mental health at the national level. “All of these things, we believe, may not improve as much if we aren't measuring them, but we don't have much evidence that says that measuring has helped,” says Ho. 

Critics say that in addition to these failings, the tests help reinforce inequity and cycles of poverty by penalizing schools that serve low-income students and negatively influencing property values in certain communities. 

A New Standard for Standardized Tests 

“I see a place for testing if we had no stakes tests that told us where we need to deliver additional resources,” Schneider says. “Not only would we get more out of the tests, but we can also do less testing. Part of why we have to test every kid every year is because they're using these for high-stakes purposes. It's a part of the theory of change that posits that schools and educators are not working hard enough and what they need is to have their feet held to the fire. We've got 20 years of evidence that that isn't the case. Educators aren't hiding their best lesson plans and waiting for somebody to threaten them.” 

He adds, “Research suggests that if you got rid of the stakes, you would see less gaming. So you wouldn't see schools teaching to the test, you wouldn't see teachers doing endless test prep, you wouldn't see schools cheating.” 

The letter Schneider and others wrote to Cardona suggests using new assessment models provided by the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment or the National Education Policy Center’s Schools of Opportunity. 

Similarly, FairTest advocates for significantly reducing the number of federally mandated tests, increased funding for alternative testing methods and having states rely on sampling to assess aggregate student progress. “If and when the federal education law comes up for reauthorization, which may be in the next Congress, that's what we'll be pushing for,” Schaeffer says. 

This Year’s Standardized Testing 

The decision to conduct this year’s standardized tests yet allow for waivers is particularly puzzling to many. 

“The Department of Education's reaction to state waiver requests, to say it's inconsistent is a significant understatement,” Schaeffer says. “It's hard to understand why the District of Columbia did get a full, comprehensive waiver, but they would not give a similar waiver to say, Michigan, where these schools are shut down in Detroit.” 

Significant questions about the accuracy of the tests abound, given the waivers and the uncertainty of the pandemic school year. “Will it be that we see more historically disadvantaged kids taking tests? We don't know,” Schneider says. “Will it be that we'll see kids who are more likely to be high achieving taking the test? We don't know.” 

Tests could also be demoralizing to students who have been through a lot since the pandemic began. “Kids did an amazing job of keeping the faith with regard to school,” he says. “It's an insult to them to say, ‘Welcome back to school. Here’s an extended period of standardized testing. Here is the most disengaging side of school.’” 

However, there are also those who argue standardized tests could be important this year. 

Ho is a critic of the way federally mandated standardized tests are generally given, but says this year’s low-stakes approach is similar to the type of testing for which he and others have long advocated. He also believes the assessments have the potential to do more good than in the past given that the American Rescue Act will provide the largest infusion of federal education funding in history.

“We have this opportunity to sort of say, ‘Hey look, you don't have to test,’ and yet for everyone who wants to test, they can contribute some understanding of where our needs are greatest so that we can allocate some of the hundreds of billions of dollars that we have,” he says. 

To make the data gathered this year valuable, Ho believes schools should use test scores from 2019 as a comparison point, though he admits this system won’t control for all the variables of this unusual testing year, especially if test turnout is low. “Our vision gets blurrier and blurrier the less testing we have, but in all cases, it is better than having the blur of nothing at all,” he says. 

But Ho is not advocating business as usual with federal standardized tests this year. “If we report test scores, as we usually do, we will be like the Titanic heading for an iceberg,” he says. 

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced a $10 billion plan for frequent school COVID testing but there are questions about how the funds will be distributed and testing availability, plus concerns that current FDA regulations could slow down the speed at which school COVID tests are administered. 

What Does the School COVID Testing Plan Call For? 

Funds from the American Rescue Plan will be allocated to states and certain cities for school COVID testing. The goal is for regular testing of all students to limit outbreaks and allow schools to continue in-person learning. 

Before he took office, President Joe Biden pointed to frequent school COVID testing as an important component of his plan to have all K-8 U.S. schools open for in-person learning this spring. The plan calls for deploying more rapid antigen tests and building infrastructure to more quickly analyse pooled PCR tests, which measure the RNA of the virus. These are technically more sensitive than antigen tests, which measure a protein that is part of the virus. But antigen tests can be better at detecting contagious individuals and are inexpensive, can provide results within minutes, and do not need to be analysed at a lab. 

The announcement of the school COVID testing funding came the same week as the CDC updated its guidance on testing to encourage more testing of non-symptomatic individuals and the Food and Drug Administration moved to allow some developers of COVID-19 tests to market their products for at home use. 

Why is School COVID Testing Still An important Strategy?  

Michael Mina, MD, PhD, professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, says the school testing plan along with the CDC and FDA updates are a step in the right direction.

“This is all really good news that I think is at least helping us stay on the coattails of our peer nations,” says Mina, a prominent advocate for more rapid testing. “Many countries have moved forward already with getting these types of tests out.”

Even with American vaccination levels rapidly increasing, quick and frequent testing may be important longterm to help combat variants of the virus. “Mutations are increasingly worrying and so having other tools in our pocket to be able to mitigate spread, if and when that's needed [is important]. If vaccines aren't doing all that we're hoping that they will, this is going to be increasingly helpful,” Mina says. 

How Will School COVID Testing Work? 

The CDC will work with regional and local health departments to help schools implement COVID screening programs but details are still forthcoming. “Every state is really going to be handling school testing very differently,” Mina says. “Each state has their own HHS or some other public health authority that's making decisions, and that does make it a complicated mix.”

School officials should continue to work closely with state and county officials to see what types of tests are available, but supply could be an issue as existing manufacturers can’t keep up with demand. “Even if the CDC wants to give really clear guidance, which they just did, there's just no tests available for the schools to really be able to purchase,” Mina says. 

What Are Some Hurdles to Implementing Widespread School COVID Testing? 

Schools still need Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) waivers to conduct testing. 

“CLIA waivers are still needed by every school and prescriptions are still needed,” Mina says. But some states are figuring out workarounds. “Texas, for example, just said, ‘We're giving a blanket CLIA waiver to every school for asymptomatic testing.’ Essentially, that's Texas’ way of getting around the FDA requirements as a whole state.” 

Mina doesn’t think waivers or prescriptions should be necessary. “At this point in the pandemic nobody, no American, especially school kids, should have to be prescribed a test by a physician and have extra cost added and complexity,” he says. “I would like the President to make a presidential order that declares these tests as public health tools that don't require prescriptions. That all of a sudden takes a big burden off of the schools. Right now, the schools have to go and apply for CLIA waivers and find physicians to write their prescriptions.” 

Will These Regulations Change? 

A reporter asked about these waivers at a CDC press conference on March 17 announcing the new funds for school testing. “We’re putting these resources out to help schools plan, but we continue to work on the policy background here. And there continues to be work to do,” said Carole Johnson, the White House Testing Coordinator. “We have seen some states do some creative work around CLIA waivers, and we have seen some work from the Department of Health and Human Services to make it easier to access CLIA waivers. And we’re going to continue to work on that issue.” 

How Do We Know School COVID Testing Works?  

The Biden Administration plan grew from the calls of public health experts who touted the benefits of frequent screening tests of non-symptomatic individuals as well as the Rockefeller Foundation’s rapid school testing plan that was published in December. Early results from six K-12 testing pilots, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and an independent assessment of school testing programs across the country, found weekly testing of all students, teachers, and staff reduces in-school infections by an estimated 50 percent. Since January San Antonio ISD has tested about 70 percent of its staff with a mix of PCR and rapid tests, and the positivity rate in schools has been only 0.8 percent. Other districts in the U.S. with aggressive testing strategies have also had positive outcomes. 

“Since we released the findings from our report in December, the data is encouraging: schools are reopening safely around the country,” said Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation in an email. “We appreciate President Biden’s commitment to building on this early success and making it sustainable, and we look forward to working with the HHS as well as our partners in public health, education and governments around the country to continue to implement our plan’s recommendations and get children back in the classroom.”

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The University of New England, Australia has offered correspondence courses since the early 1950s but until recently most students still had to take in-person exams. 

The university is a separate institution from the University of New England in the U.S., and has long had students spread out across Australia and the globe. UNE utilized a network of about 400 exam centers around the world where students could schedule their exams, but the process was often disrupted by world events. 

“We've dealt with wars, bushfires, floods, mail strikes, and riots,” says Kylie Day, UNE’s manager, exams and e-assessment. “We held exams in Fukushima, when the tsunami hit, and the nuclear power plant went off. We've had exam centers bombed the week before our exams were being held. So the logistics were massive, the disruption was routine.” 

In 2017, UNE began offering exams online with software designed to prevent student cheating. By the end of 2019, nearly half of the university’s exams were being offered online. Since the coronavirus pandemic began, 100 percent of the exams have been remote. 

“In the last 12 months, we've held 40,000 exams online,” Day says. 

Though there are privacy concerns around online exams, Day says the majority of UNE students enjoy the convenience, so the way the institution offers exams is being changed for the better. 

Day shared four tips for instructors considering proctoring exams this way. 

Rethink the Exam Structure  

Switching from paper to online exams is an opportunity for instructors to reexamine the exams themselves, Day says. “It requires you to question why you hold exams, why you hold exams when you do, and how you hold exams.” 

UNE administrators are considering doing away with an exam period because it initially was created for logistical purposes. “We needed to have all the exam venues booked, and the desks and chairs moved in, and the supervisors ready in the papers there,” Day says. “Now we are able to hold exams, anywhere, anytime, any day. So why do we need an exam period? It's allowing structural changes to the academic calendar, it gives us a few weeks per teaching period back for teaching, perhaps.” 

Day says you can also incorporate elements of video and website exploration into your exam, opening up both the type of questions you ask and the type of answers students can provide. 

Prioritize Student Convenience

When they switch to online exams, many instructors try to recreate a lecture hall exam by having everyone take the test at the same time. “A lot of institutions that I talked to think that it has to be done that way for academic integrity reasons,” Day says. She doesn't agree. She advises asking exam questions that require a deeper level of understanding so even if a student received an advance question from a classmate who has already taken the exam, it won’t matter. 

Remember, holding asynchronous exams really helps students juggle various aspects of their lives, Day says. “A student can choose to sit their exam at 10 o'clock at night at the kitchen table, after work and after the kids have gone to bed,” she says. 

UNE students have taken their exams from bed when they were unwell, on cruise ships during vacations, and while on military deployment. One student even took his law exam under a gum tree in a remote area of Australia. “We don't know why he needed to do that, but clearly, that worked for him on the day,” Day says. 

Remind Students Online Cheating is Often Less Successful 

Where there are tests, there is cheating. “Even in ancient China, one of the places where exams were first invented, the penalty for cheating was death. And people still cheated,” Day says. “The solution to cheating is, in my mind, much like a public health or public safety campaign -- you talk about behavior in terms of converting risk-taking behavior into help-seeking behavior.” 

For its exams, UNE works with the proctoring company ProctorU. Students can schedule exams 24 hours a day with a live proctor who confirms the student’s identity and watches the student with the help of AI technology, which flags unusual behavior such as typing speed variations, eye movements, etc., to the proctor. 

Day says this method can actually be more effective at preventing cheating than the in-person centers the university used to use. “When we had paper-based exams all over the world, an exam supervisor who might only supervise a couple of exams a year and had no real training, other than a brochure we sent them, would be supervising our exams. And it became clear to me that in many cases, they were checking that the student had an ID card, rather than that they looked like the photo on the ID cards,” she says. “They weren't particularly good at gathering evidence. They weren't particularly good at asserting themselves if they suspected cheating. In my mind, online, supervised exams are actually a lot better.” 

Remember There’s Still a Human Involved  

One common concern about online exams is privacy. “People say, ‘Oh, my God, that's weird. someone's watching me through a webcam, I don't think I like it, they will see stuff in my bedroom,’” Day says. “We say, ‘Just don't have your exam in your bedroom.’” 

The university understands this concern and allows students who express it to take an alternative exam. Recently, that has come in the form of a video-based exam. So far about 5 percent of students have chosen this option. 

Another worry is that AI or a proctor from a company outside of the institution will be deciding cheating cases. That’s not what happens. “We are notified by our proctoring partner if they see something strange,” Day says. “And then we, as humans, decide what to do about that. We have a video, we have the chat log, we have the log from the learning management system.” 

These recordings and logs are good for the student and the university. “We don't ever have to raise issues if we can see that it was just something strange that happened but it wasn't misconduct,” Day says. “Where we think that it could be misconduct, it's very clear cut -- ‘Here's the video, it's obvious.’ It doesn't turn into a drawn-out proceeding for the student or the institution.” 

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Slido

Increase student buy-in with interactive polls and Q&A sessions

Pros: The clean design and variety of polling options make it a great tool for student engagement and classroom discussion.

Cons: Most of the classroom-centric features are available only with a paid plan, and polls must be reset one at a time.

Bottom Line: Engaging classroom response platform offers teachers and students real-time feedback opportunities.

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App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Albert

Flexible, interactive test-prep practice for high school and beyond

Pros: AP and IB teachers will love the clearly targeted and complex questions to help their students improve.

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Bottom Line: A variety of question types and on-the-spot analytics help teachers individualize test-prep practice.

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App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

A recent Tech & Learning survey of over 500 teachers, principals, and district administrators revealed noteworthy disparities between the realities of teachers assessment experiences inside their classrooms and the perceptions of principals and district administrators outside the classroom.

While a certain degree of disconnection is to be expected, particularly given the limited interaction and physical distance common between teachers and district administrators, some of the most striking differences in perception occurred between teachers and principals working together in close proximity.

These gaps in understanding, concerning everything from the type and volume of assessments being administered to the effort and time involved in creating and grading assessments and analyzing the data gathered, can be a challenge, but they offer an opportunity to bring expectations and performance in line with one another.

Click here to download the full white paper, Understanding the Classroom Assessment Gap: Eight Important Takeaways for Principals & Administrators