High Stakes, High Stress, High Reward?

High stakes assessments are the bane of every school year. Yes, it does wonders for providing benchmarks and being able to measure student performance across districts and states, but... is it really worth the hassle? Well... it clearly depends on who you ask. For example, Columbia University (Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing, 2013) can give an entire, seemingly unbiased list of pros and cons for the process. However, many students, teachers, and parents I have talked to, both in person and online, tend to have an opinion far more negative than good. Obviously, having unbiased tests able to compare the success of schools does wonders for being able to weed out "bad" schools and remedy and help schools that under-perform. Also, these tests give a good starting place for what should be taught when, right? What could be bad about that? Well, for this particular assignment, I conducted a study in my old high school here in Hilo, Hawaii, and asked a friend of mine for information about a school he teaches in in Alabama, getting some information and opinions as best I could.
To begin with, I have to think back to my own time in high school. I graduated in 2009, so it honestly wasn't that long ago (still running under No Child Left Behind rules) when I left the public school system to enter college, and I still remember 11th grade as a plague on my schooling career. Entire weeks of meaningful, interesting instruction were thrown to the wayside so that we could be briefed over and over again on how to properly take the ACT. We were instructed on filling in bubbles (like we'd never used a Scantron before), briefed on all sorts of oddly worded questions, and given a lot of seemingly unconnected information because "you'll have to know this for the test." It was quite clear that the teachers were teaching to the test, and nobody liked it, but we all had to do it. Now, I am a good test taker and a naturally calm, relaxed individual, so I had very little extra stress (taking the SAT in 7th grade and scoring at a 12th grade level does a lot to calm one's nerves about their abilities), but some of the students around me I vividly remember vomiting more than once in class on the days leading up to the test. People were crying about ruined futures, hair was being pulled out... it was like the world was going to end.
Unfortunately, when talking to my friend in Alabama, that seemed to still be the case. The school he works in tends to focus on teaching to the test, despite quite a number of protests from parents and the district alike, and it is mostly for two reasons: funding, and teachers keeping their job. The principal doesn't hide the fact that teachers are moved around based on the performance of their students on the tests, and teachers who fail repeatedly soon find themselves looking for a job. The school is suffering enough from a lack of federal funding, largely due to low test scores. It doesn't really matter that the reason scores are so low is due to a large amount of ESL students in the classroom, or that they have been so severely punished already that the money spent on restructuring to meet the standards is making the school run on a shoestring budget... it's how the tests must be administered there. Everything, everything, is riding on the students' performance, to the point that many teachers in Alabama have been caught tampering with or changing test answers out of worry. The students know it, the parents know it, the teachers know it, and the school knows it... so the test is all that is taught for.
This, to me, is a travesty. Accountability is important, as is making sure our students are prepared for the outside world and life beyond high school, but punishing an already struggling school with a test that, while objective, is not really suited to the students taking it, only causes them to look bad and meet with disaster. The constant restructuring and changing curriculum drives the teachers and the students crazy and... honestly, it sounds like a mess I am happy not to be in.
I was worried, going back to my old school, that I would be running into a similar situation, and I was all girded up and ready to hear tales of that madness... but none came. It turns out, for a few years now, Hawaii has been involved in using the Strive HI Performance System. This system still takes test scores into account (particularly in high school, where these scores transfer into college applications) but it also takes in factors like the percentage of students who have improved in a subject, how many students graduate and go on to college, and how much of a difference there is between high-needs students and their non-high-needs peers in terms of achievement. It is a system that rewards achievement, as that is obviously important, but also rewards growth and helps schools prove their worth by more standards than just a few test scores.
This system seems a lot more inclusive, and while the numbers in a lot of schools in the state aren't pretty (in fact, on this island, they're rather atrocious),  they seem to be getting better. This system also means that a teacher in a class that doesn't test well, but shows amazing growth, is able to prove their worth without being reduced to one number. Students and teachers are still stressed about the ACT, and many still find themselves teaching to it when they know they should be doing something different, but none of the teachers I asked felt like the results of that score were going to, alone, determine whether or not they'd still have a job the next year.
When it comes to standardized, high stakes testing, there will always be worry, stress, and fear in the students over their very futures. And, while the standards are good for data... in many ways they hurt the children and do a disservice to the efforts put in by teachers and school officials. The benefits, to me at least, are largely outweighed by the lost opportunities and days spent on the testing. However, in the end, opinions don't matter that much... results do. I am just happy my results will be judged on a few more numbers than just one test.
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Resources: 
Kamenetz, Anya. (2015) The Past, Present And Future Of High-Stakes Testing. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/01/22/377438689/the-past-present-and-future-of-high-stakes-testing

Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing. (2013). Retrieved from http://worklife.columbia.edu/files_worklife/public/Pros_and_Cons_of_Standardized_Testing_1.pdf

Strive HI System Index. (n.d.). Hawaii DOE. Retrieved from http://www.hawaiipublicschools.org/VisionForSuccess/AdvancingEducation/StriveHIPerformanceSystem/Pages/Strive-HI-System-Index.aspx