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Testing, Stress, and Performance: How Students Respond Physiologically to High-Stakes Testing / Jennifer A. Heissel, Emma K. Adam, Jennifer L. Doleac, David N. Figlio, Jonathan Meer.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Heissel, Jennifer A.
- Series:
- Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25305.
- NBER working paper series no. w25305
- Language:
- English
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);
- Other Title:
- Testing, Stress, and Performance
- Place of Publication:
- Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.
- Summary:
- 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 does affect cortisol responses, and those responses have consequences for test performance. Those who responded most strongly - with either a large increase or large decrease in cortisol - scored 0.40 standard deviations lower than expected on the on the high-stakes exam.
- Notes:
- Print version record
- November 2018.
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