Common responses to "exam stress," as Hayes characterizes it, include disturbed sleep patterns, tiredness, worry, irregular eating habits, increased infections, and inability to concentrate."

 

Our educational system is now relying more than ever on standardized tests that compare students to one another as the dominant assessment instrument. This tendency has forced teachers at all grade levels to "orient students to performance goals and comparative standards of excellence instead of internal mastery goals," says Scott Paris, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. The emphasis on external goals, Paris suggests, has created an unhealthy classroom scenario in which "standardized tests provoke considerable anxiety among students that seems to increase with their age and experience."

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