Imagine this: Summer is almost here, but not quite yet. A load of tests and finals is all you can think about. Studying and reviewing does not give you much confidence. You wonder to yourself why it has to be this hard. The hours you put in every night will pay off, right? The level of uncertainty is overwhelming.
Most Lexington High School students are no strangers to test anxiety. They will inevitably encounter struggles, stress, and panic during their high school careers. But is this stress necessary and the only way for teachers to accurately assess their students? Perhaps not. Implementing project-based assessments could alleviate stress for students while upholding the rigorous academic standards present in LHS.
These projects could involve students completing tasks or projects over an extended period. Presentations, experiments, and portfolios would replace a single high-stakes assessment.
“Summative and formative assessments are designed to assess how much and how well students have learned the skills and how well they can apply the concepts of a unit,” Francesca Pfrommer, a math teacher at LHS said.
Application-based tests often cause students more stress, as studying the resources given to them may not always yield better results. This mindset leads to further anxiety before and during assessments, which Pfrommer acknowledged.
“Tests can create stress for students and teachers. Students often argue about grades. I also have seen an uptick in academic integrity violations on assessments,” Pfrommer said.
Violations to academic integrity directly result from unnecessary pressure placed on students during tests. Because of this anxiety-riddled environment, teachers cannot accurately capture a student’s full ability.
The community at LHS is diverse, and each student has different learning needs. Although some may need more time to learn a concept, it does not always mean that their academic abilities are less advanced than those of their faster-learning peers. With a fast-paced curriculum that regularly incorporates various assessments, more students are beginning to feel overwhelmed.
“As someone who takes a little more time grasping new content, sometimes the tests feel a bit rushed. I wish we had fewer assessments throughout the year and took more time engaging with new content,” Adam Keene, a sophomore at LHS, said.
Contrary to test-based assessments, project-based assessments resolve problems surrounding student engagement with content. Daily contributions to a larger project ensure that students work towards a well-made product, allowing them to synthesize information over time. This is inherently due to the longer timelines of work projects offered compared to tests.
More importantly, project-based assessments help to reduce stress perpetuated by the academically intense environment at LHS.
“I think that projects could reduce stress, as the main reason for stress in the first place is that tests are high stakes, and they compile a month’s worth of information,” says Ambalatharasu Sivabalan, a senior at LHS.
Projects reduce stress by allowing students to work at their own pace, giving them more time to understand and apply concepts. They shift the focus from memorization to practical application, making learning more enjoyable and less stressful. This progressive assessment alleviates the high pressure of a single, high-stakes test.
Unfortunately, implementing projects is not as straightforward as it seems, especially in math. Since problem-solving is the simplest way to assess a student’s knowledge, translating that into a project would be difficult.
“Project-based assessments might not work in every class. I’m thinking about math because how would you put equations and formulas into a project? Logically, that doesn’t make sense. For science, though, it would probably work fine because we do labs all the time, and those could be carried over into projects,” Ahan Banarjee, a sophomore at LHS, said.
Evidently, this new possibility will depend on the class, as some classes will have better ways to incorporate projects than others.
The stress caused by tests could carry over to all aspects of a student’s life, a dangerous possibility considering the vast amount of activities students participate in outside of academics. Although the prospect of project-based assessments may not be clear, considering how new they are, they can certainly open up new ways of learning that better fit the needs of different students. As the world around us modernizes, perhaps education should, too.
