This is when teachers limit the curriculum to a set range of knowledge or skills. This produces an unhealthy focus on excessive repetition of simple, isolated skills. A five-year University of Chicago study found "the pressure teachers were feeling lead to the decline in teaching higher-order thinking." (drdc.uchicago.edu) This is because teachers' conceptions of teaching quality seem to be narrowing. Their discourse about teaching began to focus more on test coverage. "Some teachers would even practice for the test and provide better accommodations for students, rather than teaching the DOE standards. In schools that don't meet 'AYP' (adequate yearly progress) teachers' roles intensified and expanded as multiple policy directives increasingly dictated practice." (drdc.uchicago.edu) When teachers started feeling overwhelmed, it lead for them to enact in pedagogies that were sometimes at odds with their vision of best practice. With these problems occurring, teachers feel overwhelmed and stressed, sometimes to the point where they wouldn't mind quitting. .
Stress is not only commonly classified as an issue found in adults, it's also found in teens. Sure, in adults eyes teens have nothing to worry about, all they have to worry about are the Earth shattering text messages about this year's prom king and queen, but in reality, students do experience stress. When a teenager's stress the highest? During tests, but more specifically, standardized tests. "A survey by the American psychological association found that nearly half of all teens said school pressures, due to the abundant amount of test preparation, stressed them." (Cizek) With this being said, chronic stress is not only discomforting, but it can cause a sense of panic and paralysis. Most people wouldn't believe that most cases of stress are from academics, and not bullying. "Test related jitters, are so common that the Standford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do with a test booklet incase a student vomits on it.