There is a moment in the testing season that has nothing to do with the test itself.
It happens during conversations in staff rooms, on social media, and in auditoriums filled with people who care deeply about students and are trying to make sense of what is happening.
It is the moment when adult anxiety starts to rise.
Once it does, it moves quickly from adult to adult. Then from adult to student, conversation to classroom. Before long, it is no longer just about testing but how people are experiencing it.
A Moment I Won’t Forget
When I was serving as a Director of Assessment during the rollout of Common Core aligned assessments in 2014, I found myself standing in a packed multipurpose room.
There was standing room only with parents, teachers, community members, and even some curious students.
The energy in the room was already high before I even stepped on stage. The local teachers association president had publicly referred to the statewide assessments as “child abuse.” This language had done exactly what it was intended to. It inflamed, spread, and created a sense of urgency and fear that was bigger than the facts.
So there I was, positioned as the person representing the system, standing in front of a room full of people who were angry, concerned, and ready for a fight.
I made a decision in that moment that I was not going to attempt to debate. The claim itself was not grounded in reality, and engaging it that way would only elevate the emotion in the room. Instead, I said something very simple:
We need to look at adult behavior around these assessments, because no one in this system is intending to harm children.
The room did not instantly calm down, but something shifted. The focus moved from the test to the environment surrounding it, and that’s the key.
How Anxiety Moves
Students do not form their understanding of testing from policy documents or technical manuals (most adults do not either), but that is not the point here.
Students form their understanding from us. They watch how adults talk about testing. They listen to tone and notice urgency. They pick up on stress, even when we think we are hiding it relatively well.
If adults are anxious, students will feel it and begin to reflect it as well.
If adults frame testing as something overwhelming or harmful, students will experience it that way. When this happens, performance is no longer just about what students know, it is about how they are navigating the situation. That is no a small processing shift for them. More importantly, it is a different construct entirely.
What Leadership Actually Looks Like
It is easy to think that leadership during testing season is about control. Keeping everything on schedule and making sure procedures are followed, all while responding quickly when something goes wrong.
While all of that does matter, it is not the full picture.
You are not just managing logistics. You are managing the conditions under which measurement happens, and that cannot be separated from the environment created by the adult attitudes and beliefs about what they are doing.
This is where the Compassionate Assessment Framework becomes a real practice. The Assessment Environment is not just the physical space. It is the emotional tone, the predictability of the day, and the clarity of expectations.
Adult attitudes are not abstract. They are expressed in real time through language, reactions, and decisions. Together, those two elements shape how students experience the assessment as a whole, and that experience directly affects what the data collected represents.
The Leadership Move
Remaining calm in a high-pressure situation is not passive, rather it takes purpose and deliberate action.
Do not confuse a strong leader’s ability to remain calm with ignoring concerns or dismissing frustration.
What I am talking about is real leadership that creates stability in the middle of it.
There is a reason this idea shows up across leadership literature. Stephen Covey wrote about the importance of focusing on what is within your control. This idea is reflected in the fifth habit in Covey’s bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In moments of pressure, your response is one of the few things that is entirely yours to manage.
During testing season, that matters more than most people realize because calm is contagious, just like anxiety is. When leaders remain steady, communication becomes clearer. Decisions become more grounded. The environment becomes more predictable and students respond positively to a calm, grounded environment.
What Happened Next
That auditorium moment did not define the entire testing experience.
It was a spike. A very intense spike, but it did not last. Over time, as leaders across schools stayed grounded, as messaging became clearer, and as the experience became more routine, the temperature came down before the testing season had even ended that same spring.
Students adjusted. Teachers adjusted. Participation stabilized the very next year. Increases in performance followed. Not because the test changed, but because it had not. The only things that changed were the adult attitudes and beliefs, shifting the conditions for testing to a more predictable environment and steady, clearly communicated purpose.
The Work in Front of Us
We are currently in a moment where it is easy to amplify fear. Social media rewards strong reactions. Stories of students crying or struggling spread quickly, often without context, fueling mistrust in both the system and those in it.
Despite this, it is important to remember that leadership is not about amplifying what is loud. Leadership is about stabilizing what is real.
There are legitimate questions about assessment and the fact that schools are struggling with very real constraints. There is pressure at every level of the system, and yet, we cannot forget that the way we show up in this moment matters. Testing season is not just about administering an assessment. It is about creating the conditions for measurement and those conditions are shaped by the people on the ground.
If you are in a position of leadership right now, remember that calm is not the absence of pressure, it is how you lead through it.
Adult anxiety becomes student anxiety, and that shows up in the data. Calm creates the space for students to show what they actually know, and that is the whole point.
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