Drs Cashin & Cooper,
Thank you for an insightful article. I wish there was a way for the reformers to absorb this information.
Because of the harsh test focused school environments of chronic stress, most children no longer have a “safe haven”. The same seems to apply to their home environment as well, since most parents have become indoctrinated to focus on their child’s “performance”, at the expense of validating their emotional and social needs.
Children and teenagers are searching for connections to anything or anyone who can give them affection and acceptance for who they are. They are getting tired of being used to perform for and please adults. They will find surrogate family connections in gangs or whatever group will accept them for who they are. Trouble is, most children don’t have freedom to form their own identity in the autocratic environments that now exist in homes & schools, so they will spend a lifetime searching.
As a librarian, I am shocked at the increased rigidity this year, where our elementary students are told which library book that must choose.
Children have lost freedom in learning.
They are physically and mentally controlled to the extent that schools appear more like prisons. Reminds me of the book “The Twelve Year Sentence” by William Rickenbacker in 1974. How much worse things have become since then!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh, yes! My principal actually asked a teacher yesterday about how to we GET these kids to pass the tests? Instead, he should be asking how best can we teach the kids without so much testing. As a teacher, the stress is causing ill health. I am home on leave. Even the tutors are stressed out…..not to mention the kids.
The stress and anxiety are integral parts of the stealth, embedded, behavioral curriculum, in which the tests train children to accept intimidation, tedium and helplessness as the way of the world.
After all, isn’t that what the overwhelming majority of the children’s parents are experiencing at work? This is the unspoken but clearly communicated part of what the so-called reformers mean when they talk about being “career ready:” developing a high tolerance for stress, for the absurd, arbitrary and often cruel expression of power, for learned helplessness.
Check, check, and check, Mr. Gates: your proles will be ready soon.