I don't remember any notable examples of kids misbehaving during standardized tests, but I might understand if they did (if they couldn't take one more second of it), since standardized tests were typically the most dismal, stressful, and indescribably boring point of the year. I never personally misbehaved, but when I was real young, sometimes I would freeze up and start crying when I shut down during a hard part of the test. Standardized tests are also heavily worshipped now around here, but I don't think it's so much the fault of the individual schools as it is the corrupt and evil state department of education. They put enormous stress on students, but especially teachers - their jobs being threatened if their students don't do "perfect" on these detestable exams which the state refuses to release any kind of general idea of what will be on it to the teachers (information they kind of might need if they are to best prepare their students). The states doesn't give the schools money and funds unless they do the standardized tests. The tests are also forced to count as 20% of the students' final grade, even though they won't give the teachers any fucking idea of what is on it.
In Oklahoma, the stress on the students is greatly reduced because the standardized tests are not part of the student's grade. Therefore, the teachers and administration plead with the students to try to get them to give a shit, with not much of a success. It doesn't help that the results come back so far after the test (I think sometimes the next school year, even) that by the time you get the results you don't even remember any of the questions or what you could have done better.
Fortunately for the teachers, the Oklahoma education department does at least give the teachers a basic idea of what will be covered, so they can at least be sure that they're covering the material (and there's often a week or two of review).
Also, keep in mind that some of this comes from the U.S. Dept. of Ed., by way of federal laws and programs like No Child Left Behind. State ed departments have to follow federal rules for how to disburse federal funds, like with FHWA and the MUTCD.
Right now the education system is a piece of shit - it values stress, busy work, standardized tests, and grades rather than students actually learning something, and being informed citizens that can do good in the world. Instead of engaging students and teaching them something, every day in K-12 is now just absorbed by testing, stress, and overwhelming nonsensical work loads.
It was becoming that way when I graduated in 2007. This is a salient point that too many adults in this country are blind to—students are helpless upon graduation because the relevant metrics don't measure whether anyone actually learns anything. There were too many classes I just barely skated by because I would sit in class, absorb the material from the book or the teacher, and know, remember, and understand it—but my grade actually measured my patience for fill-in-the-blank worksheets and rote repetition of math problems. I was able to pass by being able to happily regurgitate all the information on the test, because I did know it, I just didn't like having my time wasted when I could prove I knew the material.
Homework is a huge killer of education—after spending all day out of the house doing any one activity, it is entirely human to be mentally exhausted and burnt-out, and to want to use the scant remaining hours in the day on recharging with something fun. It is the same reason why I don't want to come home from work and count change into rolls, because I do that for nine hours a day at work and I need to change gears. But we measure children on their ability to come home and remain focused on busy work.
Is it any wonder that after twelve years of high school, I burnt out of college after one year and found working more appealing?
But if you tell this to anyone who graduated in years past, you get the tired, hideously malformed reasoning that Kids These Days Are Just Lazy, And Don't LikeWork, displaying the irony that they can't entertain an argument more complex than the most banal thinking that can be displayed about younger generations, and has been for millennia. (There are "Kids these days are so lazy!" treatises dating back to Roman times. Look them up.)
And it's not effective work either—there are so many people out there ages 18 to 99 who cannot meaningfully handle the real world because the education system does not even try to address things like logic, or sound reasoning, or encourage intellectual curiosity. Too many people, when confronted with an unfamiliar situation, like an unfamiliar task on a computer or how to use a tool they've never used before, shut down and bray for someone to do it for them instead of taking the initiative to try to collect information and solve the problem themselves.
Public education needs to be retooled to focus on education rather than grades, and to work smarter instead of harder.
Way back when, my dad took the ACT the day after moving. He was exhausted from the move, and he just didn't have the energy for the exam. So, for every question, he picked whichever answer looked the best—without having read the question first. He ended up testing into remedial English and advanced physics. Funny thing is, he was very literate (English literature was his concentration during college) and had never taken a single physics course. Ended up re-taking the ACT a little later.
I ended up doing more or less the same thing on a placement exam in college orientation. Better grades are better grades, right? So I naively guessed on the questions I didn't know, same as I'd do on any other multiple choice test. Ended up "lucking" into a math class that was far harder than I needed to be in and lost my scholarship as a result.
