The American school system was built to measure performance but at what cost? In this Follow Up episode, Dr. Mona sits down with Lauren Smith, a former educator and nationally certified school psychologist, to unpack how our current approach to education fuels anxiety, burnout, and perfectionism in kids.

They dive into the ripple effects of over-testing, constant competition, and the push to perform that begins as early as kindergarten. From standardized tests to college rankings, the conversation explores how a culture obsessed with metrics is stealing creativity, rest, and joy from learning — and what real change could look like.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why kids are more anxious than ever about school and grades

• How over-testing and Common Core shape classroom pressure

• The downstream effects of perfectionism on teens and college students

• How teacher burnout connects to testing culture

• What other countries are doing differently — and better

• Why “slowing down” might be the most radical educational reform

Want more? ⁠Listen to the full, original episode.⁠

Our podcasts are also now on YouTube. If you prefer a video podcast with closed captioning, check us out there and⁠ ⁠subscribe to PedsDocTalk⁠⁠.

Get trusted pediatric advice, relatable parenting insights, and evidence-based tips delivered straight to your inbox—join thousands of parents who rely on the PDT newsletter to stay informed, supported, and confident.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Join the newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

And don’t forget to follow⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠@pedsdoctalkpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on Instagram—our new space just for parents looking for real talk and real support.

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on the⁠ ⁠PedsDocTalk Podcast Sponsorships⁠⁠ page of the website. 

00;00;00;02 – 00;00;20;00

Dr. Mona

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the show. It’s Doctor Mona and welcome to this series called the Follow up. Where we revisit a listener favorite in less time than it takes your kid to finish their math homework and ask, do I really need to know this in real life? Recently, I shared a post on my social media channels that got a lot of love and attention.

 

00;00;20;02 – 00;00;43;06

Dr. Mona

I said, can we replace the perfect attendance award with a Kind Kid award already? Because coming to school sick or skipping a mental health day doesn’t deserve applause, but including others sharing lunch with someone who’s hungry and standing up to bullying absolutely does. And it was a shared post from somebody else. Now, some people reminded me, fair point that attendance is tied to school funding for many public schools.

 

00;00;43;09 – 00;01;11;24

Dr. Mona

But what I can’t shake is this bigger question what are we teaching kids when we reward showing up over slowing down when they need it? When we praise compliance, competition, and metrics over creativity, connection, and rest. If you saw my post today on my social media channel, I talked about how the American school system is shaping kids to fit into corporate America and what we lose in the process creativity, freedom, and appreciation for different kinds of thinking.

 

00;01;11;27 – 00;01;31;07

Dr. Mona

In this episode, I sat down with Lauren Smith, a former educator and now a nationally certified school psychologist, to unpack how the American school system is fueling anxiety and burnout in our kids and what real change could look like. We talk about testing overload, the pressure to perform, and why even five year olds are being measured like many adults.

 

00;01;31;09 – 00;01;53;03

Dr. Mona

It’s a conversation that will make you rethink what success in school should mean. And if this episode resonates. Make sure you download it. Tag at the PedsDocTalk Podcast and at PedsDocTalk and share your thoughts. Because this is a conversation every parent needs to be a part of.

 

00;01;53;06 – 00;02;10;05

Lauren Smith

One concern I’ve always had, and I don’t know if you agree. Or again, you can disagree with me completely if you want. Is the testing system in American school system. So like yeah, I grew up in America, I grew up in California. And it was okay, but there was a lot of testing. And then you go into college and high school and there was testing anxiety.

 

00;02;10;05 – 00;02;25;26

Lauren Smith

But I do believe that there is more pressure on children nowadays, even younger kids. And then I also see it in my junior high and high school kids. And I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you. I don’t know if you feel like it’s because the curriculum has changed, or do you think there’s something else going on here?

 

00;02;26;01 – 00;03;01;03

Lauren Smith

And I’m just feeling like I’m seeing way more testing anxiety and way more anxiety around school. Like going to school, being in school and studying in school, getting good grades. And I’m just like concerned, what do we need to do here? Yeah. No, you’re totally right. I mean, we see it in the research. And then anecdotally, like the amount of children that I work with to provide like school refusal counseling, and I’m not talking like I don’t want to get out of bed like kids who are having legitimate panic attacks and can’t get on the bus and need like exposure therapy to get to school because the anxiety is so high.

 

00;03;01;05 – 00;03;24;28

Lauren Smith

The anxiety is so real. The test anxiety is so real. I went to school in the 90s, early 2000. We definitely had the state standardized tests that you had to take every year, but there is significantly more testing now. And it’s a couple reasons. Like you mentioned, the standards have changed. So we adopted Common Core, which, you know, there’s a lot of argument about.

 

00;03;24;28 – 00;03;52;00

Lauren Smith

I think there is a need for standardized curriculum and standardized standards. Because what we were having before is different states that we’re teaching God knows what. Kids were graduating high school at a first grade reading level. There was not a lot of accountability in terms of knowing what kids know. And honestly, we still have a lot of that going on.

 

00;03;52;00 – 00;04;13;17

Lauren Smith

But the purpose of Common Core is to say there are some standards that, you know, by eighth grade, every kid should be able to do this by graduation. Every kid should be able to do this. So it sounds good in theory. But the other side of that is that we’re constantly testing throughout all of the grades to see how close we are to those benchmarks.

 

00;04;13;19 – 00;04;37;07

Lauren Smith

So it’s not just like, oh, let’s test them in 12th grade and we’ll see how far they’ve come. It’s like starting in kindergarten. These are the benchmarks. And we have to give literal five year olds tests. If they’re reaching these standards that never I’m sorry I remember my kindergarten experience which must have been a I don’t know, early 90s, mid 90s, I don’t remember ever taking a test.

 

00;04;37;10 – 00;04;58;29

Lauren Smith

It was like sitting at a table and coloring and like reading to a teddy bear. And it was all play. You know, obviously they have standards back then, but it was a lot of observation. And like I said, play and that kind of thing. And that’s just not the case anymore. And it’s heartbreaking. The over testing is leading to tons of anxiety.

 

00;04;59;02 – 00;05;24;19

Lauren Smith

The other thing is that our country, compared to a lot of the countries that are performing really well in education, we have a culture of competition in schools. That just doesn’t exist elsewhere. So yeah, I’m constantly talking about kids brains in schools. Teachers are getting evaluated based on their kids test scores. Kids are being compared to other kids.

 

00;05;24;19 – 00;05;50;15

Lauren Smith

Even in my role and special education, all of our tests are normed based on samples of kids. So we’re constantly comparing one kid to the norm for their age and how they’re performing, which for a lot of that we do need like we need developmental milestones that we can compare kids and kind of see when there’s an issue with the way that we do this in this country where we’re posting college acceptances, we’re talking about what number rank you are.

 

00;05;50;15 – 00;06;15;12

Lauren Smith

We’re talking constantly about how many AP classes you’re taking. We’re seeing so much anxiety and perfectionism and so many kids who are just struggling so hard to keep up. And that’s on top of being overscheduled with extracurriculars and all the other things that we want our kids to do. This is extremely concerning, right? Because we are fueling children to have perfection, like you said, perfectionism, anxiety.

 

00;06;15;15 – 00;06;39;27

Lauren Smith

Yeah. When we send them off to college, which we’ve been there, I’ve been I went to a major school system, and I am an example of someone who did the AP classes, was did all the clubs, did everything, like I was one of those top 20 kids at a major California public school. They got into UCLA, which is one of the most coveted public schools in the country, and I got my first see when I went into college, and I was devastated.

 

00;06;39;27 – 00;06;57;10

Lauren Smith

I thought my life was over. I was crying in tears. My teacher was done right. I was a mess. Okay, I see this happen. I mean, it goes downstream because you’re also seeing a lot of college children and I know this is gonna be like very like, well, but a lot of college children, there’s an increased suicide rate in college children.

 

00;06;57;10 – 00;07;18;04

Lauren Smith

And the reason I’m bringing it up is that this is not happening only in college. This is a school system and life system that has led that child or teenager to feel like there was no other way out because of perfectionism and whatever it may be. I mean, this is happening more than we’ve seen. And Covid, you’re right, has had a huge impact.

 

00;07;18;04 – 00;07;35;06

Lauren Smith

I do agree with that. You know, about health anxiety for children and going back to school. And again, I will bring up gun violence and all of that because that is a real reality. But I was also seeing this before all of that. Yeah. Like what you just mentioned to the testing anxiety, the amount of I have a kindergartner having to take a test.

 

00;07;35;06 – 00;07;56;04

Lauren Smith

But I hear what you’re saying about the core curriculum, like having to have some standardized ability to say that your child can now pass to the next level or whatever, but is there a way that we can find a middle ground here? Like what are other countries doing there? Doesn’t need it doesn’t we don’t need a multiple choice test to tell us child is reaching the standards that we need.

 

00;07;56;04 – 00;08;16;11

Lauren Smith

And I think that’s the thing that we are missing when we’re talking about all of these things, because it’s like everyone kind of knows that we’re over testing kids. Most people with any kind of knowledge about what’s going on in schools are like, well, we test our kids a lot, but nobody’s talking about, okay, so what are the alternatives like?

 

00;08;16;18 – 00;08;46;22

Lauren Smith

There are ways to learn about children without having them take multiple choice test or write an essay. And these are things that, like, I said, this is where the teacher creativity and the autonomy comes in. Teachers have done such cool things with like portfolios, performance pieces like end of the year, capstone projects. Like there’s so many things that we can do to gauge how our kids are doing without having these high stakes, high pressure testing situations.

 

00;08;46;22 – 00;09;09;00

Lauren Smith

Like the best situation for kids is when they don’t know they’re being assessed, right, like they’re just putting out a performance or they’re showing off, like a really cool piece that they did. And teachers are knowledgeable and creative enough to grade that, and it’s their job to match that to standards and to figure out a way to communicate to parents how their child is doing.

 

00;09;09;00 – 00;09;29;29

Lauren Smith

Like teachers are dumb, you know, they can use kids without testing kids. But again, it’s these high stakes situations where decision makers are like one track minded, oh, how are we going to do this? We’re going to have a baseline. We’re going to have a nice chart with some data. We’re going to have a line graph because we have this test out of 100.

 

00;09;29;29 – 00;09;51;20

Lauren Smith

And this is we can create percentages of that and we can rank kids. And that’s not something that we need to do to make sure our kids are doing well. But for some reason that’s just what our country has held on to. And nobody seems like really motivated to change it. Despite recognizing all of the problems that it’s causing for teachers and for kids.

 

00;09;51;20 – 00;10;12;03

Lauren Smith

I think most teachers, if they had less testing, it would help a lot with burnout because that, like I said, that goes back to their evaluation process. It goes back to how much time they have to teach what they want to teach. Testing is a huge factor in what happens in the classroom. This conversation is giving me anxiety.

 

00;10;12;04 – 00;10;32;16

Lauren Smith

Okay. Like, like in a good way that we need to have some change. But, like, I have always felt that, my own sister actually left Northern California and moved to Portugal because she was so upset, like her and her husband were, like, upset with this American dream, like this, sort of this rat race situation. And I think, I hope many people listening can understand this, but they’re much happier there.

 

00;10;32;16 – 00;10;50;05

Lauren Smith

I mean, the school system is better. I want to get like a my dream would be to get an educator who used to educate in America, who’s now educated outside the country, because I want to hear from an educator standpoint. Yeah. Yeah. Like what? Also because I want to I know it’s different. You know, like, I feel like children in America from kindergarten.

 

00;10;50;05 – 00;11;08;28

Lauren Smith

And let’s see, I would say from kindergarten, I think, you know, my son’s in a preschool. They do give a lot of downtime and play, but I just feel like there is not a lot of time. For as much time as when I was a kid, for downtime and being still creativity again, there’s so many metrics and my life I want to move away from metrics.

 

00;11;08;28 – 00;11;24;11

Lauren Smith

We are living a life of metrics. I mean, as adults too, we live a life of at our jobs we have metrics. And then if you’re on social media, there’s metrics there. And then now we have all these gadgets, like how many steps would you walk in a day like, are we serious? And then I hate it, I hate that.

 

00;11;24;11 – 00;11;46;14

Lauren Smith

Then you have sleep apps. Well how good did you sleep every night like that actually can feel more anxiety. Yeah. And then you have these poor children that I look at that I’m like, it’s basically anxiety that’s being passed from child to parent to teacher to doctor. Like, the whole system is anxious because nobody can just be and have a moment of saying, you know what, I don’t want to do my homework.

 

00;11;46;21 – 00;12;07;04

Lauren Smith

Yeah, I don’t want today. I’m just going to take a day off. Today is a day for rest, which a lot of countries do. Yeah, a lot of children in other countries and they’re succeeding. It’s not like these children are not succeeding when they become adults and they’re succeeding in very creative fields. Right. But again, America has set this standard on these jobs and that you have to do this to get into college.

 

00;12;07;04 – 00;12;08;00

Lauren Smith

But it’s.

 

00;12;08;00 – 00;12;09;06

Dr. Mona

Really interesting to me.

 

00;12;09;06 – 00;12;18;00

Lauren Smith

What’s going to happen because this isn’t sustainable for everybody involved.

 

00;12;18;02 – 00;12;39;10

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded, or had an moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram at the PedsDocTalk podcast.

 

00;12;39;18 – 00;12;55;00

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at PedsDoctalk.com. Because parenting is better with support. And remember, consistency is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona. See you next time for your next dose.