Again, students may be less willing to go to school, and parents find themselves dragging unwilling bodies from the car to the school door, because the children feel they have little to look forward to, day in and day out. The highly structured school day results in a more structured after-school environment. Parents take children to soccer practice and lessons to provide enrichment that is now lacking at school. This requires even the youngest children to have additional discipline in terms of when they begin their homework. Mealtimes may be lost, as families eat on the run, using what would once be quality time as a way of 'getting a jump' on the next day. McDonald's in the car suffices, rather than home-cooked meals, so homework can be attended to, as soon as the family walks through the door after a long, hard day.

This new pressure to succeed, facilitated by standards-based education, continues into high school, where students must face challenges such as the College Entrance...

This requires more study time in what are often already compressed, fast-based schedules. The added demands also come with added pressures. For older students who procrastinate and who cannot be compelled to sit at the kitchen table under the watchful eye of their parents, the result is often less sleep, as high schoolers watch television, email friends and play video games on the computer, and finally begin their homework only in the wee hours of the evening. This extracts a harsh toll upon their developing bodies as well as their relationships with their families.
All of this, which I have seen in my own life, and the life of my friends and family members, demonstrates how standards-based tests results in the standardization of the education system as a whole. By homogenizing content and linking school funding to student performance on exams, educational policy designers have standardized the educational process itself, and even created a more mechanical way of life for children and their parents outside of school.