The Nexus

The philosophy: High-school students are weighed down with a multitude of tests. So in helping prepare eighth graders for high school, we should increase their testing burden.

Or, at least, College Board seems to be following this train of thought. In October, College Board unveiled its new test, ReadiStep, in response to parents’ and schools’ desires to better prepare their students for the road ahead.

To parents, it seems as though College Board is “the good guy” who gives students exactly what they need.

Not quite.

The introduction of yet another test brings about a host of problems, hidden behind the promise of better guidance.

ReadiStep is a middle school assessment targeted towards eighth-graders. It is designed to provide feedback on how students can better develop reading, mathematical, and writing skills. Ideally, this skill assessment will help guide students toward success in high school and on tests such as the College Board’s own (SAT). The ultimate goal is admission to a quality college.

Because that’s what it’s all about: Testing. Testing to compare oneself to the competition, testing to size up one’s resume and testing to see if one can rise above the rest. It’s a frightening prospect, but school is quickly developing into an arms race. And adopting ReadiStep only forces this upon younger shoulders.

By the eighth grade, students have been taking Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR), California Standards Tests (CST), and Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) since second grade.

The results of these tests should be sufficient for parents to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of their students.

So why pile on ReadiStep?

As College Board says in its defense, ReadiStep is an optional, “low-stakes” test and its results will only be reported to the test-taker, parents and teachers.

Unfortunately, in today’s college culture, a test is rarely seen as trivial. Don’t expect this pre-pre-SAT to be “low-stakes” for very long.

Take, for example, the Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test (PSAT): it’s a perfectly voluntary test, but nearly 3.4 million students opted to take it in 2007. And that’s not to mention the competition for a National Merit Scholarship.

Quite frankly, ReadiStep looks more like a means of profit rather than feedback and guidance. Parents are all too willing to pay good money in order to give their child an advantage. ReadiStep is College Board’s attempt to exploit the insecurities people have about their standing in the “arms race”.

The sad thing is, we wholeheartedly buy into it.

We are idly watching our schools become more and more test-centered, which forces teachers to “teach to the test” and over-test students to unnecessary extremes.

Frequent test-taking translates into students who are more interested in learning to score rather than for the sake of education itself. This works to undermine passion and creativity.

That’s the opposite of what school is supposed to do.

We are promoting a testing culture that revolves around the idea that a bad score equals future failure and a good score equates to future success. Just imagine the psychological effect.

A pre-pre-SAT is not the appropriate answer to the call for more student guidance and preparation for high school. Higher education is not about the drive to pencil in the correct bubbles but is the place where students find and express their devotion to learning.

So let us return to a more traditional approach to education, where a parent’s involvement is more valuable than any diagnostic test result and where a passion for the pursuit of knowledge is the best path for a student to travel in his pursuit of success.