The College Board has recently announced a new test to be rolled out in fall 2009. Called ReadiStep, the new test is designed, as the College Board press release states, “to identify the skills that 8th grade students have and those that they need to develop in order to be more prepared for rigorous high school courses and for college.” The pencil-and-paper format test is two hours long and divided into multiple-choice sections of math, writing skills, and critical reading skills. Individual schools and school districts will decide if they want to employ ReadiStep and when they would administer the exam; they would also cover the fee of  $10 dollars per exam.

In introducing ReadiStep, the College Board seems to be assuming that schools and school districts, not to mention parents, are interested in having a standardized nation-wide skills assessment at the eighth grade level.  The College Board has not made clear what the utility of such a national standardized exam might be to local schools and school districts. Given the number of state tests that have been introduced in recent years as part of various no-child-left-behind initiatives, authorities at the state, district, and local school levels will need to determine whether ReadiStep provides a better tool for assessing student preparedness.

Despite assurances from the College Board that this is “not at all a pre-pre-pre SAT,” critics of standardized tests and their influence on curriculum design and the college admissions process have been quick to question the need for the new test.  Some have argued that the new test will only serve to push standardized test-taking anxieties downward into middle school; others that this is a clear effort on the College Board’s part to boost profits at a time when it sees its dominance in the college entrance exam sphere being eroded by competition from the ACT.
Perhaps the most sober way to understand ReadiStep is as a blunt but useful instrument for assessing 8th grade students’ mastery of those fundamental skills that lend themselves to standardized testing. We have yet to see a ReadiStep test, so it is not possible to offer specific advise as to how a district, school, or individual student might prepare for the new exam. Indeed, even if the test were available for review, the soundest advise that one might offer parents would be to understand that:

• Preparedness for such exams should be a byproduct of every child’s education–not the goal but the result of an educational philosophy that emphasizes the acquisition of foundational skills.
• K thru 12 Parents need to advocate at their children’s schools so as to make sure that every child receives a solid foundation in basic reading, writing, and math skills, which represents the best preparation not just for standardized exams but for the rigors of both high school and college course work.
• K thru 12 parents should recognize that it is their right and responsibility to insist upon the coordinated and transparent assessment of these fundamental skill sets over the entire course of every child’s K thru 12 education because such assessment enables educators, parents, and students to identify and address specific weaknesses in the essential skills.

Courtney Federle earned his PhD at The University of California, Berkeley; for over twenty-five years, he taught at the high school, college, and graduate levels; for six years, he was an Assistant Director of College Admissions at the University of Chicago.

The people who open and close the gates to undergraduate programs at American colleges and universities, that is, the high school college counselors who help students with the application process and the college admissions officers who make the admissions decisions, recently held their annual professional conference.  By far the most heavily attended session at the conference was a panel that discussed the professional organization’s recently published report on the place of standardized testing in college admissions.  The National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) released its report on the “Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission” in late-September. Though the NACAC report has received some press coverage, mostly focused on the perennial question of whether or not schools are going to drop the test as an admissions requirement, it would be helpful for parents to consider the less sensational and Continue reading →

This fall college-bound high school seniors will most likely find themselves somewhat distraught over that most daunting of all the various components that constitute the application package—the personal essay. However, students need to recognize that the personal essay presents an opportunity to speak in the present about themselves, each applicant in his or her own voice. This is an opportunity to be seized. The essay can be the most powerful component of a completed application precisely because here, for the first and last time in the file, the very person who stands knocking at the door asking to be let in speaks directly to those who will Continue reading →

Taking the SAT multiple times has widely been regarded as risky business. Since every score is recorded on the student’s College Board transcript, then surely it is best practice for students to be conservative, keep blemishes off their records, and avoid testing too much. Therefore, it’s no surprise that only 15% of students who take the SAT will presently sit for it three or more times.

That number, however, is about to get a big boost since the College Board’s recent (June 2008) announcement of its new score-choice policy for the class of 2010. This fall’s junior class and all successive classes will now be able to take the SAT and SAT Subject tests multiple times, record all of their scores on a College Board transcript, but then choose to send to colleges only their best scores from one administration while effectively suppressing scores from all others. Continue reading →

As an Academic Approach instructor and a mother of a daughter in law school, I’ve seen my fair share of learning styles and differences. And throughout my experience and research, one term has shed light on the brain functions associated with thinking and behavior—that term is executive function (EF). It is the group of thought processes which direct planning and organizing goal-directed actions. Discussing these functions has become increasingly popular in educational literature and in learning diagnoses. But what are these mysterious functions exactly? Are they the exclusive property of CEOs? Continue reading →

At Academic Approach, we spend our days and nights studying standardized tests—their format, content, grading, scaling, etc.—so we can save you time and distill all this byzantine knowledge down into useful bits. In this post, I will take on ACT format and content.

In the document attached (act-format.pdf) we provide a detailed analysis of ACT format and content, but what’s the bottom line?

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Over the past decade or so, a journalistic genre has emerged that seasonally represents the nation-wide anxiety that bleeds into upper-middle-class concerns about the college admissions process. Every fall and spring, articles represent the anxious hand-wringing of families that have marshaled considerable resources ($25,000+ private school tuition, Continue reading →