ReadiStep—or ReadiStumble?

As if there weren't already enough standardized testing in schools, the College Board has come up with another assessment tool—the ReadiStep—which will be available to schools next fall. Designed to "provide information about students' strengths and weaknesses," the test will be optional and given to eighth graders. According to the College Board, schools had been seeking a way of assessing students before high school to make sure they were "on the path to being college ready."

Some critics have already dubbed the new test a "pre-pre-pre SAT," and not without reason. Even as an optional tool, it will create an awareness among teachers, parents, and, most important, middle-schoolers themselves of where students stand in the precollege academic hierarchy.

For teachers who may already inadvertently focus more attention and effort on higher-performing students, additional information about lower-performing students' academic deficits—at least as measured by one new test—could further marginalize such students in the classroom.

For parents, many of whom have been keenly aware of their children's spots in the educational pecking order since preschool, the ReadiStep will be another source of anxiety potentially leading to increased pressure on their kids. Few parents will likely react to a low score on the ReadiStep with equanimity.

Finally, for students who, even in the middle school years, understand that their academic performance and choice of extracurricular activities will become critically important in high school, having to begin that process in a formal way a year earlier will foster premature stress and competition. More important, it will shift the emphasis in middle school from what should be an introduction to a lifelong love of learning to the beginning of a joyless academic grind.

The ReadiStep appears to be a big ReadiStumble in the wrong direction.