College Board Launches New Grade 8 College Readinesss Assessment

The following comes form a College Board news release:

Designed for eighth-graders, ReadiStep™ provides early feedback on academic strengths in reading, writing and mathematics. The assessment is formatted in three multiple-choice sections, and the results provide Skills Insight™ — information on the skills that students possess and the skills they need to develop, and advice on how to further develop those skills.

The content and skills measured by the ReadiStep assessment are based on the English Language Arts and Mathematics College Board Standards for College Success™,  national models of rigorous academic content standards. Schools, districts and states can use ReadiStep in combination with the SAT® and PSAT/NMSQT® assessments to monitor progress and gauge student readiness on skills that are important for success in college.

“By constructing a new assessment from clearly articulated standards like the College Board’s Standards for College Success, and providing feedback that students and teachers can act on, we have created a new assessment for learning that can support student readiness for college and help educators in their efforts to close the achievement gap,” said Glenn Milewski, the College Board’s executive director for PSAT/NMSQT as well as product manager for ReadiStep.

The ReadiStep program has been in development for about three years, utilizing a team of educators and experts from across the country to continually improve the assessment. Field trials were conducted in 2008 and 2009, which included 220 schools and more than 22,000 students.

“We engaged educators from the very beginning and throughout the process,” said Vicki Cabrera, associate director of the ReadiStep program. “We wanted the assessment to be easy to administer as well as effective in its goals to provide feedback to schools, parents and students.”

Following the initial implementation in Texas this spring, the national administration dates will be Oct. 4–Nov. 12, giving schools a broad window to arrange testing.

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