A new web site will allow children from military families to compare states' academic standards and take a free online test to identify the gaps in their understanding as they move to a new state with different testing and curriculum.

Moving from one school district to another in the same state can make it hard enough to gauge a student's academics—and moving to a new state altogether introduces even more questions. Has the student met required benchmarks? How does testing compare to the student's former state? What will the student have to do to complete high school graduation requirements? Because the 500,000 children from military families move at three times the rate of their classmates, those questions can be ever-present from kindergarten through high school.

Children from military families "face a whole different set of standards and challenges than non-military students," said Nicole Rowe, vice president of The Princeton Review, one of the country's premiere providers of test-preparation services. The company, along with the Department of Defense Education Activity, launched Student Online Achievement Resources (SOAR) in April.

Students in grades 3-12 and their parents can visit www.soarathome.org and review the standards of the state or school district they are moving to. Students also can take an online assessment to see how they measure up to their new district's math and language-arts requirements. In addition, the SOAR web site provides a host of tutorials that will help students reinforce their skills or improve in subjects they struggle with.

"Our goal is to give them something that will ease that transition, something that will help to demystify the standards in the new state," Rowe said.

The online assessment tools have been used in school districts across the country in recent years to help parents understand where their child lies on the academic spectrum. Michael Perik, president and CEO of The Princeton Review, said those proven methods would be valuable to military families as they move from base to base, ensuring their children's grades don't suffer along the way.

"These tools have been used by some of our nation's largest and best school districts," Perik said in a statement. "They help students improve their skills and feel more confident about their classroom and test performance, while at the same time helping parents as they assist their children with specific skills."

The SOAR web site has come online during an ongoing debate about the drawbacks of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Critics charge the 2002 law has resulted in states adopting drastically different standards as school boards and superintendents strive to meet NCLB's demanding mandates, including one that requires all students to be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

A report released last summer by the U.S. Department of Education measured state tests with a national assessment that compared state expectations side by side for the first time.