I just wanted to tell you an interesting experience I had on Friday. I met with a mother privately who had had both a private educational evaluation and an APD evaluation. Her son (age 7) was having difficulty learning to read and she wanted good testing and was not sure she wanted the school to be involved in the therapy anyway at that time.
The child’s tutor had given him the WJ-III and there was only about a 10 point discrepancy between WJ reading subtests or cluster. So the private evaluator had to give him the WIAT since he had recently been given the WJ-III. Well guess what? He had the 15 point discrepancy with the WIAT! Our school system uses the WJ-III and the diagnosticians are saying privately that many kids are not qualifying.
So I am just mentioning this, because if you have a child who you believe is LD and the WJ does not give you the needed discrepancy, then I’d have another test done. Of course, the idea of different tests yielding different results is not new to me, but it was the first time I had seen two well known achievement tests given to the same child close together.
Janis
Re: Qualifying for LD reading
I think what Anitya says is an important point for parents to remember. When my son was first being evaluated for LD the only tests given were the WJ-III and the WISC based on these sole findings he did not qualify for LD. His IQ was 95 and his broad scores on the WJ-III ranged from 80-90. They did no speech/language eval or other type of testing. As he continued to struggle and get further and further behind they started doing other testing piece-meal. On the WIAT he scored a SS of 68 on reading. They initiated a speech/language eval and found him to have some areas as low as the 1%. Results of an informal reading inventory showed significantly below level scores. He scored below standards on a national achievement test in reading and finally they had enough “evidence” to prove he had a reading disability. Help for him did not come until the 7th grade. Had they did the testing right the 1st time he would of got the help in first grade when he first showed signs of being a poor reader. I am fortunate now in that he has received help in this area and his skills are steadily improving. He was even able to complete his first semester of high school in all regular classes with the support of a resource room and accomodations. I have two points here: 1-never rely on 1 test, and 2-it is never to late.
Re: Qualifying for LD reading
Point #3 is that testing of young children 5, 6, 7 years old for the first time is not cast in stone, and reassessment should occur 2-3 years later. There are states that do not require a specific number of points as a discrepancy for Ld, and I urge everyone posting to make sure they know what state is being discussed when someone says this is how to qualify for special ed.
Re: Qualifying for LD reading
Absolutely, I agree on all points. My point is, if a child is tested with ONE achievement test and does not qualify, I would not take that as the final word. Also, I would not wait two or three years for retesting if the child continues to struggle.
Anitya, I do have repspect for the WJ-III, but the child in question might have wasted another couple of years on the borderline only having that one test. And our system NEVER gives a second achievement test. So the WJ scores are it. I think this is an injustice, but many, many systems only give one ach. battery. I’d be willing to bet that the majority only give one battery and yours is an exception. Could be wrong, though. ;-)
Janis
Re: Qualifying for LD reading
As far as I remember (it was while ago when I read all these documents) in my state the discrepancy needs to be 1.5 SD, but… this is only one of the elements of assessment for need of sped. If it is met of course the child qualifies for help, but if it is not met there are other elements that might indicate a need for additional services.
When my son was initially evaluated the sole reason for evaluation was not his poor performance; he still tested above average in achievements (he was given WJ and WRAT). The major issue was the frustration that we AND THE TEACHER observed when he was facing an academic challenge (although the most insightful statement came from him, when he admitted :” I know I should know how to do this, but I cannot”).
And yes, we were very lucky nobody ever told us we need to wait…
Re: Qualifying for LD reading
Indeed, we are being instructed, by our new special ed. director, that we can suspend discrepancy formula with very young students. The IEP team will need to strongly document lack of progress, reasonably good ability and clear processing deficits. Fairly often first graders may not qualify on WJ-III because they can read a few words and so don’t achieve a discrepancy on the testing.
I think this is where a thorough evaluation and IEP team decisions come into play. I am assessing one right now who is in first grade and demonstrates MAJOR processing deficits in several sub areas. Regardless of what the discrepancy actually is, he will receive a placement because his is one of the most seriously LD children I have tested in 10 years. And, we do need to get busy fast to get him functioning acceptably well before he leaves elementary school.
OK, we use the WIAT and the WJ-III in tandem on ALL new referrals. Generally I find the scores to be very close. Sometimes the WJ-III score is a little higher and sometimes the WIAT score is actually higher.
Please be careful. You will have parents telling their school they will not accept a WJ-III when this is a nationally normed assessment that is widely used across the U.S.
The rule of thumb that we apply is to take multiple assessments. We use two achievement tests to obtain two standard scores and I also use informal reading inventories. We also sometimes like the Gray Oral Reading Test.