Woodcock Testing vs. Classroom Expectations

In my experience this is a special ed neverneverland dilemna.

I’ve been led to believe that although the special ed committee tells me they “consider” what goes on in the classroom the criteria used for special ed eligibility/ineligibility are the Woodcock results.

So a child can fail in the classroom but “it’s not a special ed issue”.

And I have found that the Woodcock grade level standards are low. No school in our district is teaching to that level - classroom performance expectations are very high.

So, I would think that it could be handled in an IEP as a modification like “spelling waived” to address whatever the individual issues are.

It seems I remember Peter Wright saying yesterday that they cannot use only 1 measure for determination of qualification for spec ed. I’d have to look at my notes and book - my brain is fried from information overload at a 2 day bootcamp.

I hope whoever is doing the testing is not using the WJ-R but the WJ-III tests of academic achievement, that is an updated version of the WJ-R. Also, if you are looking at grade equivalents on an academic achievement test you should use that would caution. Grade Equivalents are very easily misinterpreted and thought to correlated directily to grade levels. Interpreting GEs correctly requires a clear and thorough understanding of the scale’s construction. For example, it is not accurate to assume a 7th grade student who received a GE of 5.1 is two years behind grade level. A GE measure indicates only that a student’s raw score is the same as the average score of the norm group students in a certain grade level. The 5.1 GE only means that the student received a scored that would be comparable with the average student after the first month of the first grade if they were to have taken the same test. It does not mean that the child is incapable of doing 7th grade work. The GE scale is not linear and is not made up of equal intervals, so like percentile rank measures, GE scores cannot be averaged. Every GE score is unique to its test, so grade level measures from one test to the next cannot be directly compared.

Always Wondering wrote:
>
> I was hoping to get some opionions about how the Woodcock
> Johnson-Revised academic tests grade level equivalent scores
> correspond to the actual grade level curriculum expected to
> be mastered in the classroom.

First, any grade equivalent scores (on any norm-referenced test) are much less reliable than the age equivalent or the Standard Score. Even percentile. Parents (and some teachers like grade equiv’s but they don’t match up to curricula and everyone becomes quite confused).

It seems to me that the either
> the WJ-R is setting the grade level extremely high or the
> curriculum provided by my child’s school far exceeds typical
> grade level expectations.

The WJ-R isn’t the newest version, first of all. There is a more recently normed version called the WJ-III. When a test is “normed” it is given to thousands of children of all types and walks of life and cultures. The results are measured statistically in order to come up with what scores a child of a certain age should have if considered “average” or below average or above average, etc. WJ-R measures a mixture of skills and does not correlate well to class room work, especially in the written language sector. The WJ-R is really a screening test of a higher caliber.

> Also, if a piece of writing was scored as on grade level in
> the WJ-R, but it would be a failing piece of writing in the
> classroom, how should these issues be addressed in an IEP?

First of all, learning is above mastering skills and not about grades. Grades are subjective. If a student is asked to write a three page research paper and cannot write a sentence, their paper isn’t going to get much of a grade. The larger issue is that the underlying skills that need to be mastered in order to perform writing tasks adequately.

When the examiner administered the WJ-R, did they give the supplemental subtests? Were punctuation, spelling, and usage determined from the Dictation subtest? At least those help you know what skills seem to be contributing to the problem, though there are better tests than the WJ-R for this.

As far as accommodations and modifications, as I said before, the goal is learning and mastery of necessary skills. If diagnosed with LD (or other disability), the IEP team would write accommodations that allow the student to perform classroom work that is similar to his/her non-disabled peers. (Examples: Listening to novel on tape instead of reading. Dictating story/writing into tape recorder.) Similarly, he/she has the right to have work that is outside his/her ability to perform to be modified so that it can be done in a certain time frame or at a certain level of proficiency. (Examples: Shortened assignments/modified assignments such as spelling not counted off or punctuation not counted off.) Further, goals/objectives should reflect how the student will continue learning/growing in acquiring skills in areas of weakness so that they do learn to punctuate or spell or whatever else is a problem.

I am a special ed teacher, and I dont administer the Woodcock Tests, I only hear the results reported. The WJ scores were often much higher than my IRI’s. I inquired— the reading portion only requires students to read very short passages and insert a word correctly in a blank. Writing skills seem to have elevated scores also. I have pointed out to our supervisors that this leaves teachers looking like we are holding the kids back, the WJ says they are performing at a certain level, but I instruct them at a lower level. They only respond that our district must be very advanced. I just know that if the Wj says a child is reading at the fourth grade level, the child would not be able to read any fourth grade text published by any of the reputable nationwide publishers without extreme difficulty. Any one else notice this?

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I notice this on the Writing Samples test on the WJ-III (the same, with a few exceptions, as on the WJ-R). Students are asked to write only a one sentence response on the test; this does not in any way correlate to what the expectation is in grades 4-6. Students are learning expository writing; having a good score on the Writing Samples test does not mean that they will be able to write a good expository paragraph or essay. It’s frustrating when the students receives a score within the average range on Broad Writing, but the classroom teachers are saying that they can’t write a good paragraph to save their soul!