Woodcock-Johnson® III NU Tests of Achievement
Authors:
Richard W. Woodcock, Kevin S. McGrew, and Nancy Mather
Type: / Test of Achievement
Purpose: / Measures academic achievement.
Ages: / 2 to 90+ years
Times: / Varies, about 5 minutes per test
Scoring: / The WJIII NU Compuscore® and Profiles Program Program quickly converts raw scores to derived scores to meet all basic scoring and reporting needs. The Woodcock Interpretation and Instructional Interventions Program™ (WIIIP™) is an expert system for interpreting test results that expands on the benefits of Compuscore by providing direct links between assessment results and evidence-based interventions.
Restriction Level: / Medium; Examiner Qualifications
Product Details > Overview | Administration | Technical Qualities | Resources
Details
Overview
The WJ III NU Tests of Achievement has two parallel forms (A and B) that are divided into two batteries—Standard and Extended. The Standard Battery includes tests 1 through 12 that provide a broad set of scores. The 10 tests in the Extended Battery provide more in-depth diagnostic information on specific academic strengths and weaknesses. Examiners can administer the Standard Battery either alone or with the Extended Battery.
Practitioners use the WJ III NU Tests of Achievement to help assess students for learning disabilities and to determine if they need special services. IDEA 2004 requires the use of a variety of assessment tools and strategies to gather relevant, functional, developmental, and academic information about the student. The WJ III NU Tests of Achievement include tests and clusters that directly parallel those outlined by IDEA and provide sound procedures for determining learning variances between abilities and achievement.
IDEA AreaOral Expression
Listening Comprehension
Written Expression
Basic Reading Skills
Reading Comprehension
Reading Fluency
Mathematics Calculation
Mathematics Reasoning / WJ III NU Cluster / Test
Oral Expression
Listening Comprehension
Written Expression
Basic Reading Skills
Reading Comprehension
Reading Fluency
Math Calculation Skills
Math Reasoning
The WJ III NU Tests of Achievement includes:
- seven new tests
- eight new clusters
- four oral language tests
- Expanded broad achievement clusters with three tests to measure basic skills, fluency, and application
- A revised procedure for evaluating intra-achievement discrepancies that now include oral language
- Expanded reading tests containing more items to measure early reading performance
- WJ III NU Audio is available Separately on CD
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Administration
Administration time varies, about 5 minutes per test. Achievement Standard 11 tests takes about 55–65 minutes long.
Professionals can use the WJ III NU to:
- Diagnose learning disabilities
- Determine learning variations
- Plan educational programs
- Plan individual programs
- Assess growth
- Provide psychometric training
- Provide guidance in educational and clinical settings
- Conduct research
Practitioners now can get interpretive information from 19 test cluster scores to help measure performance levels, determine educational progress, and identify individual strengths and weaknesses. The Standard Battery provides 10 cluster scores. The Extended Battery provides nine additional cluster scores (see chart).
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Technical Qualities
Validity
A test's validity depends on two factors: 1) how closely its norming sample represents the population to which the test results will be compared, and 2) how carefully the data were gathered from that sample. The original WJ III sample was selected to represent, within practical limits, the U.S. population from ages 24 months to 90+ years. Normative data for the test were gathered from 8,818 subjects in over 100 geographically diverse communities in the United States. Individuals were randomly selected within the stratified sampling design that controlled for 10 specific community and individual variables and 13 socioeconomic status variables. The sample consisted of 1,143 preschool subjects; 4,784 kindergarten to twelfth-grade subjects; 1,165 college and university subjects; and 1,843 adult subjects.
The WJ III NU uses continuous-year norms to yield normative data at 10 points in each grade. It provides age-based norms by month from ages 24 months to 19 years and by year from ages 2 to 90+ years. And it provides grade-based norms for kindergarten through 12th grade, 2-year college, and 4-year college, including graduate school.
The WJ III NU is a highly accurate and valid diagnostic system because the two batteries were co-normed, which means that the normative data are based on a single sample. When tests are co-normed, examiners can discover learning differences with few errors.
Reliability
Most of the WJ III NU tests show strong reliabilities of .80 or higher; several are .90 or higher. The WJ III NU interpretive plan is based on cluster interpretation. The WJIII NU clusters show strong reliabilities, most at .90 or higher. The reliability characteristics of the WJ III NU meet or exceed basic standards for both individual placement and programming decisions.
Discrepancies
The WJ III NU is especially useful for identifying and documenting ability/achievement discrepancies and intra-ability variation. The ability/achievement variation procedure is the most commonly used method of evaluating an individual's eligibility for special programs. Professionals can obtain ability/achievement variations by administering both the WJ III NU Tests of Cognitive Abilities and the WJ III NU Tests of Achievement. The WJ III NU has an advantage over other tests because it provides three types of ability/achievement variation procedures - general intellectual ability to achievement, predicted achievement-to-achievement, and oral language to achievement.
The oral language to achievement discrepancy procedure is a measure offered only in the WJ III NU. Professionals can calculate an ability/achievement discrepancy using just the achievement battery. Because limited oral language can have a negative impact on test performance, it is important to consider a subject's oral language skills when interpreting test results. The WJ III NU moved the oral language tests from the cognitive battery to the achievement battery, so the Oral Language-Extended cluster can now be used as the "ability" score and compared to a subject's achievement score. This measure is particularly useful for reading and other oral language professionals.
The WJ III NU also provides intra-ability variations, which include intra-achievement discrepancies, intra-cognitive discrepancies, and intra-individual variations. Information gathered from intra-ability variations helps professionals to determine an individual's strengths and weaknesses, diagnose and document language and learning disabilities, and make intervention plans.
The intra-individual variation procedure has several advantages over traditional aptitude/achievement discrepancy procedures. It provides a more comprehensive evaluation because examiners can analyze a variety of scores across cognitive and achievement clusters. The intra-achievement variation procedure examines the difference between an individual's achievement score in a particular area with a prediction estimated based on an average of all other achievement areas to help professionals to identify learning disabilities, pinpoint specific problems, and choose the most appropriate intervention for an individual. The procedure is also particularly useful for identifying learning disabilities early, before a child fails in school.
Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is one of the best predictors of early reading acquisition—better than IQ, vocabulary, or listening comprehension; as such, it is an important predictor of educational achievement. Deficits in this area are a major cause of severe reading problems.
Phonological awareness is the ability to focus on the sound structure of language apart from its meaning. To learn to read and spell, we must attend to the relationship between the sounds (phonemes) and the letters (graphemes) of language. This knowledge of phoneme-grapheme, or sound-symbol, relationships is a key to decoding and encoding written language.
There are several types of phonological awareness, including word awareness, syllable awareness, rhyme awareness, and phonemic awareness. The WJ III NU contains five tests that measure different aspects of phonological awareness. In fact, the WJ III NU Tests of Cognitive Abilities is the only major intelligence test that measures auditory processing and phonemic awareness. The cognitive battery contains Sound Blending, which requires a subject to synthesize speech sounds to form a word, and Incomplete Words, which requires a subject to analyze a word with missing phonemes and identify the complete word. In the WJ III NU Tests of Achievement, three tests measure aspects of phonological awareness. Examiners can use Word Attack and Spelling of Sounds to assess a subject's phoneme/grapheme knowledge and determine if the subject can apply both phonological and orthographical knowledge to identify and spell words. And if further analysis is needed, examiners can use Sound Awareness to measure a subject's ability to rhyme words and manipulate phonemes.
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Books
Essentials of WJ III Cognitive Abilities Assessment
Richard W. Woodcock, Fredrick A. Schrank, 2001
This book will provide professionals with state-of-the-art interpretive guidelines to the cognitive abilities portion of the newly revised Woodcock-Johnson III. Written in an easy-to-read format, it is ideal for anyone who wants to better administer, interpret, and understand the WJ III.
Essentials of WJ III Tests of Achievement Assessment
Richard W. Woodcock, Nancy Mather, Barbara Wendling, 2001
Complementing the Essentials of WJ III Cognitive Abilities Assessment, this volume provides a quick reference to information on the administration, scoring, and interpretation of the newly revised WJ III Tests of Achievement.
Woodcock-Johnson III Reports, Recommendations, and Strategies
Nancy Mather, Lynne Jaffe, 2001
This volume will help Woodcock-Johnson III examiners to prepare useful and descriptive psychoeducational reports and to help educational specialists convert psychoeducational recommendations into measurable goals and objectives for monitoring students' achievement and abilities. The book includes numerous examples of effective diagnostic reports as well as summaries of methods and techniques for implementing recommendations successfully.