Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Calculating Total Achievement for Woodcock Johnson

We just got the results from my 5-year-old's Woodcock Johnson III achievement test. There is no score for total achievement. Does anyone know how to calculate it?

Here are his scores for the individual batteries (score, followed by percentile):

Letter-Word Identification 156 >99.9
Reading Fluency 146 99.9
Calculation 139 99.6
Math Fluency 128 97
Spelling 137 99
Writing Fluency 112 78
Passage Comprehension 141 99.7
Applied Problems 148 >99.9
Writing Samples 134 99

Thanks!

I should add that if it's just a case of averaging the individual scores I can do that. I'm just not sure it that is the case or if some tests are weighted differently.

If it matters, my son is 5 years 11 months.

Thanks so much! I just wanted to be sure the total achievement score would be high enough to warrant spending the hundreds of dollars for the IQ test. We will proceed.

My dd was tested as a 6 year old, and her total achievement was lower than any of her other "broad" scores (144-157), where total was 142.

In any case, I would go ahead with IQ.

Thank you for your response. From what I have been reading, the broad scores are different than the individual battery scores. Broad scores are mini "cluster" scores from the individual scores (i.e. broad reading is a cluster of Letter-Word Identification and Passage Comprehension). Total Achievement is a big composite score of all the 9 individual batteries. I can see how a total achievement score could be lower than the broad scores and yet still be higher than the individual tests.

Also, we were given a Brief Achievement score of 160, which makes no sense to me because none of his individual test scores were that high. The mystery continues...

It is my understanding that the brief scores are the broad score sub tests without the fluency tests in the calculation. The fluency tests are where they ask them to go quickly or there is some timed part of the test.

Ah, that makes sense. My children have no love for the timer...

Those are great scores wonderone! I have one thought to add - you were wondering if the scores were high enough to justify spending $ on IQ testing. I'd suggest going forward with IQ testing for a second reason too - the score on writing fluency is very low relative to the other scores. You've mentioned your ds is no fan of timed tests. The tests that are labelled "fluency" are timed and require handwritten answers, but I think the writing fluency test (from what I remember) requires writing actual words whereas math fluency is writing numbers (adding, subtracting etc), and I can't remember how the reading fluency test replies work but think they may be circling things or something that doesn't require as much writing. If it was just a case of your ds "not liking timed tests" I think you'd see more of a similarity in drop among all of his fluency scores, but instead the math and reading fluency scores are only slightly lower than his other achievement scores. Soooooo.... that leads me to wonder if maybe there's something up with his writing - either in coming up with the answers or with handwriting. It's probably nothing! Could be just that he's 5 and he doesn't write quickly yet, or it could be he was daydreaming during that test or it could be a million things. If you follow up with an IQ test that will help you determine if it was "something" or "nothing".

Best wishes,

polarbear

Thank you. I'm not very worried about his lower writing score because he goes to a charter school where they don't focus on learning to print at all. (I didn't know this when we enrolled him.) On the rare occasions the kids do any writing it is on a big blank white page (no lines to guide them or anything) and the focus is on content, not mechanics. I was helping out in the classroom the other day and was shocked to find out that the kids have no concept of upper and lower case, and nothing any of them write is very legible. I just think it's an issue of needing to do more writing practice at home since it is apparently not valued in his Kindergarten classroom. We will get him IQ tested, though.