Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Which grade to norm WJ-III?

Ds is homeschooled, most of his curricula is at least 2 years ahead. He's a late birthday, so we usually answer the next grade when people ask, but nothing officially has been done as far as our school board is concerned.
Do we just use his age grade?

For cognitive testing, the default should always be age norms, for which his grade level is irrelevant. Grade norms come up mainly when 1), a child has been retained, and 2), they are extremely young, and there is a concern about hitting the test ceiling. And these really only apply to achievement. 1 doesn't apply here, and 2 doesn't apply to the WJ. You should have them use age norms for both cog and ach.

I would ask for a report using age norms. However, if your evaluator is amenable, it would be interesting to know two additional things: his percentile ranks for the grade he is working at and (if those are 95+) for what grade level his scores would place him at the 90th percentile.

Ok, so I have 2 reports for the same test, both say "compared to a representative sample of children the same age." That sounds like age normed to me, which the psych verified. One report has his age grade listed, one has the grade ahead. (She gave us the grade ahead first, by mistake, we asked for a report with the age grade listed because this was for our school board's homeschool requirements.) the report with his age grade has a 21 point difference in his total achievement, which is a DYS qualifying score. I don't want to "cheat the system" though, so I'm not sure which one is more accurate. This is for achievement testing, not IQ, we will do the iq piece in a few weeks.

He did score 95% for the skipped grade, so that's validating if we were to officially skip him.

From the standpoint of school board reporting, they want to know how he is doing compared to a public school-educated student of the same age...because, yk, those homeschoolers, they don't teach their kids anything...

I would imagine the same applies to DYS (for different reasons, of course!)

Good to know he's at the 95%ile for the skipped grade, which means you're definitely not putting him in over his head with regard to his instructional level. A number of school systems in NA actually use this as part of the testing standard for double promotion (scores at least 95%ile on an achievement test normed for the receiving grade).

That make sense. Thanks for your help!