It's the freely-available assessment included with the Six Minute Solution program, and consists of ten-word lists by grade level, up through grade eleven. It's a decent screening instrument, but can't be compared with more comprehensive assessments, even the oral reading fluency assessment passages in Six Minute Solution. Once you get three words wrong in a list, that's your frustration level. The level beneath that is your instructional level, which would be where he would be placed for reading fluency work. I would say it was probably fine as a rough screen to place him initially, but as soon as he started scoring high on the actual assessment passages, they should have started re-thinking his placement.
I should also mention that it is a pure word calling measure, which doesn't allow high-level thinkers to use context to support word calling/decoding. It is not impossible that he actually does word call in isolation at around a grade 5 level, even if he comprehends at a higher level. Wouldn't be the first or last time I've seen a child display a multi-grade/multi-SD gap between decoding and comprehension, in this direction. And that's on more accurate and reliable measures than this.
