Dottie has probably already posted this lol but I've read the WJIII shouldn't be used for grade placement. There aren't enough questions per grade level to make that decision. You would then go to out of level achievement tests, SCAT or the STEP testing.
Very interesting! I had not heard of the SCAT or STEP achievement testing before this discussion. I will have to look into it. It is curious then that if the WJ III is so quick and dirty as an achievement test, with very few questions per grade level, that it is one of the achievement test accepted for the DYS application. It must be fairly decent for spreading out the upper achievement test scores for it to be DYS-worthy??
Is it just then that the WJ III is measuring potential (with the scaled scores which look like IQ scores?) and not a grade level? But I thought that the difference between IQ tests and Achievement tests was that IQ measured what a child had the potential to learn, while the Achievement tests measured what they had already mastered. This seems to be the opposite of the scaled scores verses grade equivalent debate? It seems that the WJ III would be best suited to deliver GE scores?
Maybe this confusion is what is really throwing me for a loop with these WJ III scores?
