Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Woodcock Johnson (help me interpret)

RPI stands for Relative Proficiency Index, and is another way of viewing a student's standing relative to their age or grade peers. It's set up a little like the 20/20 system of visual acuity that optometrists and ophthalmologists use. The 90 after the slash represents the average child performing at 90% accuracy. The number before the slash represents the expected performance of your child on the same task.

Using your son as an example, this means that the test results predict that, on a task similar to the kinds of items on the subtest given, for which most students scored 90%, your son would be expected to score 98 - 100%. The RPI is a lot more informative for students performing near or below average than for those above average, as the spread is not that big in the high range of the population (due to the fact that 90% is the criterion).

On to the six year old:

His verbal and nonverbal reasoning skills are both quite good, although he is also stronger in the nonverbal area, relatively speaking. A similar pattern of relative weakness (though not as weak) in speeded/timed areas and memory is present, hence the relative weaknesses in cognitive efficiency, processing speed, short-term memory, and cognitive fluency. One of the striking differences is how strong his visual-auditory learning subtest was, which helped to pull up the long-term retrieval cluster score. This subtest is intended to investigate the kind of processes involved in learning to read (it uses a rebus task, matching orally-presented words to symbols). It isn't an exact match to the process, but between the strong score on this task and the very strong auditory processing score, one would predict strong reading achievement--which is what we do see, especially with regard to word calling (sight vocabulary). The associated written tasks are strong, too (e.g., spelling, writing samples).

Overall, this son presents with a more balanced, and thus uniformly strong, profile, with the achievement to match. Speed and short-term memory/attention are the relative weaknesses, but don't appear to have impacted achievement a whole lot. Keep in mind that he is also younger, so the normative expectations are lower, and relatively light on abstractions, so comparing the two children in any meaningful way (an enterprise fraught with danger at the best of times!), would be a bit murky from a validity standpoint.

aeh, thank you for taking the time to post these detailed responses. It is very helpful.

Thank you for everything. I checked his cogat scores again...

Verbal - 130 stanine- 9
Quantitative-131 staine- 9
Nonverbal- 123 staine- 8
Composite- 133 staine- 9

Ability profile was 9A

His GRADE (group reading assesment and diagnostic evaluations)

Word reading and sentence comprehension: stanine-9
Vocab composite, word meaning, comprehension composite: stanine 8
Passage comprehension: stanine 7
Listening comprehension: stanine 5

Overall total test: stanine 8

I also have dibles scores for him.

Receiving composite if 206 in the fall.(did not give a composite in winter)

His 'map' testing results in reading were between 96-99%, in the fall. They dropped in the winter to 87-94%.

His teacher noted he started out strong but has not made much progress.

Regarding DIBELS: In the beginning of second grade, DIBELS testing consists of a one-minute reading fluency probe (proxy for reading comprehension) and a one-minute nonsense word reading probe (proxy for reading decoding). IOW, it's timed. His fall composite is above the mid-second grade benchmark, but below the end-second grade benchmark, which I would say is fairly consistent with his WJIII results. Another thought to keep in mind is that DIBELS, like the RPI, was designed mainly to screen for risk of academic failure, not to differentiate high performers. You also cannot really compare composite scores across grade levels, as it was not designed to be used that way. (The scaling is not continuous across grade levels.)

His winter MAP results are in the same percentile range as his WJIII results as well.

So, overall, all of his achievement testing is fairly consistent, both group and individual, even the cbm probe (DIBELS).

I edited my stanine conversion figures above, as I double checked the charts and I was a little off.

In any case, wrt the CogATs: Keep in mind the motor speed requirements are substantially less than for the written parts of the WJIII (just bubbling), so any relative weaknesses in motor speed would not be figured into the composites. Group administered tests are usually not as accurate as individual, but even so, the composite seems right in line with the WJ GIA.

With the GRADE: again, this is an at-risk screening measure designed for repeated monitoring of progress, in order to catch the lower performing students before they fall too far behind. It is not really designed to spread the high performers.

That being said, his score profile is not totally unlike his WJIIIACH results. It breaks things down a little more, so that you can see that his reading comprehension is better when things are shorter, and that he comprehends better when he has something to look at and reference than when he has to rely solely on listening (may be related to the working memory relative weaknesses that may be present, if we are to believe the WJIIICOG results). This also matches up to the verbal comp results on the WJIIICOG, as that is entirely oral in administration, so that, even though the item presentations are not long, they do require him to spend some of his mental processing power on remembering, rather than actual language comprehension.

You are very welcome. If at any point you don't feel comfortable discussing any of your children's info in a public forum, feel free to PM me.