I think I remember somebody (Dottie) on this board telling me that WJIII is different. That test actually tests with material at each of the grade levels. Obviously, it's only a very small number of items at that level, but if my memory is right, the WJII grade equivalencies are supposed to reflect work at that grade.
I don't know if it has changed since our tests about 3 years ago.
And I do believe that most tests use GE to reflect how an average person in that grade would do on the test. So, for example, a second grader with a GE of 8th grade means that the average 8th grader would score that level ON THE SECOND GRADE TEST.
But again, the WJIII is from my memory different
The WJ-III is different from the ITBS in that the kid is given problems/items until he reaches the stop criterion. The GE is the same though, meaning that it reflects how well the kid did compared to X graders at the 50th percentile. The good thing about the WJ-III is that it doesn't have the ceiling that a grade level test like the ITBS has since the kid can keep going. But FWIW, when my son was 9 he scored at the post high school level in math, but only answered prealgebra type questions to obtain that score.
The ITBS has tests for each grade level with items that go above and below the grade level. In the lower grades, the GE scores top out well below that 8th grade level. For example, my son got all but one of the spelling questions correct on the 1st grade ITBS and the GE was 2.4. On the 2nd grade test he got all of the spelling questions correct and the GE was 4.5. On that same test, he got all of the language questions correct and the GE was 6.1.
The items on the ITBS are actually on a continuum. The standard score shows where the kid is on that continuum (it is similar to the RIT score on the MAP). A particular standard score is associated with a specific grade equivalent (just like the RIT on the MAP) and is based on performance on particular items. They don't develop grade equivalent scores by having older kids take tests for younger kids.
