Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WJ lll - what to show to school?

DD took the WJ last week. We will show the results to the principal tomorrow. The tester wrote that DD didn't do nearly as well on the WJ as her WISC would indicate so that is in the notes. Still, her RPI's are a mix of 97- 99/90's (one 100/90). I read on this forum that grade equivalency and age equiv. are not accurate on the WJ. Is that the case? What should I really point out to the principal on the results? I have discovered that the AIG services are very weak so I want to be able to ask for more from the school. I am worried that the principal is going to jump on the fact that DD didn't do as well achievement -wise and not offer DD more opportunities.

That is correct; GE and AE are not accurate on most tests, including the WJ. The RPIs are useful for indicating that she is well above mastery level compared to her age peers (or grade peers, if it was scored using grade norms). Finally, WJ achievement scores can easily be lower than face expectations based on the WISC, due to regression to the mean. Did the tester actually look up predicted achievement/discrepancy tables for the WISC/WJ, or did they use a ballpark/face validity approach? I don't have tables for the WISC-IV, but the WISC-III/WJIII predicted achievement tables have an FSIQ of 140 predicting WJIII ACH scores in the 120s and low 130s. (There's a statistical method for deriving these numbers for the WISC-IV, but in the interests of time, we'll just use the WISC-III predictions as an example.)

From a placement standpoint, RPI is the only score on the WJ that directly addresses placement, although it doesn't go very far above the mean.