Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment WIAT 3 interpretation

DS9 (3rd grade) had t0 take some evaluative tests for admission process into a new school. I have ZERO idea of what these numbers mean. Can anybody help me with understanding this?

fluency - 120
comprehension - 129
word reading - 130

ERB math - 324

Thanks.

I'm no expert, but I can tell you it's an achievement test, the first three appear to be Reading subtests, and the scores appear to be the standard scores, which follow the +15 standard deviation. The 120 equates to 91st percentile, 129 = 97th percentile, and 130 = 98th percentile. (133 is where 99+ percentile starts.). Oh, and fluency refers to oral reading fluency, comprehension is reading comprehension.

I'm not sure what the ERB refers to, and that number is different than a standard score. :-)

Here's a handy standard conversion chart.

longcut is correct. Fluency is oral reading fluency (reading grade-level passages out loud, quickly and accurately). Comprehension is reading comprehension (reading grade-level passages silently or out loud, and then answering a series of questions about them, with the text available to reference). Word reading is single word reading accuracy (accurately pronouncing a list of real words).

The ERB is probably this:
https://www.erblearn.org/services/ctp-overview

If that's the ERB, then I found this on the "quantile map" - "360Q - Write addition and subtraction sentences that represent
a number or word problem; solve."

The complete Spring 2011 norms for the CTP4 (which I believe is still the current version) can be found here. The norms may be slightly different, as they use rolling three-year norms (so 2016 norms would be based on 2013-2015 administration years). Your child may or may not have been scored using the spring norms, and he may or may not have been administered the grade 3 test. I expect you should be looking at the independent school norms. It should still give you a decent idea, though.

https://www.erblearn.org/uploads/media_items/ctp-spring-norms-final.original.pdf

Note that the tables suggest that your child scores about one standard deviation above the mean for spring of third grade, which would put him around the 85th %ile, on the independent school norms. On the national norms (which are a better comparison to the WIAT-III results; p.91, in case you're wondering), he scores in the beginning of the 99th %ile in mathematics, which is quite comparable to his word reading and reading comprehension scores.

Thanks your the information! I noticed for DYS, you need 145s on the WIAT 3. If 133 equates to the 99th percentile, then how do you achieve a 145?

145 is 99.9th %ile. Performance at +3 SDs is so rare that a very small percentile change represents a fairly sizable standard score difference. Beyond +2 SD (130), we are talking about way out on the tail of the bell curve. Providing some perspective, remember that "only" around 130 is still quite low incidence, and substantially above average performance.

Also, achievement scores may or may not fully capture even a PG child's full range, as there are other factors (such as exposure to/instruction in certain topics or skills) as well. The achievement scores you posted could very well be consistent with PG-level cognitive ability (though they could also be consistent with MG or HG-level cognition). In particular, the WIAT-III reading comprehension subtest has quite a low ceiling (for HG+ purposes), due to the item set structure. Similarly the oral reading fluency subtest, with the added impact of rote speed (which is usually not as exceptional in HG+ children as their reasoning skills are).