Review of Woodcock Johnson III Diagnostic Reading Battery and
Critique the Test
Abstract
The report will critique Woodcock Johnson III Diagnostic Reading Battery (WJ III DRB) and compare my report to the Mental Measurement Yearbook (MMY). The assessment will include the evaluation, in relation to Woodcock et al.’s (1989) WJ III DRB, on the description and purpose of such tests along with ease of use, administrating and interrupting results based on converting raw scores to standard scores including analyzing the results. Finally, assess the overall quality of the test.
Introduction of Woodcock Johnson III Diagnostic Reading Battery
Norm-referenced standardized tests (NRST) used for different administration over the decades. The NRST classifies individuals. It highlights achievements differences between and among students to develop reliable scores. In school systems NRSTs helps identified students for remedial programs. The U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (1992), establish a standardized test as one that uses (NAGC - ED Norm- and Criterion-Referenced Testing. (n.d.) (Retrieved from http://www.nagc.org/index.aspx?id=314). Similar procedures for application and scoring in order to ensure that results from different people are comparable (Bond, 2010). NRST compares the performance of students with other students from large groups. Using a standardized test like the NRST will grade students in order from high to low achievers. A valid population must be from the widest range of the student population. Accordingly, the assessment must also report the status of student achievement “broken down by gender, ethnicity, disability, economic disadvantage, English proficiency, and...
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... WJ III DRB is a quality test that can help examiners gain insight of examinees reading abilities and identify their weakness.
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Brianna is a 8 year old third grade student at Thompson School in Bridgeport, CT who was referred for evaluation by Horizons, an outreach program under the auspices of Sacred Heart University that Brianna has attended for the past two years. At the time of testing, her DRA level of 24 was two levels below the district benchmark of 34 for this time of year. Her parents were very concerned about her oral reading, and the overall impact that her “choppy” disfluent reading will have on her overall reading performance in school.
The United States of America has placed low on the educational ladder throughout the years. The cause of such a low ranking is due to such heavy emphasis on standardized testing and not individual student achievement. Although the United States uses standardized testing as a crutch, it is not an effective measure of a student’s ability, a teacher’s competency, or a school’s proficiency.
To begin, the RTI process my school begins with the teacher. At the beginning of the year, a battery of assessments is conducted to help identify students’ levels in reading. Students take the first Dibbles benchmark to determine their fluency rate as well as the Star test to diagnose phonemic awareness, vocabulary, and comprehension. Also, students are administered the Words Their Way spelling inventory to identify and create word study interventions. Once teachers have gathered all the data, they create a reading learning plan for students who scored significantly below the benchmark for the beginning of the year.
“Students are taking between ten and twenty standardized tests, depending on the grade. A total average of one hundred thirteen different ones by graduation.”(Locker) A few years ago the United States, along with other nations, was given a test to assess the academic strengths and weaknesses of each nation and rank them accordingly. When the results were released and the United States was ranked near the bottom, it was decided to start incorporating more testing through school. Between benchmark, TLI, PARCC, and common core standards, teaching technique was forced to change. Standardized testing has had a negative effect on teachers and students, implementing inadequate grading standards and the common core curriculum, such testing has made
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In Johnson and Scott’s study participants were told they would be taking part in a lab study. Whilst seated in a ‘waiting room’ they would hear an argument in the adjoining room. In the ‘low-anxiety’ condition, a man would walk through the waiting area carrying a pen with his hands covered in grease. In the ‘high-anxiety’ condition, the same argument was heard, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, then the same man would walk through holding a paper knife covered in blood.
... them were given the WRAT and the PPVT-R in different sequences. The results showed that the PPVT-R was positively and significantly related to the WRAT reading subtest. There was no correlation between the arithmetic or the spelling subtests scores of the WRAT to the PPVT-R. Vance, Kitson, and Singer believe both the WRAT and the PPVT-R will continue to be popular tests due to their easy and brief administration. The tests are also good screening devices. The WRAT does a brief assessment of achievement while the PPVT-R is a quick estimate of vocabulary. Because of the small sample size, restrictions in grade range, and geographical location it is recommended that further study of the concurrent validity of the PPVT-R be done. Vance, Kitson, and Singer advice against applying the result of the study to different populations than the one this study was intended for.
tests were primarily employed as measures of student achievement that could be reported to parents, and as a means of noting state and district trends (Moon 2) . Teachers paid little attention to these tests, which in turn had little impact on curriculum. However, in the continuing quest for better schools and high achieving students, testing has become a central focus of policy and practice. Standardized tests are tests that attempt to present unbiased material under the same, predetermined conditions and with consistent scoring and interpretation so that students have equal opportunities to give correct answers and receive an accurate assessment. The idea is that these similarities allow the highest degree of certainty in comparing result...
The purpose of these three distinct methods of measuring mental chronometry is to separate the subcomponents that theoretically comprise a mental reaction RT (O'Shea & Bashore, 2012). The first method, referred to as a-method, actually originated from work done by an astronomer Aldof Hirsch (Canales 2001). Hirsch’s studies were conducted in the 1860’s and consisted of repeated exposure of a single stimulus to a subject. The subjects were simply instructed to give a fixed response when they perceived the stimulus. The assumption was that the RT, being the time from presentation to response, was a representation of the time needed for the processes associated with transmission of basic stimuli and the activation of motor information through the nervous system. This was a process that did not involve any decision making regarding the stimulus given and choice of response and due to these task restrictions, this type of stimulus-response paradigm is termed ‘simple reactions’.
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