Features
- Aligned with the current content standards, curriculum frameworks, and instructional materials
- Norm-referenced and individually administered
- Assesses growth over a wide age and grade span
- Provides continuous age or grade norms
- Guides development of long- and short-term goals for educational programming
- Evaluates specific reading and reading-related strengths and weaknesses within the same battery
- Measures phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension
- Includes interpretive software in each test kit
- Ideal for identifying specific skill deficits that will be the focus of intervention curriculum in problem-solving models like Response to Intervention (RTI)
Technical Qualities
Validity
A test's validity depends on two factors: 1) how closely its norming sample represents the population to which the test results will be compared, and 2) how carefully the data were gathered from that sample. The WJ III sample was selected to represent, within practical limits, the U.S. population from ages 24 months to 90 years. Normative data for the test were gathered from 8,818 subjects in over 100 geographically diverse communities in the United States. Individuals were randomly selected within the stratified sampling design that controlled for 10 specific community and individual variables and 13 socioeconomic status variables. The sample consisted of 1,143 preschool subjects; 4,784 kindergarten to twelfth-grade subjects; 1,165 college and university subjects; and 1,843 adult subjects.
The WJ III uses continuous-year norms to yield normative data at 10 points in each grade. It provides age-based norms by month from ages 24 months to 19 years and by year from ages 2 to 90 years. And it provides grade-based norms for kindergarten through 12th grade, 2-year college, and 4-year college, including graduate school.
Reliability
The WJ III DRB clusters show strong reliabilities, most at .90 or higher.
Scoring
Interpretation
Scores obtained by using the WJ III DRB: AE, GE, instructional zone, RPI, PR, SS
Optional Scores: W score, T score, NCE, Z score, Stanine, and CALP