Comprehensive Overview of the WJ4 Assessment System

good morning everyone thank you for joining us my name is Debbie Spitzer and I'm your host today I want to mention

before we start that we will have time for questions at the end of the presentation you can enter your

questions at any time during the call just by typing them in and they'll be sent to me if we don't get to all of the

questions at the end of the call we will contact you via email afterwards to answer your questions you can also

visit our website at wgh I come and there's a lot of good information there on wj4 as well as information on

training options dates and locations we're honored to have Fred shrink speak with us today fred has guided the

development of the wj4 as the author team leader and he has worked on the development of the Woodcock Johnson

suite of assessments for over 25 years so welcome Frank and we're excited to have you speak with us today thank you

everyone and good morning it is a beautiful morning here in Olympia Washington where I'm sitting and we are

experiencing record highs for April it's going to be in the mid 80s today it's just a beautiful day for this

presentation so thank you all for joining me and as if as Debbie said I'm Fred Schrank and for the past seven

years I've had the honor of serving as the wj4 author team leader it's a privilege of the job to be the

first to share the results of that effort and to describe to you what's new and different about the WJ for the

latest generation of what I believe is arguably the most widely used assessment system for evaluation of learning

problems and learning disabilities the develop of the wj4 was a massive undertaking a

much greater effort than was involved in any previous addition and some acknowledgments are in order including

dr. Kevin McGrew who's keen insights and cutting-edge research with the CHC theory were a major influence on the WJ

for structural and interpretive plan particularly with regards to the cognitive and oral language battery

tests and clusters also dr. Nancy Mather whose expertise at test development item writing and knowledge of learning

disabilities is reflected throughout all three of the batteries and dr. Richard Woodcock who provided Kevin Nancy and me

with the opportunity to have a major influence on the structure function and interpretation of the WJ for and

consequently an impact on how millions of individuals with learning disabilities and learning problems will

be evaluated and what interpretations will be made of their assessment data I'd also like to thank father Guido

Sarducci who popularized an attentional focus intervention he called find the Pope in

the pizza I've modified this intervention for webinar attention deficits and I've renamed it find the

word in the PowerPoint my presentation this morning will be approximately 40 to 45 minutes and I have a lot of material

to cover so for some of the slides I'm going to start by announcing a key word or a key phrase and your webinar

attention task is to find the word or phrase within the PowerPoint slide some will be easy to find and others will be

more difficult and a keyword won't be presented for all slides just some of the slides after all

intermittent stimuli are the most effective at increasing webinar attention span so are you ready for the

sample item comprehensive the principle message of this webinar is that the wj4 is a major revision of the WJ 3 it's a

theoretical structural and interpretive revision intended to meet both current and future assessment needs it's also

comprehensive consisting of three batteries cognitive abilities achievement and the new test of oral

language one thing I think that we all know as educators and psychologists is that organization is half of any job and

the wj4 is organized for ease-of-use and maximum interpretive value the organization occurs at the system level

as well as the battery level this slide shows the system level of organization and how any of the three batteries can

be used independently but can also be used with another battery or both of the other batteries assessment of oral

language abilities is not new to the Woodcock Johnson system but the organization of the oral language tests

is new in the wj4 in the development of the fourth edition and inspiration occurred with the idea of a single easel

of oral language tests that could be used with either the cognitive or achievement batteries or the oral

language battery could be used by itself for a number of distinct purposes so the three batteries can potentially be used

by as many as three different professionals within a system contributing to a team evaluation and

all examiner's would be using tests with the same normative basis so that the tests and clusters can be accurately

compared and contrasted cutting edge the woodcock-johnson batteries have always been at the cutting edge of professional

assessment practice and without a doubt we wanted to continue in that tradition achieving that goal involved the gradual

development of a number of sub goals the WJ authors have always encouraged the practice of selective testing and still

do but after reading hundreds of professional reports examining school district guidelines and reading an

untold number of research studies it became clear to me that many examiner's systems and researchers preferred or

were required to use a standard recommended or core set of tests as a basic foundation for an evaluation so a

core set of tests was identified for each battery the core tests were placed first in order in each battery

configuration administration of the core set of tests allows an examiner to identify if any

strengths and weaknesses exist among the core tests and allows for additional selected tests and clusters to enter

into the strengths and weaknesses analysis another goal was to go beyond on C HC C theory as it was articulated

in the WJ 3 a great deal of research both within psychometrics and in the neurosciences as a whole has both

confirmed the merits of C HC theory and suggested modifications to the initial doulas the wj4 reflects the most current

thinking on CHC theory we also wanted to introduce new tests and interpretive clusters that would address current and

future assessment practices and we wanted to elevate oral language abilities as important correlates of

cognitive and academic performance parallel we now provide an option for measuring oral language ability in

Spanish as well as English this is because more and more children in our educational system have a background in

Spanish the wj4 now provides the option of comparing English to Spanish oral language ability for determining

language dominance and relative proficiency in each language that's often the first step in a comprehensive

evaluation of an individual with bilingualism an ancillary examiner procedure is introduced for examiner's

who are not proficient in Spanish so that Spanish oral language ability informations can still be obtained

finally three parallel forms of the standard achievement tests are introduced to reduce dependency on any

single form and avoid any potential overexposure to test items or in some cases to reserve one form for a

particular purpose the wj4 is also a theoretical revision here are just a few of the key

theoretical changes in the cognitive battery a greater emphasis is placed upon working memory capacity cognitive

complexity has been built into several tests and clusters some narrow abilities have received greater emphasis than men

have passed and a new G fgc composite is introduced in the oral language battery a new speed

of lexical access factor is identified as a cognitive linguistic competency and we have a new word segmentation test to

assess the phonological skill of breaking words apart into component sounds in the achievement battery we

have a new oral reading test that provides a measure of oral reading fluency and a new reading comprehension

test in a read and retell format in the math area our number matrices test assesses pattern recognition and

analysis in problem solving and high school or college students who are slow readers can be assessed with a new

reading rate cluster value I'd like to home in now on the tests of cognitive abilities which is organized into a

standard battery and extended battery the new test organization plan is designed to provide maximum information

for the least amount of testing time new tests 1 through 7 are the core tests and they are the seven tests that comprise

the general intellectual ability scale each of those seven tests represents the strongest measure of the CHC factor and

is also the test that is the most predictive test in the factor structure for academic achievement the tests

lineup is all new in the WJ for I'll only comment on the new tests test three is called verbal attention it's a brand

new test of working memory capacity that captures the attentional requirements of working memory in a format that is

ecologically valid meaning that the task is similar to the types of working memory tasks that are

required in classroom performance and verbal interactions with others test 4 is letter pattern matching this test is

similar to the WJ 3 visual matching task but it's a test of orthography in this test the individual is asked to quickly

match patterns of letters some of which are common English spelling patterns test 5 is for neurological processing

this is a new three-part test of the ability to access words by phonological cues or phonological substitutions this

test of auditory processing loads very highly on psychometric G and is highly predictive of academic success so this

slide is a summary of how the standard battery is organized for ease of use to obtain the brief intellectual ability

score simply administer the first three tests if the first seven tests are administered the general intellectually

intellectual ability score is obtained and each of the seven tests is analyzed to determine if any within individual

strengths or weaknesses exist at the test level adding one more test which is test 8 introduces the comprehension

knowledge cluster and that test and cluster are also analyzed in the strengths and weaknesses procedure add

another test and the fluid reasoning cluster is obtained and add another test and the short-term working memory and

cognitive efficiency clusters are obtained by deliberately by deliberate design use of the standard battery

battery alone provides a wealth of information for many standard evaluation purposes I'll talk more about the G fgc

Composite later but that for test cluster is also obtained from the standard battery the extended battery

contains eight tests most of these are from the w j3 but the non-word repetition test task is

new this is a cognitively complex test that measures phonological processing and phonological short term memory the

task requires repetition of increasingly complex pseudo words such as DK to t non-word repetition is an important

cognitive linguistic ability Susan gather coal and other researchers have shown that the ability to repeat

non words is linked to the ability to learn new words and difficulties with non-word repetition are frequently a

diagnostic marker for a language related disability selective the extended battery tests are especially useful for

selective testing this slide shows a list of the CHC broad and narrow ability clusters that can be obtained by adding

tests from the extended battery to tests from the core battery for example the perceptual speed cluster is obtained by

administering both letter pattern matching and number pattern matching the perceptual speed cluster is technically

a narrow ability in CHD theory but it has been elevated in importance in the wj4 because it can identify individuals

who are in need of extended time as an accommodation due to perceptual speed difficulties that can interfere with

timed tasks I'd like to move on now to the new tests of oral language 12 tests are included

in the tests of oral language nine are in English and three are in Spanish most of these tests are revisions from

the third edition of the cognitive battery the achievement battery or the battery a' but the interpretative model

is all new core the first four tests are the core tests in the oral language battery when these four tests are

administered strengths and weaknesses among the core tests can be identified the segmentation test is new it measures

the skill of breaking words apart into their component speech zones any of the next four tests can be added into the

variation procedure and evaluated and any cluster that is created from the component tests is also included in the

evaluation of relative strengths and weaknesses test 9 sound awareness is a brief to sub test measure intended as a

screening tool that will be useful for children in the early school years primarily in grades 1 through 3 but it

can also be used for individuals who have a delay in phonological awareness the 3 spanish tests are parallel forms

of the 3 English tests picture vocabulary oral comprehension and understanding

directions these tests are not translations though they have different items and because they have different

items both the English and the Spanish forms of the test can be administered to the same individual without compromising

test content when a bilingual student is referred for an evaluation the first step is often determining which of the

two languages is dominant the comparison of English to Spanish oral language ability does exactly that

but it goes further because the English and Spanish tests utilize the same underlying metric it's possible to

determine relative proficiency in each language for example a student may be Spanish dominant but not all that

proficient in Spanish or the tests could indicate that a student has developed advanced Spanish

oral language abilities and those abilities would make it easier to transfer that knowledge Spanish to

English rather ancillary many examiners are faced with a serious limitation when they have to evaluate a spanish-speaking

student because he or she may not be sufficiently proficient in Spanish to conduct a valid examination the

ancillary examiner procedure introduces a unique approach to this problem in this procedure a cooperating Spanish

proficient individual such as a teacher or instructional aide can be trained to administer the Spanish test under the

supervision of the primary examiner it's a practical way to obtain information about the level of a student's oral

language proficiency in Spanish these are the interpretive clusters that can be derived from the oral language

battery the speed of lexical access cluster is new it provides an important measure of automaticity in word access I

think it's also worth noting that in any evaluation of a suspected learning disability the individuals with

Disabilities Education Improvement Act requires that a determination of a specific learning disability must not be

a Fung of limited language proficiency so as part of any comprehensive evaluation for

s LD the language proficiency question needs to be addressed by a member of the evaluation team and that's another

reason for the oral language battery so that this question can be addressed by either the professional conducting the

cognitive evaluation by the specialist doing the achievement testing or by a language professional independently but

someone on the evaluation team needs to bring that piece of information to the table and this can be documented and

addressed with as little as ten minutes of testing time with the oral language cluster I'd like to introduce the WJ for

tests of achievement now and suggest that a major structural change has been made to this battery because quite a few

of the tests were so extensively used there are now three forms of the standard battery there's only one form

of the extended battery and the extended battery works with any one of the standard forms this configuration is

unique and provides the examiner with the maximum amount of quantitative and qualitative information in the least

amount of testing time there are 11 tests in the standard battery but this slide shows only the first eight tests

which I'd like to discuss the first six tests comprised the core tests those tests that are used for calculation of

relative strengths and weaknesses however when you administer the core set of tests three core clusters are also

obtained reading mathematics and written language and these clusters also enter into the evaluation of relative

strengths and weaknesses adding one more test the word attack test creates the basic reading skills

cluster and that test in cluster also enters into the variation procedure if test 8 is added the reading fluency

cluster is created and that testing cluster also enter into the analysis the oral reading test is new this test

provides the examiner with the opportunity to listen to a student read connected text out loud and there's also

an optional error analysis procedure to categorize the types of oral reading errors that were made allowing an

examiner to use this test much like an informal reading inventory more tests 9 10 and 11 have new names to more

adequately reflect the test content these fluency tests are used to create the broad reading broad math and broad

written language clusters so we have the two test clusters which do not have the fluency measure and we have the three

test clusters that include the fluency measure so that an examiner has the option of including fluency or not

including fluency in the basic evaluation of reading math and writing qualitative a new observation checklist

is included in each of the 11 tests in the standard battery these checklists capture important observations that

provide documentation that is often very helpful in interpreting test performance additional this

shows that a lot of information can be obtained from the standard battery alone the core tests alone provides standard

clusters of reading math and written language as I suggested the brief achievement cluster is obtained by

administering tests one through three additional clusters then can be obtained by administering additional tests beyond

the core the reading fluency cluster is new consisting of the oral reading test and their sentence reading fluency test

oral and a silent reading test we suggest that the wj4 reading fluency cluster represents a significant advance

in assessment practice one that is more in line with the current definition of reading fluency that's provided by the

National reading panel expanded nine tests are included in the single form of the extended battery two of the tests

are new and both provide more advanced options for assessment of reading in the WJ for the reading recall test is a

complex measure of reading comprehension that is similar to classroom reading comprehension tasks the word reading

fluency test measures an important aspect of reading speed being able to read words and make accurate semantic

decisions quickly this task requires knowledge of words in their meanings and also requires cognitive fluency or

cognitive efficiency the expand science social studies and humanities tests create the academic knowledge

cluster which has an important function in the tests of achievement these three tests are all strong measures of

knowledge and they all provide a strong measure of cognitive academic language proficiency and they don't require

reading so this cluster can provide an important comparison to measures of reading writing and math that can be

done within the achievement battery alone additional selective testing from the extended battery will provide

cluster scores for reading comprehension reading rate math problem solving basic writing skills as well as academic

knowledge enhanced the wj4 is also an interpretive revision the variation procedures have been updated to meet

contemporary assessment needs as well as being simplified and enhanced these procedures now more closely reflect what

I call the psychology of individual differences providing a snapshot of strengths and weaknesses within an

individual's profile when we talk to a parent or to the student him or herself about strengths as well as weaknesses we

can contribute to understanding not simply focusing on weaknesses simplified the procedures are simplified because

the tests that require that are required to calculate the variations are the core tests in each battery an additional

tests and clusters from the battery can also be included on a selective testing basis also within the standard

achievement battery alone an important cluster-level comparison among academic skills academic fluency

and academic applications can be obtained it's an important comparison because many individuals with learning

problems have a weakness in the academic fluency domain when compared to their basic skills or their ability to apply

knowledge compare and contrast the wj4 has five enhanced score comparison procedures that are sometimes referred

to as discrepancy procedures however instead of focusing on the question did he or she qualify the overriding purpose

for any of these procedures should be to compare or contrast an individual's ability to their levels of achievement

comparing and contrasting our critical thinking skills that help us analyze a picture whether it be a painting in a

museum or a profile of an individual for example take a look at this picture how do the critical thinking skills of

comparing and contrasting help you to understand this MA Mark Rothko painting I've got you thinking haven't I so this

is the audience participation portion of the program I'll continue this section with something with something new for

the first time examiner's who use the achievement battery alone can compare ability and achievement the academic

knowledge cluster can be compared to measures of reading writing and math to determine if a significant difference

exists this can be an important comparison because it can alert an achievement

examiner to the need for a more comprehensive evaluation or suggests the need for a referral the oral language

ability achievement discrepancy procedure has always been a part of the Woodcock Johnson and it's always an

important comparison to make particularly when reading is an area of concern because many teachers and adults

expect that an individual should be able to read at the level of their oral language ability if a student is not

reading at that level the evaluation should proceed further to address the why questions what is new in the wj4 is

that the broad Spanish oral language score can also be used as an ability score there's strong support in the

literature on bilingual education that the best estimate of a bilingual students ability may be the oral

language ability score in the students dominant language if the student is receiving academic instruction in

English then it's probably appropriate that English should be the language for academic testing but either the Spanish

or English oral language score can be considered a measure of that person's ability the GI a achievement discrepancy

procedure is their traditional regression based procedure that is used in many school districts what has always

been unique about the Woodcock Johnson procedure is that the WJ is based on actual discrepancy norms rather than a

table of estimated discrepancies or a simple different score method both of which are not as accurate and can lead

to incorrect placement decisions reintroduced the scholastic aptitude achievement discrepancy procedure has

been reintroduced these scholastic aptitude were part of the 1977 Woodcock Johnson and part of the wjr both of

which were way ahead of their time this procedure compares selected areas of achievement to a specific set of the

most closely related cognitive measures to determine if an individual is achieving at a level that would be

expected based upon his or her most closely related cognitive abilities hybrid completely new to the wj4 is the

G F G C other abilities comparison this is a very exciting option I call it a hybrid option because it is calculated

as a traditional ability achievement discrepancy but the predictor cluster is different and the comparison can be made

to many other clusters across the cognitive oral language and achievement devane's

and the results are interpreted as an overall pattern of strengths and weaknesses when compared to the G fgc

composite this slide is a visual display of the new G F G C other ability comparison let's begin in the middle

with the G fgc composite this composite represents the highest level and generally most important of the

cognitive abilities fluid reasoning and comprehension knowledge called by cattell as fluid intelligence and

crystallized intelligence the king and queen of cognitive abilities according to many

that cluster can be compared to any of the other cognitive abilities listed or two selected oral language abilities or

to areas of academic achievement each of the other abilities is directly compared to the gfg see composite and if a

difference between them is significant it can be interpreted as a relative strength or weakness when compared to

the combination of fluid and crystallized intellectual abilities this is the essence of the pattern of

strengths and weaknesses model that is more and more frequently being advocated as a third method for learning

disabilities identification any cognitive linguistic or academic ability that is not primarily GF or G C can be

compared to the to the G fgc composite this means for example that an if an individual has a specific cognitive

weakness then that affects academic performance such as working memory it can be identified as a weakness in the

very same analysis that would identify the academic areas of need it's very exciting

to end this webinar with the presentation of the G fgc composite because it facilitates in 1 normed Co

normed evaluation system the most complete evaluation of strengths and weaknesses across multiple domains for

the first time in any norm diagnostic system academic deficits can be easily associated with cognitive processing

weaknesses and evaluated in light of the individual strengths this single analysis can reveal patterns of Col

varying abilities that may help provide explanations for limitations and academic performance and

may yield important information for planning interventions and accommodations information about an

individual strengths and weaknesses can be useful in any model of disability identification whether the district is

firmly committed to a pattern of strengths and weaknesses model or whether the guidelines suggest that they

use RTI or they use an ability achievement discrepancy the PSW model just provides better information that

contributes to understanding in any form of the models in conclusion I want to say thank you for sharing your time with

me this morning I've chosen the photo of this little guy to be the poster child for my webinar presentation to me it

sort of looks like he's about to say thank you or maybe he's taking the new segmentation test and is segmenting a

word like bah sir I can also imagine him taking the sentence repetition test and repeating thank you for the pizza father

guido anyway it looks to me like they're both looking forward to the new wj4 and i hope you are too

sincerely thank you for sharing your time with me Thank You Fred and that was wonderful

we're going to move on now to our question and answer portion of the presentation so we'll get through as

many questions as we can again if we don't get through all of them we will definitely contact you after the

presentation with an answer and remember you can go to website WJ - IV calm and get many of the

questions answered and find out about training so our first question is how is scoring for the new WJ for going to work

and for that one I'm going to turn it over to quarry Lane she is our WJ for senior product manager to answer that

for us thank you daddy that's a great question and we now provide a web-based access to the fourth edition of the

Woodcock Johnson on suite of assessments so like other in internet-based applications they're now able to access

scoring and reporting online from any computer that has Internet access now the online scoring reporting system has

basic scoring and reporting and it's provided free with the purchase of paper record forms so there is no longer a CD

that will be available for scoring but everything will be available online at no extra charge when you purchase the

textbook lists some other features you're able to do now interrupt for eternity custom a suite of assessments

receive reports while derive scores and clusters so it's the earlier WJ copies for addition plus some new addition such

as exploring in roster reporting also the system provides a secure environment for examiner's to enter assessment data

add test session observations generate forth and provides a variety of report i'm additionally we meet their eyes

security standards in the industry for data integrity and related processes Debbie I'll give it back to you for some

more questions Thank You Corey alright our next question at what point will the norms associated with the WJ 3 no longer

be valid and Fred I think that would be a good one for you document that I'm referencing it's

called ethical principles of psychologists conduct and that's put out by the APA and even though many of the

examiner's may not be psychologists it is a psychological assessment instrument so people who do administer these kinds

of instruments are should be using these same guidelines which suggests that psychologists and other examiner's use

outdated norms that use the most current norms so basically when a new set of norms are

out those are the norms that that people should be using as a practical matter school districts need to put money in

their budgets and they need to you know find the resources to purchase these materials and generally people do that

over the first year sometimes over the you know first two years so people should be using the most current norms

as soon as they're available but as a practical matter it may take people a while to obtain those great thank you

all right our next question is are the oral language Spanish English proficiency procedures superior to the

be VAT as the be VAT as on the be vet the same items are repeated as translations sorry so are you saying

that the oral language Spanish English proficiency procedure is superior to the be VAT as on the be VAT the same items

are repeated as translations yeah that's a different procedure on the be vet the be VAT procedure it provides a combined

estimate of English and Spanish this procedure is a compare and contrast method I believe it's probably it's your

choice of what you would like to to assess but they are different procedures in the wj4 the idea here is we want to

know how well the person can understand and utilize English and then we want to compare and contrast that to how we're

how well they can understand and utilize Spanish and both of those issues have instructional implications the the items

in the wj4 on the Spanish Edition they are not translations as they are in the be bet they are new items they are on

the same scale so you can directly compare an individual Spanish or a language ability to their English or

language ability and the resulting interpretation is that this person has a level of Spanish oral language ability

that is equivalent to such a type of ability in English and that's a very important comparison to make great thank

you and this is kind of related to that were there new norms collected for the Spanish subjects the Spanish test an

adaptation of tests that were from the battery ax the data for the Spanish test is equated to the WJ for norms the WJ

for norms are in english so i sub set a sample of spanish-speaking individuals within the United States and within

Mexico and Puerto Rico and the individuals who are within the United States where there were selected to

represent individuals from different areas of the spanish-speaking world all comprise what we call a calibration

sample so that calibration sample had linking items items that were the same in

English in Spanish so that the English items could be linked to the wj4 norms so that the idea is that the person's

Spanish or language ability is equivalent to the English at this age or grade level great thank you okay our

next question is will a copy of the presentation be available and yes we will be sending out the PowerPoint after

May 6th which is our last webinar so you will be receiving that as well as a recording of the wet a link to the

recording of the webinar ok and let's see what else we have when were when were the dates times

let's see where the were there are there face-to-face trainings workshops for professionals across the country so yes

there are and that's a very good question you can go to WJ - IV dot-com and click on training and it gives you

all of the different options for training as well as where they're located the dates etc so that's where

you can go to get that information and we have one more question it looks like were the new oral language Spanish

subtests normed on Spanish speakers yeah I think I already answered that question gathered the data on Spanish speakers

that's called calibration data and it's equated to the English norm so it's interpreted on the same scale as the wj4

great thank you yeah all right and I think that is all our questions if anyone else has any

questions please feel free to email us even after the presentation and we'd be happy to get back to you

oh thank you very much everyone thank you