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Census data, including interactions of variables, such as ethnicity and average educational attainment of the child’s parents or guardians. Special e orts were made to ensure randomization within the variables. Students receiving special education and gifted/talented services were included. Students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and students who were academically gifted or talented were underrepresented; students with specific learning disabilities, speech/language impairments, and developmental delays were slightly underrepresented; and students with intellectual disabilities were very slightly overrepresented. According to the Technical & Interpretive Manual, “a review of the data indicated that some individuals in the grade norm samples performed similarly to students with special education classifications” (p. 34).

Reliability and Validity

The reliability and validity of the KTEA-3 are discussed in detail in the Technical & Interpretive Manual. Except for Oral Language, the mean split-half and alternate-form reliabilities are strong. Correlations with three other achievement tests and one language test are moderate to strong, showing good concurrent validity. Correlations with global scores on two cognitive ability tests are lower, indicating divergent validity: an achievement test should correlate reasonably highly with cognitive ability tests, but it should not be one.

The KTEA-3 subtests appear to be legitimate111111111 and reasonable measures of the intended constructions (face validity), which is reassuring to examiners, parents, and teachers, and helpful in maintaining the examinee’s motivation and cooperation.

Administration and Scoring

The easels, separate stimulus sheets, and record forms are easy to use (with one exception noted below). The easels are printed so test items face the examinee on one side of the easel and instructions and scoring information face the examiner on the other side, rather than, for example, having test items for di erent subtests printed on the two sides of each page so the examiner turns the easel around half-way through the examination and continues testing with the remaining subtests. The KTEA-3 arrangement uses twice as many pages, so the subtests fill two easels rather than just one. The bulk of two easels is a small price to pay for the convenience of having information for the examiner printed on the back of every test page.

For the most part, scoring (usually dichotomous) is straightforward with clear explanations. An entire 208-page Scoring Manual (Kaufman & Kaufman with Breaux, 2014d) provides scoring examples for many items on the Reading Comprehension, Listening Comprehension, Associational Fluency, Writing Fluency, Written Expression, and Oral Expression subtests. The age-based and grade-based norms are readily available and clearly labeled in the Technical & Interpretive Manual on the KTEA-3 flash drive, facilitating scoring and reducing the likelihood of errors. The record form

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encourages and simplifies the use of confidence bands, which happily do not extend lower than 85% confidence.

The KTEA-3 Graphical Profiles, printable from the flash drive, allow users to use either one of two standard score divisions to help describe results. One divides the standard score range by a seven category, “traditional” 10-point scale, which defines Average as standard scores from 90 to 109, while the other uses a seven category, 15-point scale in which Average is defined as scores of 85 to 115. The KTEA-II defined and the WIAT-III (Pearson, 2009a) defines Average as 85 to 115. We consider the 31-point average range a reasonable definition of “within normal limits,” but an excessively broad educational definition of “average” achievement. Since classifications are arbitrary and opinions di er (e.g., Roid, 2003, p. 150; Wechsler, 2014b, p. 152), the choice of two interpretive scales strikes us as helpful, although it may lead to some confusion in team meetings. We urge examiners always to carefully explain either the various verbal classifications labels they are using on di erent tests or the single classification system they have elected to apply to all of the tests in an assessment.

Interpretation

Interpretation of the KTEA-3 is enhanced by having subtests and/or composites that measure all eight areas of achievement111111111 specified by IDEA (2004) legislation as important for identifying and classifying learning disabilities: (1) oral expression (one subtest), (2) listening comprehension (one subtest), (3) written expression (composite based on two subtests), (4) basic reading skill (composite based on two subtests),

(5) reading fluency skills (composite based on three subtests), (6) reading comprehension (composite based on two subtests), (7) mathematics calculation (one subtest), and (8) mathematics problem solving (one subtest). The KTEA-3 also includes subtests of rapid automatized naming (RAN) and phonological processing, two skills considered by many experts to be essential foundations for reading skills (e.g., Wolf & Bowers, 1999), a subtest measuring associational fluency, and writing fluency and math fluency subtests. In addition to the written expression (Written Language), basic reading skill (Reading Decoding), Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension composites mentioned above, the KTEA-3 provides composite scores for Reading, Math, Sound Symbol, (reading and listening) Comprehension, (written and oral) Expression, Orthographic Processing, Academic Fluency, Oral Language, and Oral Fluency. The recategorization of the 19 subtests into these 13 composite provides the examiner with a sound foundation for further interpretation. There is also an Academic Skills Battery (ASB) composite based on three prekindergarten, four kindergarten, or six subtests for grades 1 and above. This composite is not a total score (which would be practically meaningless), but a summary of reading, writing, and math skills (two each for grade 1 and above) to which scores on other composite and subtests can be statistically compared to determine relative strengths and weaknesses.

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The generally high reliabilities of the composites and subtests permit separate interpretation, and the Technical & Interpretive Manual provides the necessary data on significant di erences and base rates (as well as intercorrelations), which makes it easy to guard against overinterpretation of composite scores in which subtests are significantly or uncommonly di erent from each other.

We find that the subtests, composites, and error analyses are practical and that the information they provide is educationally meaningful, leading to useful recommendations. The 30-page chapter on interpretation and the 14 interpretive Tables in the Technical & Interpretive Manual provide the necessary information in a clear, concise format, and encourage the use of additional data to verify hypotheses.

Composite and subtest scores can be compared to each other with readily available data for significant di erences and base rates. The contrast between Reading Comprehension and Listening Comprehension subtests (which can also be joined together in the Comprehension composite) is extremely valuable, as the two subtests have essentially identical formats with the only di erence being who does the reading. That comparison is often far more useful than a comparison between levels of cognitive ability and achievement. The comparison between Written Expression and Oral Expression is less exact, as the formats di er, but it is still useful. The Analysis & Comparisons Form (which must be printed from the KTEA-3 flash drive for each examinee) includes spaces for recording these comparisons (and for writing in other comparisons of interest). 111111111

Growth Scale Values (GSV) are provided as an Item-Response-Theory-based statistic that would be much better for assessing growth over time than would be raw scores or grade-equivalent scores.

The Analysis & Comparisons Form makes it easy to record both normative strengths and weaknesses and personal (ipsative) ones. There are a simple chart for recording behavioral observations (disruptive and enhancing), a two-page Qualitative Observations list, and a six-page Qualitative Observations Hand Scoring Form with a very helpful discussion in the Technical & Interpretive Manual (Kaufman & Kaufman with Breaux, 2014b, pp. 116–120) written in collaboration with Elaine Fletcher-Janzen. There is also a table for recording ability-achievement discrepancies. Tables G.9 through G.14 permit comparison of KTEA-3 scores with those of the KABC-II and the DAS-II (but not, as mentioned above, with scores from the Wechsler intelligence scales). Each chart on the Analysis & Comparisons Form helpfully lists the identifying number of the table in the Manual that is to be used for the scores or comparisons in that chart.

Phonological Processing

The norms for Phonological Processing now extend from age 4:0 (where the standard score for a raw score of 0 is 73) to age 25 (where the highest possible score is 130) and from Fall of Pre-Kindergarten (raw score 0 = standard score 69) to Spring of grade 12

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(highest possible standard score is 132). This expansion of the KTEA-II age range for assessment of phonology is a welcome change. Weaknesses in phonological abilities are just as likely to contribute to weaknesses in reading and spelling in older students as in young ones.

KTEA-3 Flash Drive

Hand-scoring the KTEA-3 requires use of files provided on a flash drive included in the kit. The contents of the flash drive can and should be copied to a computer hard drive before you lose the flash drive in spite of the convenient lanyard. Examiners familiar with the WIAT-III or other tests with electronic manuals will be accustomed to finding the Technical & Interpretive Manual, including test norms, in an Adobe pdf file. Those who have not used electronic manuals will need to adjust and learn to appreciate the advantages (if someone who used to administer the original WISC [Wechsler, 1949] can do it, you can, too). It would obviously be impractical (although if cost were not a factor, extremely useful) to print the 688-page manual in addition to the 66-page Administration Manual and 208-page Scoring Manual. As noted in Chapter 1, you can separately purchase a printed Technical & Interpretive Manual from the publisher (see Rapid Reference 1.4). With a little practice, it becomes easy to navigate the digital manual. Page 1 provides blue “quick links” to each chapter, each appendix, and the references. 111111111

The first page of each of the nine appendices is a table of contents. Although the contents are printed in black, each entry is also a quick link, so only two clicks are needed to take you, for example, to “Age Based Subtest Standard Scores for Subtest Raw Scores: Ages 9:8–9:11.” (You would need three clicks to reach norms for ages 11:8 or above or norms for composite scores because those appear on the second page of the table of contents for that appendix.) At the bottom of each page, there are triangles pointing left and right and, between them, an icon that, if su ciently enlarged, appears to be a house. Clicking on those icons takes you a page back, a page forward, or home to the Quick Links page. You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard. All of the tables appear on the screen in a readable orientation. Tables presented in landscape layout are not rotated sideways, which avoids any need to tip one’s laptop on its side to read a table. However, in order to be able to read the tables on a laptop screen, many examiners will need to zoom so much that the full table more than fills the screen. Then you must zoom out again or scroll down to use the navigation icons. We have found it helpful to print out and store within the Scoring Manual frequently used pages, especially the eight pages of gradeand age-based composite scores and four pages of confidence bands.

The chapters (Development and Standardization, Technical Characteristics, Interpretation, and Content Development) do not have tables of contents, but the CONTROL + F (or Command + F for Mac) “find” utility in Adobe makes it easy to locate, for example, “retest” in Technical Characteristics. In addition to the test norms,