318 ESSENTIALS OF KTEA™-3 AND WIAT®-III ASSESSMENT

have generally been made clear and user-friendly on the record form and su cient space is provided for recording responses. Scoring for many tests is made easier than on the WIAT-II because it is dichotomous (0 or 1 point).

The tabbed, two-sided stimulus book contains five subtests and has an easel back that allows it to stand freely on the table. Most materials needed to properly administer the WIAT-III are provided and are generally light and do not appear at all cumbersome. It is much more reasonable for the examiner to provide several other materials (e.g., blank paper, CD or MP3 player, and stopwatch) than to have to keep purchasing such materials from the publisher of each test the examiner uses. One recommendation made in the Examiner’s Manual that we wholeheartedly endorse is to add to the materials for administration an audio recorder to record the examinee’s verbatim responses. Although certainly not needed for the entire test, the proper scoring of four subtests (Word Reading, Pseudoword Decoding, Oral Expression, and Oral Reading Fluency) can be greatly aided by the audio recording.

The inclusion of a CD containing the Oral Discourse Comprehension subtest is a welcomed addition. There has always been the problem of di erent examiners reading a comprehension passage di erently from each other or even di erently for di erent examinees. The inclusion of the oral discourse passages on the CD makes the administration of this subtest much more universally standardized so all examinees get the same pronunciation and word emphasis in the recitation of the stories. Many may

remember the CHEWIES story on the original WIAT. (That story, as are several other

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original WIAT stories, is once again used for the Oral Discourse Comprehension passages.) Although the story passage that was to be read aloud to the examinee was printed clearly on the easel, there was no instruction as to whether or not an examiner was to read the passage with a normal tone, and without any special emphasis on any passage part or word (despite the fact that the word CHEWIES was always bolded in the story). This problem has been successfully eliminated on the WIAT-III by the use of the CD.

INTERPRETATION

Interpretation of the WIAT-III is enhanced by having subtests and/or composites that measure all eight areas of achievement 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 or three subtests), (4) basic reading skill (composite based on two subtests), (5) reading fluency skills (one subtest), (6) reading comprehension (one subtest), (7) mathematics calculation (one subtest), and (8) mathematics problem solving (one subtest).

The 28 WIAT-III component subtests are organized into 16 subtests and seven composites plus a Total Achievement composite. The first page of the Enhanced Record Form makes it easy to enter the subtest scores and calculate the composite scores.

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE KTEA™-3 AND WIAT®-III 319

Footnotes are provided to facilitate correct summation of scores (e.g., Total Reading includes Reading Comprehension, Word Reading, and Pseudoword Decoding at all grade levels, but Oral Reading Fluency only for grades 2 through 12+). The distinctions between the composites for Total Reading, Basic Reading, and Reading Comprehension and Fluency are helpful, as are the separate composites for Mathematics and Math Fluency. Appendix H of the Technical Manual provides all of the necessary information for checking critical values and base rates for comparisons between composites and between subtest scores by age norms and grade norms.

Better Listening Comprehension Measure

Historically, one wonderful aspect of the original WIAT was the lovely contrast between Reading Comprehension and Listening Comprehension. You had two tests, normed on the same sample, that were (except for the memory demand of Listening Comprehension) nearly identical in format, with one requiring reading and the other only listening. This contrasting pair was tremendously helpful in distinguishing reading comprehension problems from more pervasive language comprehension problems and in documenting the severity of a reading problem compared to an expectation based on oral comprehension. That contrast was lost in the WIAT-II where the Listening Comprehension test was primarily two very brief vocabulary subtests (Receptive Vocabulary and Expressive111111111 Vocabulary) with an extremely brief sentence comprehension test thrown in. The WIAT-III now has a much better Listening Comprehension measure made up of the Oral Discourse Comprehension and Receptive Vocabulary subtests. It may still be a bit di cult to interpretively contrast examinee’s performance on the Reading Comprehension test to that of the Oral Discourse Comprehension subtest because the tables in the Technical Manual that provide the relevant critical values and base rate necessary for pairwise comparisons do so only for the Listening Comprehension versus Reading Comprehension measures, but not for the Oral Discourse Comprehension versus Reading Comprehension.

Technical Manual

The WIAT-III Technical Manual (Pearson, 2010) is provided as a 627-page pdf file is obviously extensive and is easy to navigate. All headings and subheadings in the Main Table of Contents (TOC) can be clicked to go to the desired page. Readers can also move through the Manual with keyboard arrow keys. At the bottom of each page there is a button to return to the “Main TOC.” Some of the tables are in landscape format and appear sideways, at least on a small laptop screen. We find it helpful to print and keep copies of frequently used pages, in which case, the orientation is not an issue. As mentioned in Chapter 1 of this book, a hard copy of the Technical Manual can be purchased from the publisher (see Rapid Reference 1.3).