REVISED 11/10
WRAT
CWCS has chosen the WRAT as the assessment test to be administered yearly to Kindergarten through 3rd grade students. This test is a brief achievement test measuring reading, spelling, and arithmetic. Total test time is 15 to 30 minutes, depending upon age. Scoring by hand takes less than 5 minutes. It is a valuable instrument to assist in diagnosing levels of academic achievement, learning disabilities, and checking progress in academic remedial programs. This tool is readily available for use with all ages of students in assisting the parents and ES with curriculum choice.
ESs are required to administer the WRAT to their students according to the following schedule:
· Administer the WRAT to each K through 3rd grade student within 40 school days of the beginning of the school year.
· If student is enrolling after the beginning of the 2nd semester, the ES must administer the WRAT to newly enrolling K through 3rd grade student within 30 calendar days of initial enrollment in the charter school in order to provide adequate time between the pre and post tests.
· Administer the WRAT at the end of the school year as a post test for your K through 3rd grade students by April 30.
A WRAT kit is given to each CWCS ES for use with their students. Please contact the Waterford Office to obtain your kit. If you need additional tests ordered, email cwsecretary@connectingwaters.org
In most cases, two tests will need to be completed each year. For the first WRAT administration, please use the green form. For the second WRAT administration, please use the blue form. If a student is enrolled less than 12 weeks then only one WRAT should be administered. Administer the test according to the directions provided in the WRAT kit. Here are specific directions for administering the WRAT 4 Sentence Comprehension section.
Entering the WRAT scores in FRED:
Once you are on the student detail screen, click on the yellow Assessment
button. Choose WRAT 4 (pink) tab/ Select Enter or Exit exam/ Select Blue or
Green test/ Enter date of exam/ Enter the raw scores for each subject (fields
will only allow raw scores). It is not necessary for the ES to enter the
resulting converted scores. The assessment clerk will regularly convert and
enter the age-based standard scores for your view and parent
print-out.
Click "ES flag as done" so the assessment clerk will know that it's ready to process. (cwcstestclerk@connectingwaters.org )
If you need the results immediately, you may also convert the raw scores to age-based standard scores by using Appendix C in your Professional Manual (starts on page 178 for Green Form and page 124 for Blue Form).
Standard Score Interpretation
Raw scores by themselves give little useful information about a student’s performance on a subtest because the subtests vary both in terms of their difficulty and the number of items they contain. Therefore to interpret subtest raw scores, they must be converted based on the performance of a standardization sample.
Standard scores for the WRAT4 subtests range from a low of 55 to a high of 145 and have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. A standard score above 100 is above the mean, whereas a standard score below 100 is below the mean. A standard score of 85 is one standard deviation below the mean, a standard score of 115 is one standard deviation above the mean, a standard score of 70 is two standard deviations below the mean, and so forth. The bell curve and table, linked below, present a helpful classification of standard scores in terms of qualitative descriptions of levels of performance:
http://www.ieminc.org/Assessment/cw2011/WRATbellcur.pdf
Caution Regarding Grade
Equivalents
Although grade equivalents appear to be easily understood and seem to convey an obvious meaning, they are often misinterpreted. For example, suppose a third grade student received a grade equivalent of 5.2 on the Math Computation subtest. This result does not mean that the student’s math performance is similar to that of students in the second month of fifth grade and that the student could successfully perform fifth grade math.