Date of Award

2009

Degree Name

School Psychology

College

Graduate School of Education and Professional Development

Type of Degree

Ed.S.

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Sandra S. Stroebel

Second Advisor

Peter N. Prewett

Third Advisor

Stephen O’Keefe

Fourth Advisor

Fred Jay Krieg

Abstract

Traditionally, standardized achievement measures have provided only age-based norms for deriving standard scores from obtained raw scores. In recent years, publications of normreferenced achievement test have begun to include norms based on grade level. With the addition of grade-based norms, test manuals and interpretation guides have not included clear guidelines indicating when it is advisable to use one type of norm over the other. The purpose of this study was to examine the differences between standard scores obtained using age- and grade-based norms, using the same raw score, for students in the appropriate grade for their age, students who are young for their grade level and students who are old for their grade level using the WIAT-II and the KTEA-2. Additionally, standard scores were obtained using age-based and grade-based norms using the same raw score for students with below average, average, and above average achievement. In general, for students who are in the appropriate grade for their age, grade-based norms yield scores that are not educationally significant, while grade-based standard scores for students who are young for their grade placement are lower than age-based standard scores and grade-based standard scores are higher than age-based standard scores for students who are old for their grade level. Further, results indicate that the differences between age- and grade-based standard scores are greater at lower grades than the higher grades.

Subject(s)

Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement.

Wechsler Individual Achievement Test.

Educational tests and measurements.

Achievement tests.

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