Special Education Assessment Terms

To qualify for services under special education requires a comprehensive evaluation, which usually includes a number of assessments, such as the WISC-4 (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children 4th edition).

Because of the psychological, neurological, and medical nature of the evaluations, the assessment terms used are usually very long, cryptic, and confusing, so this page is dedicated to shedding some light on what it all means.

Glossary of Assessment Terms

Ability 
A characteristic that is indicative of competence in a field. (See also aptitude.)

Ability Testing 
Use of standardized tests to evaluate an individual’s performance in a specific area (i.e., cognitive, psychomotor, or physical functioning).

Achievement tests 
Standardized tests that measure knowledge and skills in academic subject areas (i.e., math, spelling, and reading).

Accommodations 
Describe changes in format, response, setting, timing, or scheduling that do not alter in any significant way what the test measures or the comparability of scores. Accommodations are designed to ensure that an assessment measures the intended construct, not the child’s disability. Accommodations affect three areas of testing: 1) the administration of tests, 2) how students are allowed to respond to the items, and 3) the presentation of the tests (how the items are presented to the students on the test instrument).Accommodations may include Braille forms of a test for blind students or tests in native languages for students whose primary language is other than English.

Age Equivalent 
The chronological age in a population for which a score is the median (middle) score. If children who are 10 years and 6 months old have a median score of 17 on a test, the score 17 has an age equivalent of 10-6.

Alternative assessment 
Usually means an alternative to a paper and pencil test; refers to non-conventional methods of assessing achievement (e.g., work samples and portfolios).

Alternate Forms 
Two or more versions of a test that are considered interchangeable, in that they measure the same constructs in the same ways, are intended for the same purposes, and are administered using the same directions.

Aptitude 
An individual’s ability to learn or to develop proficiency in an area if provided with appropriate education or training. Aptitude tests include tests of general academic (scholastic) ability; tests of special abilities (i.e., verbal, numerical, mechanical); tests that assess “readiness” for learning; and tests that measure ability and previous learning that are used to predict future performance.

Aptitude tests
Tests that measure an individual’s collective knowledge; often used to predict learning potential. See also ability test.

Assessment
The process of testing and measuring skills and abilities. Assessments include aptitude tests, achievement tests, and screening tests.

Battery
A group or series of tests or subtests administered; the most common test batteries are achievement tests that include subtests in different areas.

Bell curve
See normal distribution curve.

Benchmark
Levels of academic performance used as checkpoints to monitor progress toward performance goals and/or academic standards.

Ceiling
The highest level of performance or score that a test can reliably measure.

Classroom Assessment
An assessment developed, administered, and scored by a teacher to evaluate individual or classroom student performance.

Competency tests
Tests that measure proficiency in subject areas like math and English. Some states require that students pass competency tests before graduating.

Composite score
The practice of combining two or more subtest scores to create an average or composite score. For example, a reading performance score may be an average of vocabulary and reading comprehension subtest scores.

Content area
An academic subject such as math, reading, or English.

Content Standards
Expectations about what the child should know and be able to do in different subjects and grade levels; defines expected student skills and knowledge and what schools should teach.

Conversion table
A chart used to translate test scores into different measures of performance (e.g., grade equivalents and percentile ranks).

Core curriculum
Fundamental knowledge that all students are required to learn in school.

Criteria
Guidelines or rules that are used to judge performance.
Such tests usually cover relatively small units of content and are closely related to instruction. Their scores have meaning in terms of what the student knows or can do, rather than in (or in addition to) their relation to the scores made by some norm group. Frequently, the meaning is given in terms of a cutoff score, for which people who score above that point are considered to have scored adequately (“mastered” the material), while those who score below it are thought to have inadequate scores.

Criterion-Referenced Tests
The individual’s performance is compared to an objective or performance standard, not to the performance of other students. Tests determine if skills have been mastered; do not compare a child’s performance to that of other children.

Curriculum
Instructional plan of skills, lessons, and objectives on a particular subject; may be authored by a state, textbook publisher. A teacher typically executes this plan.

Derived Score
A score to which raw scores are converted by numerical transformation (e.g., conversion of raw scores to percentile ranks or standard scores).

Diagnostic Test
A test used to diagnose, analyze or identify specific areas of weakness and strength; to determine the nature of weaknesses or deficiencies; diagnostic achievement tests are used to measure skills.

Equivalent Forms
See alternate forms.

Expected Growth
The average change in test scores that occurs over a specific time for individuals at age or grade levels.

Floor
The lowest score that a test can reliably measure.

Frequency distribution
A method of displaying test scores.

Grade equivalents
Test scores that equate a score to a particular grade level. Example: if a child scores at the average of all fifth graders tested, the child would receive a grade equivalent score of 5.0. Use with caution.

Intelligence tests
Tests that measure aptitude or intellectual capacities (Examples: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III-R) and Stanford-Binet (SB:IV).

Intelligence quotient (IQ)
Score achieved on an intelligence test that identifies learning potential.

Item
A question or exercise in a test or assessment.

Mastery Level
The cutoff score on a criterion-referenced or mastery test; people who score at or above the cutoff score are considered to have mastered the material; mastery may be an arbitrary judgment.

Mastery Test
A test that determines whether an individual has mastered a unit of instruction or skill; a test that provides information about what an individual knows, not how his or her performance compares to the norm group.

Mean
Average score; sum of individual scores divided by the total number of scores.

Median
The middle score in a distribution or set of ranked scores; the point (score) that divides a group into two equal parts; the 50th percentile. Half the scores are below the median, and half are above it.

Mode
The score or value that occurs most often in a distribution.

Modifications
Changes in the content, format, and/or administration of a test to accommodate test takers who are unable to take the test under standard test conditions. Modifications alter what the test is designed to measure or the comparability of scores.

National percentile rank
Indicates the relative standing of one child when compared with others in the same grade; percentile ranks range from a low score of 1 to a high score of 99.

Normal distribution curve
A distribution of scores used to scale a test. Normal distribution curve is a bell-shaped curve with most scores in the middle and a small number of scores at the low and high ends.

Norm-referenced tests
Standardized tests designed to compare the scores of children to scores achieved by children the same age who have taken the same test. Most standardized achievement tests are norm-referenced.

Objectives
Stated, desirable outcomes of education.

Out-of-Level Testing
Means assessing students in one grade level using versions of tests that were designed for students in other (usually lower) grade levels; may not assess the same content standards at the same levels as are assessed in the grade-level assessment.

Percentiles or percentile ranks (PR)
Percentage of scores that fall below a point on a score distribution; for example, a score at the 75th percentile indicates that 75% of students obtained that score or lower.

Performance Standards
Definitions of what a child must do to demonstrate proficiency at specific levels in content standards.

Portfolio
A collection of work that shows progress and learning; can be designed to assess progress, learning, effort, and/or achievement.

Power Test
Measures performance unaffected by speed of response; time not critical; items usually arranged in order of increasing difficulty.

Profile
A graphic representation of an individual’s scores on several tests or subtests; allows for easy identification of strengths or weaknesses across different tests or subtests.

Raw score
A raw score is the number of questions answered correctly on a test or subtest. For example, if a test has 59 items and the student gets 23 items correct, the raw score would be 23. Raw scores are converted to percentile ranks, standard scores, grade equivalent and age equivalent scores.

Reliability
The consistency with which a test measures the area being tested; describes the extent to which a test is dependable, stable, and consistent when administered to the same individuals on different occasions.

Scaled score
Scaled scores represent approximately equal units on a continuous scale; facilitate conversions to other types of scores; can use to examine change in performance over time.

Score
A specific number that results from the assessment of an individual.

Speed Test
A test in which performance is measured by the number of tasks performed in a given time. Examples are tests of typing speed and reading speed.

Standard score
Score on norm-referenced tests that are based on the bell curve and its equal distribution of scores from the average of the distribution. Standard scores are especially useful because they allow for comparison between students and comparisons of one student over time.

Standard deviation (SD)
A measure of the variability of a distribution of scores. The more the scores cluster around the mean, the smaller the standard deviation. In a normal distribution, 68% of the scores fall within one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean.

Standardization
A consistent set of procedures for designing, administering, and scoring an assessment. The purpose of standardization is to ensure that all individuals are assessed under the same conditions and are not influenced by different conditions.

Standardized tests
Tests that are uniformly developed, administered, and scored.

Standards
Statements that describe what students are expected to know and do in each grade and subject area; include content standards, performance standards, and benchmarks.

Stanine
A standard score between 1 to 9, with a mean of 5 and a standard deviation of 2. The first stanine is the lowest scoring group and the 9th stanine is the highest scoring group.

Subtest
A group of test items that measure a specific area (i.e., math calculation and reading comprehension). Several subtests make up a test.

T-Score
A standard score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. A T-score of 60 represents a score that is 1 standard deviation above the mean.

Test
A collection of questions that may be divided into subtests that measure abilities in an area or in several areas.

Test bias
The difference in test scores that is attributable to demographic variables (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and age).

Validity
The extent to which a test measures the skills it sets out to measure and the extent to which inferences and actions made on the basis of test scores are appropriate and accurate.

Z-Score 
A standard score with a mean of 0 (zero) and a standard deviation of 1.

Some of the Specific Assessments

WRMT-R: Woodcock Reading Mastery Test – Revised

GORT-4: Gray Oral Reading Test 4th Edition

KTEA-2: Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement 2nd Edition

WJ-III-ACH: Woodcock Johnson III Achievement Test 3rd ed

WJ-R: Woodcock Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised

WJ-III-COG: Woodcock Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities 3rd ed

DAS: Differential Ability Scales

SB:V Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale 5th edLeiter-R: Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised

WPPSI-III: Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence 3rd ed – 2 years 6 months to 7 years 3 months

WISC-IV: Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children 4th ed: 6 to 16 years

WAIS-III Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale 3rd ed 16 to19 years

PIAT-R: Peabody Individual Achievement Test-Revised

CTOPP: Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing

TOWL-3: Test of Written Language 3rd ed

KeyMath-R: KeyMath Diagnostic Inventory-Revised

CMAT: Comprehensive Mathematical Abilities Test

PPCT-III: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test 3rd ed

EVT: Expressive Vocabulary Test

DIBELS: Dynamic Indications of Basic Early Literacy Skills 

Special Education and Assessment Terms can be very confusing and may take years before you feel somewhat comfortable, if ever, using these terms, but at least you have a place to go to figure out what they are talking about. You may want to bookmark this page, especially if your child is going through the evaluation process, as a reference and to help prepare for the MET (Multi-disciplinary Evaluation Team) meeting.

Here are the definitions of some of the general special education terms:

Special Education Terms


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