How do I score the WJ IV™ ACH's Sentence Reading Fluency Test?

If the test is not discontinued:

Because Sentence Reading Fluency asks the examinee to mark yes or no for each item, there is a 50% chance the individual will obtain a correct response without even reading the item. To account for this, the examiner is asked to review the examinee's correct and incorrect responses within the range of the items they attempted to control for guessing. Note that the normative data are based on this procedure (i.e., number correct minus the number incorrect across the range of items attempted). As such, the examinee is not being unfairly penalized.

The examinee's raw score for Sentence Reading Fluency is obtained by doing the following: number correct - number incorrect.

Note that for this test, the examiner should not include skipped items or items that fall beyond the last item the examinee attempted during the time limit as being incorrect.

The examiner must also mark the time the examinee took to complete the items (either 3:00 minutes, or, a lower time if the examinee finished all items before the time limit was reached).

If the test is discontinued:

When Sentence Reading Fluency is discontinued, you would mark the raw score down as "0" and leave the testing time at the default time listed in the scoring platform (3:00).

Please keep in mind that when an examinee obtains a 0 raw score (as would be obtained if Sentence Reading Fluency is discontinued), the examiner needs to consider the "usability" of that score. The examiner needs to determine, using their clinical judgment and knowledge of the examinee, whether that 0 reflects a very low ability on the underlying skill being tested, or whether it is instead a reflection of the examinee not being developmentally ready to manage the task demands (as in the case of a 3-year-old who doesn’t know how to hold a pencil encountering test items that require him or her to provide written answers or markings in response to questions).

If practitioners determine that the 0 raw score is reflective of the examinee not being developmentally ready to manage the task's demands, they may opt to leave that score input box blank when entering scores in the online scoring and reporting platform. If they determine that the score reflects very low ability on the skills assessed, then the examiner can choose to score the test as 0 within the platform.