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  • Early Childhood

WJ IV Tests of Early Cognitive and Academic Development (ECAD®)

Overview
Scoring and Reporting
Additional Resources
Authors’ Hub
  • Overview

    Flexible Testing to Suit a Variety of Needs

    With its combination of unique new material, age-appropriate artwork, and early-form content adapted from trusted WJ IV tests, ECAD provides a dynamic way for examiners to assess emerging cognitive abilities and academic skills in young children and children with cognitive delays using contemporary, theory-based measures.

    ECAD’s assessment clusters can be completed individually or in any combination. Plus, some tests provide information applicable to multiple clusters, providing examiners with even more options for test interpretation.

    WJ ECAD Chart

    ECAD®, WIIIP® (WJ IV Interpretation and Instructional Interventions Program™ and Woodcock Interpretation and Instructional Interventions Program™), WJ IV™, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt™, and HMH® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 

  • Scoring and Reporting

    ECAD Scoring & Reporting

    To determine the presence and severity of cognitive delays, ECAD offers percent delay, standard deviation delay, and months delay scores - helping assessors in many states meet IDEA eligibility requirements.

    Scoring and reporting for ECAD is completed through the free WJ Online Scoring and Reporting system, a secure, web-based environment accessible from any computer with an Internet connection. Plus, when paired with the WJ IV Interpretation and Instructional Interventions Program™ (WIIIP®)*, ECAD reports provide easy-to-implement intervention suggestions that target specific cognitive and academic delays.

    The following reports are available for ECAD in the WJ Online Scoring and Reporting System:

    • Score Report: This report provides age-equivalent (AE) scores (including difficulty levels or ranges, relative proficiency index (RPI), standard score or percentile rank for a single examinee.
    • Parent Report: This report describes the clusters or tests administered and provides a profile of the examinee's norm-based or criterion-referenced based proficiency when compared with others in the same age nationally. This report is available in English and Spanish.
    • Profile Report: This report provides a graphical description of the examinee's performance using the standard score confidence band and percentile rank (PR).
    • Comprehensive Report: Examiners with a WIIIP subscription can create a Comprehensive Report using ECAD scores.

    About the WJ Online Scoring and Reporting System

    Houghton Mifflin Harcourt provides web-based scoring and reporting for all Woodcock-Johnson® Fourth Edition (WJ IV™) assessments, including ECAD®.

    Accessible for free with a paper record form purchase, the WJ Online Scoring and Reporting System offers a powerful solution that provides:

    • Secure, 24/7 access from any computer with an Internet connection
    • Accurate and reliable results delivered in real time through robust reports
    • 90 days to edit committed test records
    • Deletion and restoration of test records

    ECAD®, WJ IV™, Woodcock-Johnson®, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt™, and HMH® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    *WIIIP available through a separate subscription.

  • Additional Resources

    ASB #4: Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Early Cognitive and Academic Development: Overview and Technical Abstract

    This bulletin provides an overview of the Woodcock-Johnson® IV Tests of Early Cognitive and Academic Development (ECAD®; Schrank, McGrew & Mather, 2015) and highlights important technical aspects of ECAD that establish its validity for measuring emergent cognitive and expressive language abilities and early academic skills.

    Information in this bulletin is abstracted from the Woodcock-Johnson IV Tests of Early Cognitive and Academic Development Comprehensive Manual (Wendling, Mather, LaForte, McGrew & Schrank, 2015). Additionally, because ECAD was developed and normed simultaneously with the Woodcock-Johnson IV (WJ IV;Schrank, McGrew & Mather, 2014a), much of the technical information relevant to the WJ IV also applies to ECAD tests.

    Readers who are interested in more detailed information should consult the Woodcock-Johnson IV Technical Manual (McGrew, LaForte & Schrank, 2014).

    MindHub is a registered trademark of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP) and Interactive Metronome. ECAD®, WJ IV™, Woodcock-Johnson®, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt™, and HMH® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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  • Authors’ Hub
    Introducing the authors for ECAD®!

    Fredrick A. Schrank - Program Author

    Fredrick A. (Fred) Schrank guided the development of Woodcock-Johnson® IV (WJ IV™) as the author team leader. He managed the test development company Measurement Learning Consultants (MLC) and provided stewardship to the Woodcock-Muñoz Foundation.

    Dr. Schrank is a licensed psychologist (Washington) and a board certified specialist in school psychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP). He worked in the Dodgeville, North Fond du Lac, and De Forest (Wisconsin) school districts before earning a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Dr. Schrank then taught at Truman State University (Missouri) and the University of Puget Sound (Washington) prior to a 25-year career devoted almost exclusively to the development and publication of the Woodcock-Johnson family of tests. In service to professional psychology, he has been an oral examiner for the American Board of School Psychology (ABSP) and president of the American Academy of School Psychology (AASP). Dr. Schrank was instrumental in the development of the organizational and interpretive plan for WJ IV, including the Woodcock-Johnson online scoring and reporting program.

    Fredrick A. Schrank - Author Video

    Watch an Introductory WJ IV Webinar hosted by Author Fred Schrank

    Nancy Mather - Program Author

    Nancy Mather is a Professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Disability and Psychoeducational Studies. She holds an MA in Behavior Disorders and a PhD from the University of Arizona in Special Education and Learning Disabilities. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship under the mentorship of Dr. Samuel Kirk at the University of Arizona.

    Dr. Mather assisted Dr. Richard Woodcock with several aspects of test development for the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery—Revised (WJ-R®), including coauthoring the Examiner’s Manuals for WJ-R Tests of Cognitive Ability and Achievement. She has been a coauthor of both Woodcock-Johnson III (WJ III™) and the WJ IV and has coauthored two books on the interpretation and application of the WJ III and WJ IV—Essentials of WJ IV Tests of Achievement and Woodcock-Johnson IV: Reports, Recommendations, and Strategies.

    She has served as a learning disabilities teacher, a diagnostician, a university professor, and an educational consultant. Dr. Mather conducts research in the areas of reading and writing development. She has published numerous articles, conducts workshops on assessment and instruction both nationally and internationally, and has coauthored several books linking assessment and intervention, including Learning Disabilities and Challenging Behaviors: A Guide to Intervention and Classroom Management (3rd ed.), Essentials of Assessment Report Writing, Essentials of Evidence-Based Academic Interventions, Writing Assessment and Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities, and Essentials of Dyslexia: Assessment and Intervention.

    Nancy Mather - Author Video

    Kevin S. McGrew - Program Author

    Kevin S. McGrew is Director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics (IAP), LLC, a private research and consulting organization he established in 1998. He was the Research Director of the Woodcock-Muñoz Foundation from 2005 to 2014. He is also a Visiting Lecturer in Educational Psychology (School Psychology Program) at the University of Minnesota and Director of Research for Interactive Metronome, a neurotechnology and rehabilitation company. Since 2014 he has been the intelligence theory and testing consultant to the Dharma Bermakna Foundation and the Universatas Gadjah Mada (UGM) for the development of the Indonesian AJT Cognitive Assessment Development Project. He holds a PhD in Educational Psychology (Special Education) from the University of Minnesota, and an MS in School Psychology and a BA in Psychology from Minnesota State University—Moorhead.

    Dr. McGrew was a practicing school psychologist for 12 years in Iowa and Minnesota. As a school psychologist he provided assessment services from preschool through high school. From 1989 to 2000, he was a Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota. He has served as a measurement consultant to a number of psychological test publishers, national research studies, and organizations.

    He has authored numerous publications and made state, national, and international presentations in his primary areas of research interest in human intelligence, intellectual assessment, personal competence, applied psychometrics, and the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory of cognitive abilities. He is an active distributor of theoretical and research information via three professional blogs and The MindHub® web portal.

    Dr. McGrew was the primary measurement consultant for the WJ-R and served in the same capacity as coauthor of the Mini-Battery of Achievement (MBA), Sharpe-McNear-McGrew Braille Assessment Inventory (BAI), WJ III, Woodcock-Johnson Diagnostic Supplement to the Tests of Cognitive Abilities, Batería III Woodcock-Muñoz®(Bateria III), Woodcock-Johnson III Normative Update (WJ III NU®), Woodcock-Johnson III—Australian Adaptation, and Woodcock-Johnson IV. He was also the psychometric and statistical consultant for the development of the Children’s Psychological Processes Scale.

    Kevin S. McGrew - Author Video

    ECAD®, WIIIP® (WJ IV Interpretation and Instructional Interventions Program™ and Woodcock Interpretation and Instructional Interventions Program™), WJ III™, WJ IV™, WJ-R®, Woodcock-Johnson®, Batería III Woodcock-Muñoz®, WJ III NU® (WJ III Normative Update), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt™, and HMH® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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