Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement – Second Edition

Overview of the KTEA-II

Dr. Alan Kaufman and Dr. Nadine Kaufman designed the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement, Second Edition (KTEA-II). The Kaufmans are part of the clinical faculty at Yale University Department of Child Study in the School of Medicine. Dr. Kaufman is a Clinical Professor of Psychology as well as a lecturer and author, who has written 17 books and more that 175 articles over clinical psychology, neuro-psychology, educational psychology, special education, and school psychology. Nadine Kaufman is a teacher of children with learning disabilities, a learning disability specialist, a school psychologist, and an associate professor.

The Kaufmans designed the KTEA-II to measure all seven areas stipulated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act 2004 (IDEIA) to test for specific learning disabilities – basic reading skills, reading comprehension, mathematics calculation, mathematics reasoning, oral expression, listening comprehension, and written expression. The KTEA-II was also designed to help clinicians identify and analyze errors. The test provides an empirical basis and uses common language to discuss results. The KTEA-II also offers a framework for instructional purposes.  The test is an individual based test and does have a brief form for older individuals. The KTEA-II has norms tables that allow the test to be scored at both grade level and age level. The test was designed to measure academic achievement of individuals from four and a half years of age to twenty-five. The KTEA-II is a curriculum-based instrument that provides both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced assessments in reading, mathematics, written language, and oral language. The testing sample is representative of the population in the areas of sex, race, and socioeconomic status.

The test gives the administrator the ability to identify where exactly the examinee is making errors, which allows the administrator to recommend specific remediation. The KTEA-II is flexible with start points for different levels at the administrator’s discretion. It is recommended that before the test is administered the administrator should be fully familiar with the test and practice administration and scoring. When meeting a new examinee, the administrator should first establish a rapport with the examinee. Encouraging the child to point is important in the administration of the KTEA-II. It is important to remember no feedback is allowed, neither are calculators.

There are some disadvantages in giving the KTEA-II. For instance, it is easy to administer, but takes much longer than reported in the book. Hand scoring is very time consuming. There are no measures to score a student over the sixth grade level or thirteen years of age on phonological awareness. As a tutor of a child over the age of thirteen and in the eighth grade, I see this as a major problem. My client has poor phonological awareness. Therefore, throughout the semester we have been building his phonological and phonemic awareness skills. If the Abilene Independent School District were to use this test to assess my client’s learning disabilities, they would not be able to pinpoint where he is having difficulties.

Most of the KTEA-II subtests or composites are deemed reliable. However, the word recognition fluency and decoding fluency consisted of only one trial. Therefore, the reliability of those subtests is questionable. The interrater reliability of the KTEA-II is high and averages around .90. The standard error of measurement varies according to grade level and subtest administered with means ranging from 2.40 to 6.42. The intercorrelation of subtests and composites vary on the test given, some subtests have near perfect correlation, while other subtests have low correlation (.40). The band intervals vary depending on the subtest given.

Another potential problem with the KTEA-II is that the error tables stop before the end of the test at some grade levels. The test authors state that the test is an excellent tool in determining gifted and talented placement. However, a student that is in the sixth grade that finishes a test at far above grade level cannot be scored. This problem also arises in the Reading Comprehension subtests. For instance, if a student starts at a sixth grade level and finishes every section, without reaching meeting the discontinue rule, it is impossible to score the student. Another problem found, is one of my examinees scored a raw score of 84 on oral expression. Unfortunately, the oral expression grade equivalent corresponding to subtest raw scores table has a 77+ at the 9.8 grade level and no raw scores from there to the 12.6 grade level. On the age equivalent corresponding to subtest raw scores, the age equivalent level stops at 19:0. However, the test is supposed to be acceptable for individuals up to the age of 25.

Finally, another disadvantage noted is that the basal and ceiling is different for many of the sections of the tests. For instance, one section may say six errors in one section of the subtest, or three errors for the entire subtest. The discontinue rule also requires the examiner to continue to the end of each subtest section even though the rule was met. Until the administrator is fully comfortable with the KTEA-II, this could cause confusion and difficulties administrating.

Assessment Results

I tested two middle school students with the KTEA-II. One child, Damien, is a seventh grade student with autism who receives special education services at Clack Middle School in Abilene, Texas. At the time of the assessment, Damien was thirteen years five months and ten days of age. The other child, Dylan, is a sixth grade student who is in Pre-Advanced Placement classes at Clack Middle School. At the time of the assessment, Dylan was twelve years five months and ten days of age. The results of the testing are as follows:

Composite / Subtest	Dylan				Damien
	Raw Score	Stand Score	%ile	Grade =	Raw Score	Stand Score	%ile	Grade =
Letter & Word Recognition	80	121	92	11.6	69	104	61	8.4
Reading Comprehension	66	106	66	8.6	60	94	34	6.1
Reading Composite	-	115	84	-	-	99	47	-
Math Concepts & Apps	55	93	32	5.5	65	103	58	8.8
Math Computation	28	86	18	4.7	23	42	<0.1	4.0
Math Composite	-	76	5	-	-	71	3	-
Written Expression	193	107	68	9.0	188	97	42	6.8
Spelling	53	118	88	11.2	50	108	70	9.2
Written Language Comp.	-	117	87	-	-	103	58	-
Listening Comprehension	45	115	84	7.8	21	76	5	1.7
Oral Expression	84	135	99	12.6	50	62	1	1.3
Oral Language Composite	-	131	98	-	-	66	1	-
Comprehensive Achievement Composite	-	100	50	-	-	82	12	-
Phonological Awareness	24	106	89.5	6.8	23	105	63	6.8
Nonsense Word Decoding	45	134	98	12.6	45	127	96	12.2

The test results show that Dylan is at grade-level with his phonological awareness. Dylan is above grade-level in nonsense word decoding, oral expression, listening comprehension, spelling, written expression, reading comprehension, and letter and word recognition. Dylan is below grade-level in math concepts and applications (4.7) as well as math computations (4.7). Dylan’s percentile scores in math are as follows – 32 for math concepts and applications, 18 for math computations, and the overall composite score placed Dylan in the 5^th percentile. Therefore, it is recommended that Dylan be further assessed in math to determine intervention strategies to be used.  Dylan’s overall comprehensive achievement composite places him at the 50^th percentile for his grade level.

In language, Dylan’s strengths are as follows: consonant blends, consonant digraphs, r-controlled vowels, silent letter, hard/soft c g s, initial/final sound, misordered sounds. Dylan showed weakness in the following: wrong vowel, short vowel, prefix/word beginning, unpredictable patterns, and insertion/omission. In reading and listening comprehension, Dylan was strong in literal comprehension and average in inferential comprehension. Dylan was strong in the task, structure, and capitalization areas of expression and average at word form, word meaning, and punctuation. Dylan was strong on all skills dealing with phonological awareness. the math skills that Dylan showed strengths in were addition, subtraction, regrouping, and subtracting smaller from larger. Dylan’s math computation skills were weak in the following areas: multiplication, division, fraction, wrong operation, and fact or computation. Dylan was not at an average level on any of the skill levels. Dylan’s math concepts and applications skills were strong in addition, subtraction, multiplication, geometry, measurement, and multi-step problems. Dylan only showed to be weak in one area – fractions. Dylan was average in the following skill categories: number concepts, division, tables and graphs, and time and money. Dylan completed most of the tests given because he did not meet the criteria for the discontinue rule. However, the tables in the book did not go high enough to reflect his true scores for his grade-level.

The KTEA-II results for Damien show that he is not at grade-level in any area tested. However, the results show Damien is above grade level in letter and word recognition, math concepts and applications, spelling, and nonsense word decoding. Damien is below grade level in the areas of reading comprehension, math computation, written expression, listening comprehension, and oral expression. Damien was below 50^th percentile in the following areas – reading comprehension, which brought his reading composite down; math computation, which placed him at the 3^rd percentile; written expression; and listening comprehension and oral expression.   Damien’s overall comprehensive achievement composite has placed him in the 12^th percentile. It is recommended Damien continue receiving special education services. It is important to note that most of Damien’s subtest scores are typical for a student with autism. He scored above average on the letter and word recognition but below average on reading comprehension, thus placing Damien below average on the reading composite. On the math composite, Damien is above average on the math concepts and applications but far below average on the math computation (<0.1), thus placing him in the 3^rd percentile on the math composite. Similarly Damien was well above average in spelling but below average on written expression. However, the overall written language composite is slightly above average. On the oral language composite, Damien is in the 1^st percentile for his grade-level. Damien was placed at the 1^st percentile in oral expression and 5^th percentile in listening comprehension. Damien’s phonological awareness is at grade-level and his nonsense word decoding is at the 12.2 grade-level, placing him far above his peers.

In language, Damien showed the strengths in the following skill categories: initial blend, medial/final blend, consonant digraphs, short vowels, long vowels, vowel team/diphthong, r-controlled vowels, prefix/word beginning and suffix/inflection, initial/final sound, and misordered sounds. The categories Damien was weak in are as follows: single/double consonant, consonant blend, wrong vowel, silent letter, prefix/word beginning, suffix/inflection, hard/soft c g s, and unpredictable pattern. It is important to note that Damien struggled with any word that did not follow phonological awareness rules. Damien’s comprehension skills were weak in both literal and inferential categories. Damien’s expression skills were strong in structure and word form. he was average with his capitalization and punctuation skills. Damien was weak in task skills in both oral and written expression. Damien was given a picture of a female reporter and her cameraman in the rain. In the background of the picture there are firefighters fighting a fire in the building. Damien was told to write a sentence using the word despite about the picture. Damien’s sentence was as follows: “Despite your camera having cobwebs on it, you cleaned the screen well.” Similarly, Damien was told that he is an intern at a news station. The news reporter is about to go on air and cannot find her script. Damien was told to write a question asking where the script is without using the word “where.” Damien wrote the following: “Did you flush her paper down the toilet for fame?”

Damien was assessed in math computations. His skill levels in addition and regrouping addition were strong. However, his skill levels were weak in subtraction, multiplication, division, fraction, wrong operation, fact or computation, regrouping: subtraction, subtract smaller from larger, and equivalent fraction/common denominator. Damien was not at an average skill level with any of the categories. With math concepts and applications Damien has strengths in addition, subtraction, and measurement. Damien was average with division, geometry, fractions, advanced operations, and multi-step problems. Damien showed weaknesses in the following skill categories: number concepts, multiplication, tables and graphs, time and money, decimals and percents, data investigation, and word problems. The math results show that Damien can often set the problem up and tell how it should be worked; however, he does not have the skills to complete the problem and provide the correct answers. Therefore, it is recommended that Damien continue the use of a calculator as an accommodation as stated in his Individualized Educational Program (IEP).

Overall, I found the testing experience enjoyable. The KTEA-II was simple to administer and simple to score, despite the disadvantages. However, due to my findings and the disadvantages listed, I would not recommend the KTEA-II for gifted and talented placement. The norms tables do not give a true score for students who complete beyond what they should for their grade and age levels. Hand scoring of the KTEA-II is simple, but time consuming. Therefore, I recommend any person administering the KTEA-II to use the computer-scoring instrument. I would also recommend the use of the KTEA-II for professionals assessing students with learning disabilities. The KTEA-II could be an effective tool for Admissions, Review and Dismissal (ARD) teams when determining goals and objectives for an IEP. The KTEA-II effectively allows instructors and faculty to see exactly what the student is struggling with.