SPED 311 Assessment Review Project

Name: Ashlyn Cummings

Date: 4/20/16

School/Setting: SFA Middle School/ Life Skills

How does this project contribute to your knowledge about assessment?

This project has helped me to understand why it is important to know whether or not a

test you are conducting on a student is appropriate. The usefulness of the research I conducted

allowed me to understand how easy it is to misinterpret whether a test is good just based upon

face-value. The reviews, manual, normative data, reliability, and validity all play a major role in

figuring out whether or not a test is an effective test to use. This information was something I

definitely took away from this project. My understanding now of what makes a good test has

increased tremendously, to where I know now that I can make wise decisions on what tests I use

for my future students.

On my honor, as an Aggie, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this
academic work.

Signature____________________________________________
 Practical Elements

Description of Test:

The Kaufman Functional Academic Skills Test (K-FAST) is for ages 15 to 85 years of

age. The test is published by American Guidance Service Incorporation in 1994, and has been

currently retired. The cost of the K-FAST test is around $125.00 dollars. The K-FAST included

an test manual, easel, and protocol. The administration of the test is around 15 to 25 minutes,

and has two subtests. The subtests are in both reading and arithmetic. The K-FAST is used to

help in comprehension measures of intelligence. This particular test is in common with many

intelligence, achievement, and adaptive behavior tests.

Description of test manuals:

The test manuals that were provided show were very easy to understand and operate. The

testing manuals shared that the test itself was a well normed measure of both functional and

academic achievement behavior in students. The manuals is broken down by chapters with

subheadings, with a table of contents. The manual discusses both reliability and validity scores.

The test manuals is full of useful information that is helpful to not only the person who is

administering the test, but also the teachers who will use the information to help gage student

progress. There was complete information except in the area of the norms. The norms were

missing several key areas in the demographic of the United States, such as the Southwest or East

regions. They did do a background check on the parents and those of different ethnic groups. The

aspect of the students parents were based upon educational level, ethnic group, and finally

gender.
Description of test materials:

The test materials included a flipbook that used pictures and word problems to test both

functional and academic achievement. The testing materials also included a protocol that is used

to record the answer of the students. The directions given in the testing materials were short and

only one sentence with a 1 or 0 rating scale. The durability of the materials is well made and

seems to last for a while. The protocol is not as helpful for the fact that the surface is slippery and

is not easy to write on. The flipbook on the other hand does not stand up by itself which makes it

a little harder on the person who is administrating the test. The overall appeal of the test is easy

enough for the some students, but the questions may not be generalized for multiple different

audiences.

Description of test protocols:

The protocol is the answer sheet that the administrator uses to score the student while

giving the test. The protocol for the K-FAST is light in weight and small. The ease of handling

the object is easy since it is thin, but is hard to right on. The outside of the protocol is slippery

and is not easy to write on. This causes a problem for when the administrator is trying to write

down student responses and it smudges. Other than this the ease of handling the protocol is very

easy where the administrator will only write a 1 or a 0 depending upon student response. The test

protocol is less durable because there is a gloss over it.

Description of test items:

The test items are pictures or words that are shown to the students. They will be either

asked to write the answer or orally state it. The administration process is fairly easy with short

one sentence directions. The scoring is very simple as well. The administrator either chooses a 1
or a 0. For the student to complete a 1 a student must complete all items on the page. The items

for the ages that it is administered too was appropriate. The test items did consist of pictorial

representations to test the students functional academic skills. The test did have approximately

25 items in the arithmetic subtest, and 29 items in the reading subtest. Some of the items that

consisted in the reading subtest were signs, pictorial representations, newspaper articles, etc. The

arithmetic portion of the test consisted of items such as counting, graphs, grocery shopping, etc.

Technical Evaluation

Norms:

The K-FAST was based upon the United States Census took the norms in 1988. The

norms were based upon random sampling across the United States from ages 15 to 85 years and

above. According to the review conducted by Steven R. Shaw, he found that the testing involved

2600 participants from 27 states. They took norms based upon age group, geographic,

socioeconomic status of parent educational level, race ethnic group, and gender. The norms

however did exclude those who were Alaskan and Hawaiian. They focused on four major

regions: Northeast, Northwest, South, and West. From the presented norms, they did not discuss

anything about special education and Texas representation. The review conducted by Steven R.

Shaw shared that there was an overrepresentation of the North Central and South regions, and an

underrepresentation in the Northeast and West (1994). This however is not a main concern to the

overall effectiveness of the test, but plays a big role due to the fact that states such as Florida

have a higher senior population. This information is important to the test since it does have a

target audience of those who are from ages 15 to 85 years of age.

Reliability:
 The reliability was based upon test-retest reliability. They administered the test twice to

116 normal adolescents and adults. They had a range from 6-94 days with a mean of 33 days and

a median of 31 days. The sample ranges from ages 15 to 91 years of age. The coefficient for the

subtest are in the mid to high .80 and values is .91. These values reflect adequate test-retest

reliability and for the subtest and composite scores. The scores were broken down into three data

points in reading, arithmetic, and composite. Considering the standard errors of measurement is

inversely related to reliability coefficients the higher the reliability coefficient the smaller the

SEM. The composite scores has a mean SEM of about 4 points, and reading and arithmetic each

have a mean SEM of 5 points. The examiners were also encouraged to band standard scores with

scores of 90 or 95 percent confidence intervals which offer a wider margin of error than the 68

percent afforded by the SEM.

Validity:

The validity of the K-FAST was seen by comparing the test to other test. They used this

correlation between the K-FAST and other test such as the K-BIT, K-Snap, WAIS-R, etc. the

groups were controlled of normal individuals and it discuss a little of neurological problems.

The ceiling of the validity is 4 consecutive 0s. The validity for the paper was very hard to find.

There were no numerical representations of the effectiveness of the assessment, but from what

was presented, the assessment included concurrent validity, content validity, clinical validity,

construct validity, and finally criterion-related validity. Concurrent validity were conducted on

persons who have reading disabilities, mental retardation, severe depression, Alzheimers

disease, and neurological impairments (Shaw, 1994). According to the review conducted by

Steven R. Shaw, Clinical validity is found by discussing consultants examination of adaptive

inventories and the selection of concepts and items (1994). Construct validity was determined
by establishing reading and mathematics tasks that are applied to daily situations (1994). Finally

criterion- related validity is conducted through studies and analysis that was carried out through

the development of the K-FAST. The validity in the manual was very hard to find which made it

difficult to trust whether or not the validity was stable. In the review conducted by Shaw he was

able to find more information by further research to demonstrate that the K-FAST was indeed

successful

Journal Review #1: Mental Measurements Yearbook:

The review conducted by Steven R. Shaw, described the course materials and purpose of

the test, as well as providing an overview of the tests reliability and validity. Shaw stated that the

test was both easy and quick to administer, as well as not timed (1994?). The testing materials of

the easel and test records are easy to follow and large enough for people to read. Shaw also

mentioned that for the administrators of the test, this should be fairly easy to administer to

students if the proper training and experience on scoring standardized tests (1994?). Regarding

the normative data that was presented by the K-Fast, Shaw found that the test had fairly good

normative data for ethnicity groups, SES, gender, and education (1994?). Although the normative

data was good for these areas, there was a lack in geographic representations. The norms showed

an underrepresentations in the regions such as Northeast and West (Shaw, 1994). There was also

an overrepresentation of the North central and south regions of the United States. Shaw did

mention that usually the geographic regions are not a major factor in how affective a test may be.

Although true, for the purposes of this test, since the K-Fast was not tested in states such as

Arizona and Florida where there is a higher number of senior populations, the norms for those

who are 65+ may not be a good representation of the seniors in the United States (1994?).
 Reliability data that was discussed in this review found this test to be very reliable. Shaw

shared how the test used both internal consistency reliability, and test-retest reliability (1994).

The range of internal consistency for the test was .83-.94. Shaw also found the reliability for

test-retest intervals, which were .84 for Arithmetic, .88 for Reading, and .91 for the Composite

scores. Shaw did mention that the manual used standard errors of measurement for the

arithmetic portion of the test, which helped to make it easier to interpret the test as well as

helping the administrators avoid test abuse (1994). The reviewer discussed how the validity of

the K-FAST was found in concurrent validity, clinical validity, construct validity, and criterion-

related validity. Shaw mentioned in his review that the manual presented many different ways to

help support the validity of the test (1994). Overall, Shaws review shared that the K-FAST was a

very good test that should be used as a supplemental aid to other assessments (1994). His final

remarks regarding the test were focused on the fact that the test was a good starting place for

administrators, but to be more effective with the process he would suggest using the CASAS

which has an adult-oriented functional assessment system focus. This way the test would have a

more well-rounded approach to truly testing functional behavioral analysis.

Journal Article #2:

The article, Improvement in Academic Screening Instruments? A Concurrent Validity

Investigation of the K-FAST, MBA, and WRAT-3, is by Dawn P. Flanagan and colleges. The

purpose of the article was to show the extent to which score from the WRAT-3, K-FAST, and

MBA are comparable in degree of correlation or concurrent validity and mean scores (Flanagan,

1997). The research was conducted on 62 adult volunteers that ranged from 19 to 45 years of

age. The K-FAST test was made to measure the academic skills by problems that people

encounter every day (1997). The Woodcock-McGrew-Werder Mini-Battery of Achievement

(MBA) focuses on the measurement of four areas: reading, writing, mathematics, and factual

knowledge, that only takes 25 to 30 minutes. The last test that this information was compared to

was the Wide Range Achievement Test-3 or the WRAT-3. The WRAT-3 focuses on three

academic skills: reading, spelling, and arithmetic. The correlation between the three test is that

they all focus on some kind of reading and arithmetic. The results of the findings showed that

there were no significant correlations between the three test. The focus of the MBA and WRAT-3

were more on reading and mathematics, where as the K-FAST measured some commonalities

but was ultimately focused on functional daily living skills (1997). Flanagan stated that the K-

FAST and/or MBA would be a suitable replacement of the WRAT-3 in regards to general

achievement screening (1997). Overall, the findings in this article shared that the K-FAST does

have a lot of potential in helping students determine their functional academic skills in

comparison to the other two tests.