Waterford Assessments of Core Skills™ (WACS), an adaptive reading assessment for pre-Kindergarten to second grade students, is designed to assess the following reading skill areas: letter names, letter sounds, initial sounds, blending, segmenting, real words, sight words, nonwords, vocabulary, and listening and reading comprehension.
The major strength of WACS is its adaptive sequencing technology. As children correctly answer questions within a content area, the questions’ difficulty level will increase up to a fourth-grade level. If a child fails to answer questions correctly within a content area, he or she will receive less difficult questions in order to identify the area in which more instruction and practice is needed. In this way, WACS can indicate the full range of a child’s capabilities rather than just providing a satisfactory or unsatisfactory assessment, thereby providing invaluable information about a child’s needs, abilities, and strengths. In addition, because the test adapts to the child’s input, a significant level of detailed information can be gleaned in one testing session, thereby reducing both testing time and the stress associated with multiple testing sessions. WACS designers have developed 4 times the number of items on a typical elementary-school–level assessment: 30% at the beginner level; 40% at the intermediate level; and 30% at the advanced level for each grade per content area.
WACS is based on nationally recognized guidelines for reading assessment and scientific research, including the guidelines presented in the National Reading Panel’s report, “Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-Based Assessment of the Scientific Literature on Reading and Its Implications for Reading Instruction,” which established guidelines for educators, curriculum developers, school administrators, and assessment content designers.
