The Pros And Cons Of Intelligence Testing

When one speaks of intelligence or how bright another person is, the often quoted figure is the IQ or intelligence quotient. It is the most often used standard of how smart a person is. This paper shall look at what intelligence tests measure, how the IQ tests measure intelligence and interrogate their history. It shall then apply the tests to school policy and hence evaluate their validity.

     Since the development of the intelligence quotient, schools in every part of the world have been using the IQ test to categorize millions of students into three groups. These three groups, which are the gifted, the average, and the retarded, are falsifications that perpetuate in our world culture and cause many gifted students to be deemed retarded and vice a versa. Why then is the IQ test so heavily relied on in our school systems? For schools the answer is simple, an I.Q. test is a reliable predictor of a students later performance in academics. This answer is relatively true, but where the I.Q. test falls extremely short is with testing the multiple

Sir Francis Galton (1869, 1883) quantified traits that were assumed to be correlated, and developed the first comprehensive test of intelligence. By the end of the 19th century, the foundation was laid for modern day intelligence testing (Wicket, 1998). In 1905, the French psychologist Alfred Binet published the first modern intelligence test to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum (Neiser, et al. 1996). Shortly thereafter in 1908 and 1911, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon published revisions of the Binet intelligence test (Wicket). The mental age concept was adopted to express the results in adequate units. The concept is based on an individual’s performance in comparison to the average performance of individuals in a specific chronological age group (Kaplin, & Saccuzzo).

The main purpose of addressing the issue is to prove IQ scored is biased and spurious .Various articles and research papers prove that IQ scores fail to reflect a person’s intelligence. This top-ic is important because due to flawed IQ scores every year, many students are assigned to the wrong class, for example an intelligent student with a low IQ score is assigned to easier class and a student with a high IQ score who may not be intelligent in a particular field is assigned to a higher level class which can be difficult for that student. IQ Tests need to be redesigned to re-pair this major flaw in our academic system

Intelligence quotient-also known as IQ-is the measure of the mind's ability to retain and interpret analytical facts. Educational institutes are largely conditioned to determine what the IQ score of a person is through standardized testing. These forms of testing are commonly focused on a person’s ability in short-term memory, analytical thinking, mathematical ability and spatial recognition. The standardized testing used in educational institute only accounts for a certain percentage of their actual IQ level. A person’s IQ proves how intelligent a person is, respective to the many forms of of acquiring knowledge-work experience, project experience, using the internet. The projection an educational institute suggests on a resume for a job screening, is that of the person's academic ability within the general demographic of persons with a similar IQ level-determined by a form of standardized testing. There are many assumptions that this statement suggestions. This revolves around the notion that individuals are attending institutes that respectively correlate to their

“Blacks still score below 75 percent of American whites on most standardized tests” (Jencks and Phillips). The belief that intelligence and aptitude are innate seems to be especially important in discussions of racial differences (Jencks and Phillips 6). White Americans score closer on IQ tests to other white populations across the globe than to the worldwide black average (Saletan 1). An important question that may come to mind is whether intelligence tests biased. Intelligence tests are likely to be culturally biased when a standardized test reflects what is learned through experience in a culture that does not regard to another race as highly (Young). For instance, if a standardized test result represented an ingroup preference exclusively than it may only measure a specific part of intelligence; for example the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, WAIS, is more verbal while the Raven's Progressive Matrices, RPM, is more visual (Young). This may cause a majority of individuals with autism to do better on the RPM due to autistic students connecting with images rather than words. Young has stated that intelligence tests that only focus on certain neurological criterias and are not well indicators of intelligence due to it not equally indicating all types of intellect. Yet a majority of psychologists now agree that intelligence tests measure developed

According to Nesbitt (2005), other researchers misrepresented standardized tests by associating intellect with heritability. IQ testing to dissimilar cultural groups/people with disability opposes questions as to what IQ really measures. According to Arnold et al (2011), IQ testing generates a floor effect when pertained to people with lower IQ's. Example, in a practice IQ scores beneath a definite cut-off are still being utilized to conclude and categorize an individual’s intelligent disability. An alternative explanation to this matter would be to evaluate people from dissimilar culture groups and or those with mental retardation and incapacities with more than standardized tests. As for the natural bias for the mentally retarded, individuals should be assesses based on their needs, and the atmosphere influenced within their lives.

Intelligence testing is rather arbitrary as people can have many kinds of intelligence strengths and it's difficult to assign a measure of intelligence without flaws in the system. Though there are attempts at keeping standardization and norms to keep results unbiased and consistent there are still failings, which the most viable of those failings is that with intelligence testing and capital punishment such as the case of Daryl Atkins. Atkins was tested at an intelligence quotient of 59, which is about half the average score of 100 ("Module 7.5: Measures of Intelligence"., n.d.). The original jury had sentenced a mentally impaired man to death until it was taken to the Supreme Court where they ruled that it would be a cruel and unusual punishment,

The major findings of that report indicated that the effects of these tests on social classes were ‘strong and consistent’ and that while ‘the upper respondent is more likely to favor the use of tests than the lower class respondent,’ the lower class respondent is more likely to see intelligence tests measuring inborn intelligence (Garrison).

Intelligence tests are inaccurate to measures true ability of a person because genes affect how a person responds to their surroundings, the tests cannot measure the person biological makeup or his true potential for being “smart”.

In 1904, a French psychologist (Alfred Binet) created the first intelligence test in order to help the French Ministry of Education segregate children that may have difficulty learning in a regular classroom. At that time, he did not know that his test would be the basis for IQ tests administered over 100 years later. He has a Stanford University psychologist, Lewis Terman, to thank for expanding his work and creating the Stanford-Binet intelligence test that took root in the United States in 1916 and is still popular today. However, along with its popularity came criticism. Critics see the current version of the Stanford - Binet test and other intelligence tests, despite attempts to make them culturally fair, as limiting to individuals who are not from the major social norm. They claim that cultural bias in test questions is why certain races do not perform as well as others on the test.

Interest in intelligence dates back thousands of years. But it wasn't until psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned to identify French students who needed educational assistance that the first IQ (intelligent quotient) test was born. The problem found by early psychologists was not in defining intelligence but rather measuring intelligence. The test that Binet and Simon divised early in the century distinguished between fast and slow learner and also between children of different age groups. Then Lewis Terman compared mental age and chronological age to assess intelligence and the result is called an intelligence quotient. These early tests worked well with children but had limitations as age increased. David Weschsler developed a test for adults. In fact, he designed several tests including the WAUS-IV (for adults), the WISC-IV (for children), and WPPSI-IV (for pre-school). Today the use of these tests are more prevalent than the Stanford-Binet tests (Ciccarelli & White, 2015, p. 277). On the early intelligence tests in the beginning of the 20th-century, immigrants were given tests to enter the United States. The problem lies in the fact that most immigrants did not speak the English language. There are many today who criticize standardized tests by saying they are culturally and racially biased.

That being said, we all have the responsibility to understand that intelligence testing is important, but is not always the only option for at risk children in today’s schools. Also, when testing children we must always look at all factors, including both nature and nurture risk factors. We need to be all encompassing as professionals and utilize a interdisciplinary approach when working with clients/students. Finally, we must keep in mind that our goal is to assist and educate all helping professionals involved, such as school psychologist, school counselors, teachers, counselors, parents, and of course the students to ensure the best possible care for these

The IQ test was one of the first standardized tests introduced in this country. Its purpose was to be used by the military to efficiently place the influx of soldiers into positions, due to the draft during WWI. The purpose of the exam was to gauge a person’s skill set and their abilities in order to place them in a category, in this case, a line of work. While the test did what it set out to do, but it favored better for middle to upper class white males. Ivy league educational institutions took notice of the results and developed entrance exams to universities that would discriminate specifically against Jews, so they would not be accepted. Since the early 1900’s, standardized testing has always discriminated against certain groups, and over

According to Aiken (2003b), any test of ability (general intelligence, special abilities, achievement) actually assesses what people have achieved. Specifically, the items on intelligence and special abilities tests require test takers to manifest some accomplishment, just like those on achievement tests. Educational achievement tests often serve as reliable predictors of school marks compared to tests of intelligence and special abilities, but still cannot completely replace them. It is notable to mention that the individual’s attainment measured by general intelligence tests are indeed broader and the products of less formal and usually less recent learning experiences compared to the ones measured by standardized achievement tests (Aiken, 2003c). Cohen et al. (2013b) regarded that the