<p>Welcome to CC Canuckguy!!! 
:)</p>
<p>Yep…that looks like what she must have used.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link! ~berurah</p>
<p>Unfortunately I don’t have time to read all the posts in this thread-- but the correlation between “intelligence” (which can be measured in several ways-- and the WISC- IV by the way, is for approx ages 6-16-- The WAIS- III is for adults) and professional success is not a strong one. </p>
<p>As for use if standardized testing in placement in gifted programs, there is a lot of variation in what is used to determine this. In my state they will no longer accept private psych. evals, as they feel these are potentially biased. They use a combination of standardized tests for “mental ability, achievement, creativity and motivation”. Huh??? They also allow for teacher reccs for the latter two, ostensibly to minimize and potential discriminatory concerns. So, as you see, this is a far from uniform measure.</p>
<p>
BERURAH. Unless I am very much mistaken, you were not in attendance at the lesson refered to above. It is possible for students to “hear” what is not said - and it is not always possible for teachers to control this. Just think about times when you have misunderstood information, or misinterpreted information. If you had been sitting in the classroom, then perhaps you would have heard something different. From your quote above, your daughter reported that the teacher was helping the children understand “Flowers for Algernon” by discussing IQ scores. Is it possible that your daughter interpreted the factual information (“the majority of doctors IQ’s fall into the gifted range”), to mean that if SHE is not “gifted”, she can’t be a doctor? This is the part of the statement
that might have been your daughter’s misinterpretation. Or maybe not. But since you weren’t there, and you are dealing with second-hand information, it is hard to know if the teacher really did something outrageously wrong - or if she just was misunderstood by your daughter.<br>
And, BTW, kindergarten teacher here. NMF. There are teachers out there with different levels of IQ. Anecdotally - and not scientifically speaking - the ones that stay in teaching and do well have a high EQ, excellent organization skills, a good sense of humor, and strong moral and work ethics. I’d take that over high IQ’s for my kid’s teachers any day.</p>
<p>People have not become more gifted over the last 45 years, so exactly what did anybody do in our era who was gifted but could not avail themselves of gifted education…Every particularly clever person I knew in childhood had a drive in a particular academic direction which they explored and nurtured. Their parents, happy to have a clever child but not indoctrinated in the literature of the current era, encouraged this by giving them music lessons and taking them to museums or whatever. Somehow they turned out fairly well. </p>
<p>Until there is a controlled study demonstrating that barring any other factors (and I include pushy parents who want to raise hot house flowers in this category-- believe me there were fewer of these 45 years ago) that gifted kids (let me clarify, gifted kids who are not twice exceptional that is) have substantially better social, emotional and academic outcomes when provided with ‘gifted education’ services, I will withhold judgement on the absolute necessity of these services…</p>
<p>I believe that the kids who most benefit from gifted ed are those who are twice exceptional, in fact-- gifted by IQ measure, but with other learning, emotional or social variations which render them asynchronous in the demonstration of their intellect-- hence needing special attention. </p>
<p>My children grew up in a school system with no gifted education whatsoever, I know for a fact that they and many of their peers would have qualified for these services in the US…and I can detect absolutely no negative impact of the lack of ‘gifted ed’ on any aspect of their development. What took the place? Initiative, leadership, creativity, effort in areas in which they were not gifted, playfulness, spontaneity-- and wonderful teachers who got great enjoyment out of having classes with really clever students. Oh, and by the way, their non-gifted friends benefited as well-- the school was a place where it was cool to achieve, to be smart, to think. Rubs off on even the folks with 110 IQ’s. Imagine that.</p>
<p>Furthermore, while you can certainly get through medical school with a 120 IQ, and you can certainly be a fine physician as well-- It would be foolish to assume that there is not some advantage to 20% more mental firepower in a field so demanding of precision, problem solving and memory. If you have ever seen a really, really smart doctor work out the complex process of differential diagnosis, you are seeing the difference that intellect makes to the practice of the most refined aspects of medicine.</p>
<p>"My children grew up in a school system with no gifted education whatsoever, I know for a fact that they and many of their peers would have qualified for these services in the US…and I can detect absolutely no negative impact of the lack of ‘gifted ed’ on any aspect of their development. "</p>
<p>It may be that because the school system had many gifted students that the school system naturally met their needs.</p>
<p>Where it’s particularly difficult for gifted students to get their needs met is in systems where there are very few gifted students, and the system is designed to meet the needs of the slower students. The traits that are characteristic of many gifted students – a passionate interest in learning, out of the box thinking, creating intellectual challenges for themselves and for their teachers-- can be irritating to such students’ peers and teachers, and can cause those students to have very miserable experiences and to develop emotional problems like depression, low self confidence or to drop out of school or get far less education than they are capable of getting. </p>
<p>As for the lack of being able to see a negative impact of a lack of gifted education, that also can be hard to determine because you don’t know what they would have achieved if they had had an education more designed to meet their needs (if the education that they had did not meet their needs that well).</p>
<p>For instance, up to 5th grade, I was in a very rigid parochial school where memorization and repetition were the way that we learned. I excelled in that system. However, I also didn’t have to study and ignored my own propensity to do out of the box thinking, etc. Instead, I nicely complied by meeting the teachers’ expectations of copying things verbatim, etc.</p>
<p>When I switched to a school system that had an excellent gifted program, for the first time I was encouraged to use my own creativity. It took me a while to get the knack of doing this because this was the opposite of what I had been rewarded for doing in Catholic school. However, when I did “get it,” it ended up that I am very creative, normally think out of the box, etc., and those traits have been a hallmark of things that I have become noted for as an adult.</p>
<p>I imagine that I would have done well professionally if I had continued along my original path, but I would not have developed into the creative, individualistic person whom I am now. I probably also would not have developed the kind of unique projects that are what I am known for. </p>
<p>Anyway, I certainly think that gifted people can become successes without participating in gifted programs. They may not, however, be able to develpp into the best “thems” that they are capable of being. This, however, would be something that probably can’t be measured.</p>
<p>I would say success is at least as much due to hard work as it is to natural ability. Probably more.</p>
<p>Kids often tell gifted kids, “oh, you’re smart, you don’t have to work hard.” But I get really ticked when <em>teachers</em> say the same thing (not necessarily in so many words, but you get what they mean–“we are just so impressed with your child’s natural intelligence and aren’t you lucky?”) My child may be smart, but he/she works hard, does the problem sets to be sure they are understood, stays up late doing homework, doesn’t watch much TV or play video games, does a lot of outside reading…you get the idea. Any kid could get better grades by doing the same things.</p>
<p>Teachers aren’t doing anyone a favor by spreading the idea that some people are naturally smart and some are not, and that determines the course of your life. Sheesh.</p>
<p>I’m just not sure that, in this situation, the teacher was spreading the idea that smartness determines the course of one’s life. It sounds like she was using commonly available, and scientifically accurate, information to illustrate the concept of “I.Q.” to discuss a book where IQ plays an important role in the story. The majority of doctors have IQ’s in the gifted range. That is a fact. It does not mean that one can’t be a doctor if one is not in the gifted range in I.Q.<br>
Most teachers bend over backward to preach the message that everyone can learn and that one’s hard work and efforts are what determines the course of one’s life.</p>
<p>A test is devised and called the SAT; The Scholastic Aptitude Test. It measures aptitude for success in college. “That’s why we invented it. We are psychologists who know much more about aptitude testing than you could possibly know as a lay person.”</p>
<p>You cannot improve or influence your aptitude, so their is no point in studying for the examination. This point of view was promulgated by the College Board for years. </p>
<p>Then Stanley Kaplan, a gifted teacher, started tutoring math in the basement
of his home. He hired an assistant to tutor vocabulary and verbal skills. Kaplan was brutally criticized by the College Board. He was dispelling an accepted theology, that SAT scores measured aptitude and that aptitude could not be improved by cramming. This idea was dangerous to the ideology and mythology of the test. Negative publicity was heaped on Kaplan by the Board. </p>
<p>Of course, it became apparent that Kaplan was correct. So how could the Board explain that. The stratagem was to conclude that the exam does not test aptitude and then to compete with Kaplan in the marketplace with prep materials, pathetic. </p>
<p>What is sad and irreversible is the amount of damage done to students who were informed that they were not “college material”, based upon the result of the SAT. The score was tattooed on them for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>Now the IQ is the holy grail of psychologists. </p>
<p>The IQ test is an attempt to assess reasoning. It is a subjective test, highly
dependent on reading skills and attention span as well as other parameters.
What is the purpose of a test? It is to encapsulate, as inexpensively as possible, where an individual stands regarding particular parameters of reasoning, as compared to others. </p>
<p>It does not measure the future of your child any better than you can if you are an educated, objective parent. See if this makes sense to you; you live with a child for sixteen years and astutely observe their ability to interpret information and to communicate. You listen to feedback from teachers and colleagues. In several hours an exam will accomplish what you failed to do in sixteen years; have an objective assessment of your child’s intellectual value.</p>
<p>Is an IQ test worthless? Of course not. In children with serious learning deficits, it can provide a guideline for where to begin to help a child. In organic disease it can give a general idea of severity on cognitive function.
In others, it is an attempt, however limited, to categorize your child in several hours.</p>
<p>Studies have shown that students told they can improve their IQ, do so
as compared to a control group told IQ is static, with statistical significance. </p>
<p>If you need an IQ test to inform you that your child is well below the norm,
you are not a very attentive parent or the test is flawed. </p>
<p>Look at an IQ test. It should be apparent that not only can IQ improve but
that you can disproportionately move it if that is your desire. </p>
<p>I am ready for the onslaught of criticism by psychologists and teachers who reinvent education and come up with a new acronym every two years. The bright psychologists and educators understand the benefits and limitations of IQ testing.</p>
<p>It’s not the teachers who come up with the new acronyms and who reinvent education. It’s those dang administrators who listen to the textbook lobbyists and are bowing to political pressure to “fix” the problems of public schools. They jump on the new ideas, and try to convince us all that this panacea will really do what they say it will. We shrug our shoulders, roll our eyes, and pray that they will stay out of the classroom so that we can do what we know how to do.</p>
<p>“The IQ test is an attempt to assess reasoning. It is a subjective test, highly
dependent on reading skills and attention span as well as other parameters.”</p>
<p>Right on! Your entire post was right on!</p>
<p>Testing is big business; make no mistake about that.</p>
<p>IQ test is dependent on reading skills? Where in tarnation are you getting that? Certainly the IQ tests are not independent of learning skills and cultural issues, but the Wechsler scales (the WISC-IV, the WAIS-III, the WPPSI-III, etc) that are independently adminitered (ie one on one) are given orally. There is no component that requires reading.</p>
<p>Thank you, Jym. My jaw dropped on that one.</p>
<p>Many IQ tests are written tests with a multiple-choice format, and the tests that are designed to be given orally are subject to the biases of test administrators with the regard to responses to open-ended questions depending on their willingness to accept answers that are unexpected, but are the products of out-of-the-box thought processes and are often more “correct” than even the expected answers. But I have anecdotally heard horror stories about what type of answers were deemed “wrong” by some test administrators who did not give the children they tested an opportunity to explain their reasoning.</p>
<p>It’s an imperfect instrument designed to measure a quality which is not really a subject of accurate measurement.</p>
<p>The true value of tests such as the WISC III is to help identify areas of strength and weakness, especially important for students with specific learning disabilities. So it can give great insight into HOW the student functions. But the notion that there can be a defined number assigned to a student’s intellectual capability or potential is simply based on a theory of cognitive function and development that has now been widely refuted; “IQ” is largely a measure of experience. (Cultural anthropologists also find IQ tests valuable, for a different reason – the cultural differences in responses can be a good way of ferreting out differences in linguistic and cultural influences on thought processes, such as differences in the way people categorize objects and shapes).</p>
<p>Obviously, there are some people who are extremely bright and some that have severe cognitive limitations, but the idea that we can assign a very specific number akin to measuring height or weight is simply arbitrary or untrue, as is the idea that the number is somehow immutable – it is actually very common for an individual’s IQ score to increase as they grow from childhood to adulthood.</p>
<p>calmom-</p>
<p>subject to the biases of the examiners? There rwe specific accepted answers, and the interrater reliability of these tests is strong. I am not interested in getting into statistical arguments, but even if some individual test items are scored slightly differently between examiners, the overall score changes negligably, if at all.</p>
<p>Many of the questions have only “right” and “wrong” answers. There is no interpretation required, because the acceptable answers are very clear. Most wrong answers kids give are not creative responses utilizing interesting or out-of-the-box reasoning; they are simply wrong. </p>
<p>Even when students are tested over a number of years, by different examiners, their scores remain relatively consistent (within a small error margin). This speaks very much to the validity of the test and refutes the idea that individual evaluators can easily skew the results. </p>
<p>Perhaps it happens now and again (and I have seen a few anomalies), but it certainly isn’t the norm. I have seen hundreds and hundreds of tests from dozens and dozens of different examiners, and what you describe, Calmom, is the exception and not the rule.</p>
<p>allmusic, and jym, do you find this to be true (meaning #s are pretty much the same) when comparing numbers of the Wisc III and the Wisc IV?</p>
<p>Jym, I also don’t want to get into debating nuances of testing. I just know that a “strong” interrater reliability is not the same as a “perfect” interrater reliability. If I get on my bathroom scale, and then get on the gym scale, and then get on the scale at my doctor’s office, I except the results to be consistent within a few pounds— because it is not difficult to design a device to accurately measure weight. There isn’t even a common understanding about what “intelligence” is or what ought to be included in IQ testing, and so the tests are not even consistent in the types of questions they include. In fact, one of the strengths of the WISC is that its subtests function closer to a learning styles inventory, so it can give a profile that is very useful to an educator in determining why a particular child (including one with a very high IQ) may be struggling in school. </p>
<p>My daughter had a WISC full scale score of 140 at age 6, but she didn’t score too well in one of the performance subtests that is timed. At school she used to have problems with tasks that required speed, such such as “mad minute” tests of arithmetic (answer as many problems as possible within a minute). Ten years down the line she ended up with SAT scores of around 1200 – which supposedly correlates to about 125 IQ. See: <a href=“Shaw Communications”>Shaw Communications;
Does that mean that here IQ went down by 15 points? No – it probably is perfectly consistent with what we knew from the start: she does not perform as well in a timed setting. </p>
<p>I suppose processing speed might be very important in some occupations; you wouldn’t want an air traffic controller who needs a couple of seconds extra time to think about what is showing up on the radar screen. But I don’t really see why it necessarily should be associated with the notion of “intelligence”.</p>
<p>I personally have been very skeptical of IQ tests ever since I scores 178 on the Stanford Binet at age 14. Maybe I underestimate my own abilities, but I just don’t give a lot of credence to that score – I think it is too high, even though it was verified by retesting. (I just thought that the S/B test was the easiest thing I had ever seen). I scored less on different tests (lowest score that I know about was 132, but I remember that test as having very different types of questions than the S/B). I do know that as a child I really liked to do puzzles that relied on logic – such as recognizing sequences & patterns – so I am wondering whether I simply had inadvertently prepped well for a certain type of IQ test. </p>
<p>I think that personality tests or learning style inventories, in combination with IQ tests, might be more useful in the long run toward making educational and career decisions than the IQ tests alone. I feel I know more about my 2 kids from their Myers Brigg profile (son: INTP, daughter: ESFJ) - than I would from IQ scores. Motivation, interests, and creativity are all very important factors that can’t be measured by IQ tests – and they are as important in deciding who should be in a “gifted” program as anything else.</p>
<p>And the correlation between group and individually administered tests varies by test. No one should ever feel that there is a “magic number” generated by any one IQ test that reflectes a persons “IQ”.</p>
<p>northeastmom -
The WICS-IV has many changes from the WISC- III. Unfortunately far beyond the scope of this forum to get into the differences in the tests. There are a lot of difference between the 2. I dont know the correlations between scores off the top of my head, but the whole way the subtest scores are looked at has changed.</p>
<p>Tests have been refined many times–with each new test development/version are new sets of norms, new standardization samples, etc etc. You can’t compare scores on old and new tests, Add to that the fact that the standard deviations are big at younger ages, and developmental trends also affect changing scores.</p>
<p>The old S-B has been replaced many times-- I believe they are on the SB V at least. And to me, any score above the 99th percentile is meaningless-- so whether you score a 145 or 160 is statistically really negligible</p>
<p>I 'm sorry your daughter’s teacher gave this partial information. The original IQ tests were put together to better classify those who are at the lower end of the scale so that programs and instruction could be geared tto those needing special instruction. Binet was horrorfied to learn that his methods were being used to classify “how smart” people, particularly children were, when Stanford started tinkering with his tests. </p>
<p>In my opinion, that is a big problem with these gifted programs that target kids with a certain IQ threshhold. In our areas, many of the kids are clustered around that number, and it becomes meaningless. Any child who is doing well in his schoolwork and wants to do the extra activites should be allowed to do so. Those who are so far advanced from their classmates need supplementation, but the IQ should be irrelevant to the situation. I even do not like IQ tests being used in the “bad” school districts to target kids to be pulled out and given the opportunity to work up to potential. It’s wonderful for those kids with the high IQs, but what about those who have the attention span, work ethic and discipline to do the work, but do not make that cut off? I think that more emphasis needs to be put on those other qualities. I know many MENSA members whose IQ status is the only thing they have to brag about, and that is truly tragic as it implies they are wasting their talents. That they feel having that magic number alone is anything is pathetic.</p>