<p>I thought I’d ask a question here of all you fellow parents, because you are so much more knowledgeable than I about many things. I’m going to be giving a seminar about IQ testing for my state gifted education association next week (Saturday morning 13 May 2006), and as I touch up my handout for the seminar, I’m wondering what questions about IQ tests are most important to you. What have you always wanted to know about IQ tests? What have you heard about IQ tests that sounds unbelievable? What should everyone else know about IQ tests that you already know and wish more other people knew? </p>
<p>If you are in Minnesota and able to attend the event, you are very welcome to do so. I’d be happy to follow up with any of you who suggest issues not to miss in the seminar, perhaps by emailing you a copy of the final version of the seminar handout. </p>
<p>Do you administer IQ tests (Wechsler or Stanford Binet)? Usually, those questions are best answered by diagnosticians, who know the ins and outs of the tests from practical application.</p>
<p>What is your audience? Teachers of gifted? Parents?</p>
<p>I have never administered an IQ test, and I don’t expect I ever will. I have taken quite a few, both as a child and as an adult. </p>
<p>My state gifted association has signed off on the idea of me presenting the seminar precisely because I am “neutral” as to which test-giver in town might do a good job of administering a test. Some local test-givers are part of the governing board of the association (as I also am) and some are not. Some advertise heavily for new testing clients, and some hardly do at all. I have a parent’s interest in these issues, and expect an audience consisting largely of parents and of schoolteachers. </p>
<p>Do you administer IQ tests yourself? What is your opinion of the new brand names of tests on the block? What points do you think I should take special care to mention in a three-hour seminar for nonspecialists. </p>
<p>A incomplete bibliography of research I have done on this topic in the last decade or two can be found at </p>
<p>I would want to know what the IQ testing is for. For us, knowing our kids’ IQ scores would have served little purpose. If it had not been for CTY, it would never have occurred to us to have our S take the SAT in 7th grade. And the scores made no difference whatsoever to his regular teachers. His math teacher had already decided on his own to accelerate my S, and his social studies teacher believed in pushing every student to the best of his or her ability. Still, IQ scores may be useful in different contexts, especially if a school has TAG classes. </p>
<p>Finally, some people have pointed out that IQ testing captures only certain types of “giftedness” and not others such as artistic creativity.</p>
<p>Truthfully, Token, if you have professional evaluators hawking their services at a conference, that’s a problem! Talk about conflict of interest!</p>
<p>I do administer these tests, and there are no new ones that I use (or know that have value), only new permutations of the same tests (the WISC is now in revision IV). It is the ony reliable test to me, and only when used within the context of a multi-disciplinary evaluation. In isolation, I don’t think any IQ test is much value at all.</p>
<p>Knowledge is very different than knowing facts…it is what to do with them, how they interrelate, and how things REaLLY are as opposed to what should be</p>
<p>For instnace, I will never forget the test my mom gave me (she was a special ed teacher who wanted to see how a “regular” kid handled the test)…anyway, one questions was:</p>
<p>Why do we send people to jail?</p>
<p>The choices were:
punishment
keep them out of society
rehabilitation
send a message</p>
<p>Well, the “correct” answer was rehabilitation…but as a 10 year old, even I knew that didn’t work very well…, so I went back and forth between punishment and out of society…</p>
<p>and rehabilitation, as it wasn’t very effective, didn’t not seem right, even though that was the “party” line</p>
<p>That’s an interesting example. Every single one of these answers is correct. The philosophy behind incarceration has oscillated between punishment and rehabilitation, and in fact, both ideas are used to justify incarceration at the same time.</p>
<p>That is not the type of question on a Wechsler IQ test. There is alleged (and perhaps truthful) cultural bias on that test too, but at least the acceptable answers aren’t multiple choice, or ones on which several potential answers could be “right”.</p>
<p>I guess as a parent my question would be “Of what use is an IQ score?”
The only thing personally we have used IQ for was in the battery of tests done to diagnose a learning disability --so I guess in that instance it was useful for the evaluators. I have never told my kids their IQ scores for several reasons:
If high, I didn’t want them to be lazy and think they could coast by.
I didn’t want them comparing to each other
If lower than sibs or friends, I didn’t want it used as an excuse for not performing better.</p>
<p>Have always told them that it is work ethic that matters–not IQ:)</p>
<p>mkm, that is the capacity in which I use IQ tests, and that is what I mean by a multi-disciplinary evaluation.</p>
<p>My own children have never had any testing at all ( I do confess to my own curiosity at times…although can likely ‘guestimate’ their scores to an approximate range), because the information, in an of itself, isn’t very useful to me.</p>
<p>It is useful to parents whose kids are having trouble, because sometimes people mistakenly think those kids are stupid or unmotivated. An IQ test can clarify areas of strength and weakness, in corroboration with other academic or neuropsych tests.</p>
<p>Yes, I probably would not have ever had mine tested (except for the one who was being LD evaluated) except our state mandates IQ testing in the public schools–so that’s how I found out. Actually, if I remember right the IQ score, grades, and state end of grade testing percentiles is how the system designates for AG placement.</p>
<p>I think that it’s important for people to realize that an IQ test is just an ESTIMATE and it’s very possible that if a person is ill, upset, doesn’t like the tester, has hearing or sight problems etc. the test can estimate their intelligence as being far lower than it is.</p>
<p>I also think that it’s important for people to realize that since the tests are just estimates and don’t cover all aspects of intelligence that many people can achieve far more than one would think if one only looked at their IQ. In addition, since academic and professional success is also due to discipline, organizational skills, and personal skills, just because a person has a sky high IQ doesn’t mean that they are destined to be successful in academics or in their vocation.</p>
<p>And a reminder to everyone that they need to take a broad view of success. There are many people who have sky high grades, high paying jobs bringing fame who are very unsuccessful human beings in that their ethics are weak or they don’t know how to maintain relationships.</p>
<p>I hosted the gifted boards at AOL for years the same questions came up year after year. A kid comes back with a big scatter on the subtests and people want to know what it all means. There is surprisingly little on the web about what aspects of intelligence the subtests address, and which cluster might or might not indicate ADD, NVLD, processing issues or what have you. In my experience the psychologist giving the test often only addresses these issues orally (not my best learning mode) and in a way that’s confusing.</p>
<p>I agree also remind parents that IQs are estimates and many factors can depress scores - illness, boredom, distractions in the testing room, lack of rapport with the test just to name a few.</p>
<p>Yes, such a test is just an estimate, or a “snapshot” in the day of a child…sort of. Truth is, though, I can, by talking and working with a kid for an hour, estimate his/her IQ score(s, because there are multiple indexes), before administering a test or reading someone else’s report, and I am shockingly close.</p>
<p>In other words, they aren’t as big an estimate as all that. Superior verbal kids show their skills outside of the test, as do slow processors.</p>
<p>The one truth is that there are plenty of people who test “average” who excel far beyond expectations; likewise, there are geniuses (by these measures) who never amount to much. That is one reason that by themselves, I don’t put much value in numbers, but much more into the diagnostic skill of the evaluator, in solving the learning puzzle.</p>
<p>I never worried about the tests with my D, but know that some minorities are concerned with the fairness of the tests. One example we have discussed in AA/GT classes is that a child could be truly brilliant and score low on an IQ test based on life experiences. What if a child came froma poor family that used only mugs, and the child on the test had to put the 2 pictures out of 4 or 6 that go together and they are a teacup and saucer? The child may have never seen a saucer, and therefore, would have to guess, whereas a child who had been raised in ahousehold where using saucers is normal, then that child could score higher. Just one example. Would the child be labelled? What other criteria would be used in determining whether the child should or should not be allowed into certain programs such as accelerated, GT, etc.? How was the test created? Did it take into acount regional and social norms in the questions? An IQ test shoulc be different for kids from Appalachia than from NYC. Their sphere of reference is very different. I never really gave it much thought until the training I took and suddenly realized how skewed the results can be if the child doesn’t have the same life experience as the child next to him. This isn’t a “spout back the info” test - it is a test that rates the ability of a child to think, but what will a child do if they don’t know what the thing is that they are supposed to deal with?</p>
<p>Important point to check out: Many of the IQ tests only go to around 150. I read that once a long time ago on a one of the testing company’s own website.</p>