A Wary Look at IQ Scores

School Administrator, June, 1994 by T. R. Ellis

One of the most notorious ways teachers misjudge students is by making too much of standardized test scores, particularly IQ scores.

Test scores demand a healthy skepticism. It is a little-known fact that the human brain has 10 times the memory capacity of the National Archives.

Yet educators frequently sell short a student's ability to learn based on the ridiculous practice of attempting to reduce something as complex as human intelligence to a single number.

Defenders of the IQ quickly point out the high positive correlation between IQ scores and school success. Since intelligence tests primarily ask questions about math and vocabulary, and include memory exercises, that should be no surprise. But other things also correlate with school success.

How about parent support? If parents provide a quiet, well-furnished study area at home with books and encyclopedias, demand a regular schedule of homework, support the teacher, and reward with hugs, are such students likely to succeed in school?

Suppose we quantify parent support, which is not nearly as complex as human intelligence, and determine that a 100 PS. indicates a child of average parent support. Now, suppose you get a student with a 101 IQ and a 125 P.S. Which score would you emphasize more when creating the child's instructional plan?

Is there a high correlation between work ethic and school success? Quantify it so that a 100 W.E. represents a child of average dedication to duty and motivation to learn. Now if you received a student with a 90 IQ and a 130 W.E., would you assign that child to a slow learner's class?

Limited Instrument

IQ is not that important because it is not that valid. Howard Gardner has written, "Most scholars within psychology, and nearly all scholars outside the field, are now convinced that enthusiasm over intelligence tests has been excessive, and that there are numerous limitations in the instruments themselves and in the uses to which they can (and should) be put. ... First of all, the IQ movement is blindly empirical."

I tested the intelligence of a precocious six-year-old once. I knew he was bright when he entered the room, greeted me ceremoniously, and asked me politely if he could sit down.

One of the questions on this particular intelligence test asks, "How many inches in two feet?" There are darn few beginning first graders who know the answer to that question, and this little guy was no different.

But instead of shrugging, he looked pensively at the ceiling and finally mused, "I had a foot-long hot dog once!" Then he held his index fingers apart about the distance of that remembered hot dog. Next, he closed his index fingers down to what he imagined was an inch and proceeded to count off the segments of that mental picture, long ago digested. He remembered there were two feet involved and so repeated the process. His answer was 21!

I was tempted to give it to him. Intelligence tests purport to measure innate intelligence. The process the boy used in arriving at his answer was most decidedly innate, and at a high functioning level for a six-year-old. Yet he

got the answer wrong and his measured IQ was lower because of it.

Damaging Judgment

Good educators refuse to sell kids short based on IQ scores, yet it happens all the time. I kicked a student off the bus one time because he continually attacked others physically and verbally after several warnings. The child was labeled mildly mentally handicapped and when his resource room teacher discovered my deed she was incensed.

"You have to realize, Mr. Ellis," she argued, "the boy is very low functioning. He does not understand!"

Ridiculous! An animal can be taught to sit quietly on a bus for 20 minutes. We may be better off employing pet trainers than some of our teachers.

Whether because of test scores, cultural bias, or some other reason, misjudging students ruins understanding, wrecks trust, and creates problems for learning. Misjudge only to the student's advantage.

As Gardner has said, "...if we are striving for a decisive theory of the range of human intelligence, we can expect never to complete our search." Yet many educators believe each student's intelligence has been nailed down accurately by whatever two- or three-digit number appears in the cumulative record folder.

I do not advocate eliminating intelligence testing. An IQ score remains too predictive of school success to be ignored completely. I merely urge all educators to remember that an IQ score is only one measure of a student's potential learning ability, and it may not be accurate.