Standardized testing and IQ testing controversies
Standardized testing and IQ testing have sparked significant controversy in educational and psychological contexts. These types of assessments, which include intelligence tests, aptitude tests, and achievement tests, are often used to evaluate academic performance and potential. Critics argue that standardized tests may not accurately reflect a student's knowledge or ability, raising questions about their reliability and validity. Additionally, concerns about cultural bias have been prominent, as minority groups often perform worse on these tests, leading to accusations that they favor students from more affluent backgrounds. The implications of these tests are profound, influencing decisions about school promotions, college admissions, and job opportunities, which can exacerbate social inequalities. Historical context reveals that early intelligence tests were used to support discriminatory ideologies, although efforts have been made to reduce bias in modern assessments. Research continues to explore the complex interactions of family background, socioeconomic factors, and potential cultural differences that impact test performance. Overall, the debate surrounding standardized testing and IQ testing reflects broader societal issues related to equity, education, and the interpretation of intelligence.
Standardized testing and IQ testing controversies
SIGNIFICANCE: Standardized tests, including intelligence tests, are widely used and, many argue, misused in modern society. Controversies surround the uses to which test results are put and whether intelligence tests truly measure intelligence.
Testing is an integral part of education. Most persons who have been educated formally have participated in some aspect of testing as a means of evaluating their performance. The results of standardized testing can have profound effects on people’s lives, as such tests help determine who passes from one grade to the next, who is admitted to special programs, who enters college, who receives scholarships, who is accepted into graduate school, and who is promoted on the job.
Types of Tests
There are several kinds of standardized tests, including intelligence tests, aptitude tests, and achievement tests. Intelligence tests measure analytical and general thinking skills. Aptitude tests measure mental functioning in various subjects or areas. Achievement tests are used to measure skills and information taught in the average American classroom. Testing is a multimillion-dollar industry in the United States, with group intelligence tests being used primarily in business and in schools.
Standardized tests are usually used nationally. They are administered under uniform conditions and are scored according to uniform procedures. Most often group administered, they include such tests as the American College Testing (ACT), California Achievement Test (CAT), Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), Metropolitan Achievement Test (MAT), Standard Achievement Test (SAT), Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), Graduate Record Examination (GRE), National Teachers’ Examination (NTE), Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), and Dental Aptitude Test (DAT). One of the most popular and frequently used aptitude tests is the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The SAT comprises a verbal section to measure reading comprehension and vocabulary and a mathematical section to measure quantitative abilities closely related to college work. This test is used as a common national standard for evaluating students.
The purpose of tests such as the SAT and others listed above is to determine “achievement,” how much a person has gained or learned in a given content area or span of time, or “aptitude,” which is a measure meant to predict performance. Thus, standardized achievement tests provide information about students’ academic gains, whereas standardized aptitude tests attempt to provide information about a person’s potential performance in certain academic pursuits or endeavors.
Intelligence Tests
Intelligence tests are standardized tests used to determine a person’s ability to acquire and use knowledge for solving problems and adapting to the world. Standard intelligence tests include the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI), Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, third edition (WISC-III), and the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.
The most famous and probably most frequently used of these standardized intelligence tests are the Stanford-Binet test and the Wechsler series. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale consists of a variety of mental tasks arranged by age level. The person’s mental age and intelligence quotient (IQ) are determined by the summing of credits for the successful completion of tasks at each level. Test performance is expressed by a single score, which represents a highly verbal measure of general mental ability. The Wechsler intelligence tests are organized by subtest as opposed to age level. Each test contains a Verbal Scale, composed of five or six subtests, and a Performance Scale, which is composed of five subtests.
The dimensions of intelligence that may be measured on a standardized intelligence test include verbal, reasoning, spatial, memory, and quantitative abilities. Thus the information provided by intelligence tests includes a person’s abilities in vocabulary memory, mathematical ability, and visual and spatial skills. Intelligence test scores predict future academic behavior and job success in the workplace and have been found to correlate with many other variables.
Controversies and Biases
At least three controversies surround the use of standardized tests, particularly standardized intelligence tests: the controversy concerning reliability and validity; the controversy about possible bias in the tests that affects the performance of minorities; and the controversy over how the tests are used. Reliability in testing refers to the extent to which a test is consistent in measuring what it measures. Validity refers to the extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure. Those who do not support the use of standardized tests point out that testing may not adequately portray how much students know.
The fact that minority groups, such as African Americans, American Indians, and Latinos, tend to perform relatively poorly on standardized tests has been a cause for serious concern. Charges have been made that the tests are biased in favor of students from middle-class backgrounds, most of whom are White. Considerable research has examined this problem, and much of it has found ways in which such tests contain subtle bias (almost certainly unintended, at least by the late twentieth century) against ethnic minorities and against females. The makers of standardized tests have taken a variety of approaches to charges of bias; they have both denied that such bias exists and redoubled efforts to create tests that do not contain bias. It is a difficult challenge: Creating a test that does not contain some cultural assumptions (ranging from assumed background knowledge to language use to expected thought patterns) is virtually impossible. The hope is that most assumptions that are discriminatory against particular groups can be eliminated.
A third controversy surrounding standardized testing focuses on the uses to which test results are put. SAT scores, for example, are often tremendously important in colleges’ decisions concerning which students to admit. If the tests are indeed biased, then the use of their results in this way actually constitutes an act of discrimination. Standardized tests have also been used to determine people’s access to advanced placement programs, scholarship and other financial aid programs, jobs, and job promotions. The denial to minority students of programs that could benefit them increases their risk of falling victim to truancy, dropping out of school, alcohol or drug abuse, or street crime.
Development
Intelligence tests were the first standardized tests developed, and early tests were far from objective. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, intelligence tests (first developed in Europe) were often used to justify the “survival of the fittest,” and tests and their interpretations were demonstrably skewed toward proving that White Europeans were mentally the fittest. Cultural bias was rampant. The situation has improved dramatically, but the fact that controversy swirls around standardized tests indicates that there is still a long way to go. Among the cultural factors that have been studied with regard to test results are family influences and the role of race or ethnicity.
Standardized testing controversies should be understood as being related to the influence of the family in American society. Research has shown that there is considerable variation from family to family both within and between different races and socioeconomic statuses. There are many events in the family that affect intellectual functioning. Many of these events are social, but they also include viral infections, unrecognized head injuries, and forms of nutritional deprivation based on individual inabilities to metabolize otherwise normal quantities of specific nutrients; all these elements influence intellectual ability and thus performance on standardized tests.
Deficiencies in the mother’s womb or disadvantageous configurations in families may severely depress IQ scores, according to Miles B. Storfer in Intelligence and Giftedness (1990). For example, black women tend to become mothers at earlier ages than White women and tend to have more closely spaced births. Their children’s IQ scores are likely to be affected adversely. Research continues on parental treatment, biological differences, and socioeconomic differences as influences occurring within the context of the family that might affect a person’s standardized test and intelligence test performance.
The IQ scores of Americans rose steadily and rapidly during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Generally, African Americans, Hispanics, and American Indians score about one standard deviation below Anglo-Americans and Asian Americans, while Jews outperform all other groups on standardized measures of intelligence. According to Storfer, research indicates that the IQ gap that has existed between Black and White people has decreased. He argues that efforts to improve the health and early education of lower and lower-middle classes have caused the reduction in the size of this gap.
Bibliography
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