When I was in 7th grade, not that many years after you were, the teacher had IQs for each student in a book on her desk with other information. Which the kids in the front row copied and reported on. What test this came from I don’t know.
If you don’t want to read my personal opinion on standardized tests, skip down to the red word:
In my schools, we were given standardized tests, and they extrapolated IQs for the normal and girted students from them. I was always in a very good mood on standardized test day. There was no pressure, because we had a whole week with no homework, and once we finished a section, we could sit and read a book.
I had good reading skills, and was very good at finding the “Easter eggs” in the tests-- you know, when you could figure out an answer because only one of four choices matched the question stem grammatically, or because it referred back to an earlier question, and I could find the earlier question quickly, to double check myself.
In fact, I once, for a psychology test in college (those tests that freshmen in psych 101-102 have to volunteer for) took a test the sole purpose of which was to measure a person’s ability to pass multiple choice tests. I scored 49/50, the highest score that year.
Unsurprisingly, by IQ was 142. I think it reflected a slightly above grade level reading ability and an unusually good memory, though, not a global quality. I was no good at all at math, but I continued to do fairly well on the math problems, which on these particular tests were all story problems (extract the necessary info from the written paragraph), or logic problems. If we’d actually had a page of sums, I would have been in more trouble.
I still was good at guessing, even at math when under the clock. I took the SAT at fifteen, having had only one year of beginning Algebra, and gotten a C+ and a D. I still managed a 580 on my math on my first test, and a 620 on my second. I scored a 720 verbal on my first test, and that was good enough to test out of freshman (in college) composition.
So my opinion of standardized tests is very low.
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HOWEVER**:
At the school where I went, and later worked, each spec. ed. student got a personalized IQ test with a qualified psychologist. I participated in a few, because some of the students used sign language and needed interpreters, and others were very vulnerable, and so a second adult in the room was required, and I was elected, since I had lots of experience with trying to communicate with low-language people, and it was suggested I might be able to figure out some things they were saying or gesturing (some had been exposed to sign language when younger) when the psychologist was struggling.
Those tests couldn’t have been more thorough. It’s hard to imagine administering a test like that to a typical person, though. I guess there’s a way, but the whole point of these tests is to identify children who need help, not label ordinary children. There’s essentially no difference between a child who tests at 123 and one that tests at 119. Or 123 and 127. Basically, the whole bell curve of children from about 110 (the actual mean) to 140 (the threshold for gifted) can be taught together in a classroom that allows for some self-pacing, and isn’t unwieldy large. Even gifted children will do fine if there are some extra opportunities for self-expression, and self-direction, and extra teacher, possibly one who moves among three or four rooms, and in extreme cases, the school is open to double promotion.
How is the “actual” mean 110 when it’s defined as 100?
In other words, you probably are actually decent at math, but never realized it, because of the silly habit in schools of referring to arithmetic as “math”. Meanwhile, one of your classmates probably aced through arithmetic, and got repeatedly told that they were great at math, and burned out on school as a whole when they got to high school geometry and discovered that they weren’t good at math after all.
Sorry, pet peeve of mine.
Sorry-- I threw that out there thoughtlessly. The mean is 100, but the median is closer to 110, and so is the mode. It’s because there are more people far below 100 than there are people far above it.
Nope. I am terrible at math. I am decent at arithmetic, but beyond that, I am lost.
Did you just do a no-true-Scotsman on math? Bold move.
I’m not saying everyone took one. It certainly wasn’t the first thing that I did with them. I worked with them quite a lot to get some idea of what it is I should be doing with my life. The IQ test was only a small part of it.
Not so much anymore. The test itself has a high coloration for academic success, but the results were not evenly spread among gender and ethic groups.
As a group, the European Jews scored the highest with an average of 115, then East Asians at 110. Men tended to get more up the upper range scores.
Ever since any scientists who approached the topic was bombarded with an ad hominem attack