Herman Rubin wrote
> As it is used, it is a VERY bad thing. There is no way now
> that a gifted child can get anything like an appropriate
> education in the public schools, and failing to recognize
> giftedness, or its extent, is really criminal.
To which Robert Dawson replied
<<<
If the public school system had any interest in recognizing (and
giving an appropriate education to) highly gifted children it could
do so without IQ tests. If it doesn't, we cannot blame the tests.
>>>
Indeed, the profoundly gifted are not going to be well-served in the
public school system, unless it changes a great deal. When I was
getting my PhD in psychometrics, one of my interests was the profoundly
gifted. It is unlikely that ANY school system could cope well with
these kids - not only are they, by definition, quite rare, they are also
very different from each other.
There are a lot of problems with how we deal with the very very gifted,
but they are not due to IQ tests.
<<<
If the maximum score attainable is (say) interpreted as
an IQ of 140, and if that score is only attainable by somebody who
ought to be offered an enriched program, then that can be used
to make this decision. Scaling differently so that a perfect mark
was intepreted as 180 or as 90 out of 90 would not add any more
information.
>>>
And, if the teachers in the gifted programs are any good, they will
know which of their kids are profuoundly gifted, and which are merely
pretty smart. They won't know this perfectly, but I'd bet that they
would be more accurate than any test - how would you norm a test
designed to separate the 1 in 100,000 kids from the 1 in 1,000 kids?
<<<
I would reiterate that the tests that are usually
administered to the majority of kids are not necessarily appropriate
for measuring very high intelligence. Especially when the subject
is more intelligent than the designer of the test, the scoring is
unlikely to be more than extrapolation based on higher speed.
>>>
Many profoundly gifted kids are likely to regard the tests as something
of a joke, or simply be bored by them and perhaps amuse themselves by
giving wrong answers on purpose. Many others will have learned that
being identified as brilliant is often not to their advantage, and
therefore take steps to hide their ability on purpose.
<<<
In short - schools that are prepared to admit to the
existence of gifted children had better learn to recognize
then by more valid criteria than IQ tests.
>>>
Indeed.
Peter
Peter L. Flom, PhD
Assistant Director, Statistics and Data Analysis Core
Center for Drug Use and HIV Research
National Development and Research Institutes
71 W. 23rd St
www.peterflom.com
New York, NY 10010
(212) 845-4485 (voice)
(917) 438-0894 (fax)
.
.
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