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Chapter 16 |
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A Brief History of Intelligence Tests
Standardized intelligence tests originated in the early 1900s when Alfred Binet was asked by the French minister of public instruction to help develop an instrument to be used in the education of mentally handicapped students. He selected a number of school-related skills, such as defining words and making change; and with his partner, Theodore Simon, Binet developed a series of tests based on these skills. They gave the tests to heterogeneous groups of children, eliminating items so difficult that no students passed (or so easy that all did). The result was an objective instrument, essentially independent of the influences of social class or the person administering the test, that could be passed by the average child of a given age.
Although first developed to measure the capabilities of learners with disabilities, the tests were later broadened to describe the performance of students in general. Initially, performance was described as a "mental age"; for example, a child succeeding on tasks designed for a typical eight year old was said to have a mental age of eight years.
To overcome problems with older populations—describing a 20 year old as functioning like a 30 year old wasn't meaningful, for example—the mental age (M.A.) was divided by the chronological age (C.A.) and multiplied by 100, resulting in the familiar ratio IQ (intelligence quotient).
For example, a six year old with a mental age of an eight year old would have an IQ of 133 (8/6 = 1.33 × 100 = 133).
Binet and Simon's pioneering work revolutionized intelligence testing. For the first time, educators had an objective way of predicting school success; and while the predictions were less than perfect, they were a vast improvement over people's intuition. The test was translated and brought to the United States by Lewis Terman, a professor at Stanford, and it then became known as the Stanford-Binet. The updated version is one of the two most widely used intelligence tests in schools today (Kaufman & Lictenberger, 2002).
Standards-Based Education
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This article describes the potential positive benefits of standards-based education.
High-Stakes Testing
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This article examines the practice of high-stakes testing from a critical perspective, focusing on potentially negative effects on motivation and learning for all students, and especially minorities.
Minorities and Testing
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This article describes some potential problems when high-stakes testing is used with minorities.
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