Most of us are familiar with standardized tests; and most of us have probably stressed over them at one point or another. The ACT, as some of us view it, is a benchmark for intelligence that will help determine where we go for college. “Revealing each person’s intelligence would, they believed, help individuals find their rightful place in society and help society run more efficiently” (pg. 36). This ideology has led to the development of the ACT, the SAT, and the IQ test. Although these measures of intelligence are widely used, they have aroused much criticism. Critics claim that these tests are not conclusive on what they measure, that one’s true level intelligence cannot be determined from filling out bubbles on a scantron form. Even worse, it is suggested that these tests are used as tools to support negative ideals, such as “profound racism” with “alleged proof of biological superiority” is shown through these tests (pg. 39).
To what extent do you think that tests that measure intelligence accurately reflect someone’s actual intelligence? Is a “perfect test” possible? Are there different kinds of intelligence that cannot be measured through a written test? How do conclusions from intelligence tests relate to other, seemingly more scientific test, conclusions that are made? Allow me to clarify: if the data gathered from intelligence tests is subjective/ inconclusive, what does this suggest about results and conclusions from other scientific studies?
Lauren Young (laurenyoung19@aol.com)
Standardized testing is something that is always being debated and is something that can never be agreed upon under one definition. The use of standardized testing was initially to "determine if children are ready for school, track them into instructional groups; diagnose for learning disability, retardation and other handicaps; and decide whether to promote, retain in grade, or graduate many students." This is no longer the case. Schools are not putting the kind of emphasis on standardized testing that they were initially used for. These "intellegence tests" are now used as a means of tracking school status and of placing undue stress on students to study for them, when there should not be so much resting on a single test.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many variables that come into play regarding intellegence that one number can not possibly hope to cover every category. Every student, or person for that matter, has different strengths and different situations that come into play under that one number. Some are positive and some are negative. A person has many possible outcomes for one test throughout a single day. They are not changing their intellegence throughout the day, but their state of mind, and the way the questions will be absorbed can change dramatically throughout a day.
Obviously a standardized test or an "all encompassing" intellegence test can make for quick generalizations and categories, but no test can truely take into account every bit of data necessary to make a true judgment. A more scientific test would be a complete observation of a student, or person, throughout their career and the types of progress made and the drive and passion to learn should be strongly taken into consideration.
Source: http://www.fairtest.org/facts/howharm.htm
Hannah Perl (hannahperl94@gmail.com)
Standardized tests are a measure of what a person knows, but not what they are capable of knowing. Tests like the ACT and SAT are more about what you have learned in school, and whether you can still remember it. This does a good job of showing if students have the basic knowledge needed to go on to institutions of higher learning, but they are not true measurements of a person's intelligence. A smart person like a english professor in college is smart, but if he took the Math portion of the SAT, he might get a bad grade. This doesn't mean that he is a dumb person, just that he didn't study the specific topics the test was asking about.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there are problems with standardized tests that mess with results. The tests follow a system, and the system can be gamed. Since standardized tests are multiple choice, even if a person might not fully understand a topic, he can still get right answers more often than not if he just uses test taking skills to eliminate wrong answers and make an educated guess. Cheating can also go on. Students have taken tests for others, or gotten answers from other people. This would misrepresent students as being more knowledgeable than they actually are.
Although standardized tests are not perfect, they are still a reliable way to test high school students. Smart people still get higher scores than stupid ones. The problem is that the score from tests does not represent the true intelligence of a student, such as how efficient they are at learning, or their drive and motivation for learning.
The inability for standardized tests to test true intelligence is no surprise, and it really doesn't affect any other scientific studies at all. They all use tangible data, with variables that can be controlled and measured accurately. To say that just because one experiment was inconclusive that every other scientific study might also be wrong is not very logical.
Well I think the tests that measure intelligence should be taken from a combination of tests, Intelligence tests, which are tests for assessing a person’s mental abilities and comparing them with the abilities of others, Aptitude test, which are tests that predict one’s capacity in the future. I strongly believe both of these tests can assess an individual’s actual intelligence. Many biases are also proved wrong as many tests are the same and valid, along with that they hold standardization. Many people don’t understand how these tests are graded upon; they are graded using a bell curve, then with all the scores they see where the majority lie. From that information, standard deviations are taken to find the validity of this test along with p-value to see if this test occurred due to chance.
ReplyDeleteIn some cases, people aren’t even able to show their talents/intelligence in subjects because it’s not asked for or there is not test for it. For sure there is no “perfect test” but these are decent tests that can assess one’s intelligence. There are always outliers to these intelligence tests, as one might just be a good test taker, and abilities might be stronger in one area that another just as Phannah mentioned. These tests are to do an overall generalization of the whole population to where you as an individual place at. I also agree with Phannah that observation of a person would be a great way to assess the intelligence as long as it is a single-blind study with the individual being looked upon is the one blinded.
In the long run, intelligence tests aren’t even used. For example, if you want to study medicine after high school, you take MCAT which is an achievement test, which is a test designed to determine what an individual has specifically already learned therefore intelligence tests are important in high school or younger, but I don’t think that they would affect the way a person would be in life.
Sruthi (gangasruthi@gmail.com)