

Junior Meritocracy: Why kindergarten-admission tests are worthless - tokenadult
http://nymag.com/news/features/63427/

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tokenadult
"In 2006, David Lohman, a psychologist at the University of Iowa, co-authored
a paper called 'Gifted Today but Not Tomorrow?' in the Journal for the
Education of the Gifted, demonstrating just how labile 'giftedness' is. It
notes that only 45 percent of the kids who scored 130 or above on the
Stanford-Binet would do so on another, similar IQ test at the same point in
time. Combine this with the instability of 4-year-old IQs, and it becomes
pretty clear that judgments about giftedness should be an ongoing affair,
rather than a fateful determination made at one arbitrary moment in time. I
wrote to Lohman and asked what percentage of 4-year-olds who scored 130 or
above would do so again as 17-year-olds. He answered with a careful regression
analysis: about 25 percent."

Most people are surprised that IQ scores can change over time for the same
individual. But this is a routine finding of most longitudinal studies of
individual IQ. I've gathered other reports of this phenomenon in the
psychological literature. For example, young people in the famous Lewis Terman
longitudinal Genetic Studies of Genius (initial n=1,444 with n=643 in main
study group) when tested at high school age (n=503) were found to have dropped
9 IQ points on average in Stanford-Binet IQ. More than two dozen children
dropped by 15 IQ points and six by 25 points or more. Parents of those
children reported no changes in their children or even that their children
were getting brighter (Shurkin 1992, pp. 89-90). Terman observed a similar
drop in IQ scores in his study group upon adult IQ testing (Shurkin 1992, pp.
147-150). Samuel R. Pinneau conducted a thorough review of the Berkeley Growth
Study (1928-1946; initial n=61, n after eighteen years =40). Alice Moriarty
was a Ph.D. researcher at the Menninger Foundation and describes in her book
(1966) a number of case studies of longitudinal observations of children's IQ.
She observed several subjects whose childhood IQ varied markedly over the
course of childhood, and develops hypotheses about why those IQ changes
occurred. Anastasi and Urbina (1997, p. 328) point out that childhood IQ
scores are poorest at predicting subsequent IQ scores when taken at preschool
age.

Anastasi, Anne & Urbina, Susana (1997). Psychological Testing. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Moriarty, Alice E. (1966). Constancy and IQ Change: A Clinical View of
Relationships between Tested IQ and Personality. Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas.

Pinneau, Samuel R. (1961). Changes in Intelligence Quotient Infancy to
Maturity: New Insights from the Berkeley Growth Study with Implications for
the Stanford-Binet Scales and Applications to Professional Practice. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the
Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

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asm
In the beginning of the article, there seems to be an implicit claim that this
kind of testing is bad because those who score on the border of a "cutoff"
only have a probabilistic chance of making it into these coveted schools. The
author seems to be suggesting that the error prone nature of measurement
instruments means that we need to create something that is free of error or we
need to stop using them all together. Unfortunately such instruments will
never be error free and there doesn't seem to be an acceptable alternative for
collecting predictive information. The measurement community will continue to
improve on their instruments, but it seems like the only real remedy given the
author's criticism is for these schools to just admit everyone so that nobody
misses out. This, of course, isn't realistic.

When resources are thin and there is no way to deduce a provably optimal
allocation, we start having to make guesses given the best possible
information and algorithms. Until we can come up with something better,
schools will continue needing instruments like these (as well as other tools)
for making the best possible guesses.

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pw0ncakes
When my dad was growing up, getting into Harvard was considered a nice thing,
but it wasn't expected that everyone halfway smart would vie for the Ivy
League. Most people applied to two or three schools-- usually good colleges
close by, such as the state flagships.

Now there's an obsession with elite schools, and it has trickled down even to
the pre-school level, at ridiculous costs in both time and money. It's not
about education; it's about social climbing.

I believe this is because society is beginning to unravel, even as technology
and the economy improve. When society contracts, social connections become
important because of the dwindling resources and hoarding.

~~~
kaveri
I'm not sure about the causes, but it seems in the UK for example that social
mobility has decreased in the past few decades compared to the 1960s. A big
part of that has been the disaster of comprehensive education - the old
grammar school system, which selected children from poorer families, gave at
least some a chance of climbing the social ladder. Comprehensive schools are
more of a lottery than a meritocracy, and the wealthy as always have the
option of fee-paying "public" schools.

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nitrogen
I think that students should be given a selection of work ranging from easy to
challenging and encouraged to choose the most demanding work they can. After a
few iterations to allow the teacher to gently nudge kids toward their optimal
difficulty, the students are evaluated based on their proficiency and chosen
difficulty. This process should be repeated throughout their education to
compensate for "late bloomers."

The terminology used to communicate to the students may have to be altered so
as to prevent students from feeling obligated to choose a higher difficulty
than they should, such as saying "choose the kind of work you find most
enjoyable and least boring," so it sounds like a horizontal rather than
vertical separation.

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biotech
I am curious - are you a teacher who has tried this? If so, what age level,
and how long have you been practicing this technique?

~~~
nitrogen
No, but both of my parents are teachers, and I was in a poorly-structured
(IMO) gifted program for a year of elementary school. I also worked as a math
tutor when I was in high school, and still tutor family friends on rare
occasions. My suggestion is based on a combination of what I think would've
helped me perform better when I was in school and my observations of other
students.

~~~
biotech
Thanks for the reply. It is an interesting idea.

