The IEP Process – Special Education Advice for Parents (Part I – The Beginning)

March 8, 2009 by 3 Comments

Learning about special education is a daunting journey. I’ve been doing it for over four years now and I’m still learning. I can barely remember the very beginning and how confusing it all was. That’s why when I read a call from Karen Nowicki (an integrative coach) for tips for parents with children on IEPs, I responded, even though it was tough to make my response so brief to meet the 100 words limit.

Karen was gathering responses for an article for Root & Sprout (a site I’ve never heard of until then) and has published her piece on IEPs just recently (update on December 3, 2009 – the site seems to have gone defunct since then).

When the article was posted, Karen wrote to me to let me know she received a lot of responses, and could not possibly include all of them, so I’m more than flattered that she did quote parts of my submission and included a link to this blog, even though I’m not anonymous any more. (I was planning to “go public” soon anyway, although I probably would not have published my name, just give the readers enough information that they would be able to find who I am.)

I’m also happy to be in the company of www.weddingsx3.blogspot.com, by Debbie Yost writing about mothering, family life & Down syndrome awareness; www.motheringautism.blogspot.com, by Pam Walsh, and on the same page that mentions www.wrightslaw.com, by Pete & Pam Wright, William & Mary Law School, Education Law Clinic & Special Ed Advocates, and www.LDpodcast.com, by Whitney Hoffman.

The first tip on how to prepare

Preparing for an IEP will require you to read everything made available to you by the school and everything else you can get your hands on to support your child’s rights to special services.

Is similar to what I wrote to her as well

Read, read, read – You have to know the law, your rights, and what the school is obliged to do for your child. There are several very good books on IEPs out there. My absolute favorite: Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy: The Special Education Survival Guide

The “Top Ten IEP Tips” from Carrie Gilmer and “Parent IEP Tips” from Eileen Mullin, are great too.

All that said, I tried to read this article as if I were a parent just starting out in this journey, and I’m afraid I probably would still not know what IEPs are all about and how to start the whole process, especially if my child was not in school yet and I did not know any staff from the district yet.

Most likely I would not understand the advice “Know and use IDEA 2004 laws and proper IEP procedure,” especially given the fact that the article does not explain what IDEA 2004 laws are. It is, of course, everyday language for parents of children with disabilities and in special education, but typical parents usually have never heard of IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), unless they work in Special Education themselves. And if they go searching for the term, they are most likely to get to the U.S. Department of Education web site, which is not very “beginning parent” friendly. (as I commented on in “IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) U.S. Department of Education Web Site” from December 31, 2008)

The advice “Become an expert on your child’s disabilities” while extremely important, also assumes a parent knows what the child’s disability is. At the beginning of the journey, many parents may not even have a diagnosis yet and don’t know what to search for. In our case, the specialists disagreed on a diagnosis for quite a while. (as I complained in “Personal Introduction“ from September 2007)

So here comes:

Advice for Parents of Preschool-Age Children

When nearly four years ago my son’s private daycare teachers politely told us they won’t be able to “meet his needs” the following year when the number of children in the classroom was going from nine to fifteen and advised us to contact the local school district to see if he qualifies for special education services, I had to call a couple of places in the district before I found the right person to talk to. By the way, at that age “special education services” meant an “integrated” preschool with a comparatively low number of kids and a high number of teachers in the class, who can keep good tabs on everyone.

I know now that the place to start may not necessarily be called “Special Education Office.” In Massachusetts that’s usually called “Pupil Services.” If a district is large, the main office might refer a parent to a local school’s special education coordinator.

Whoever you talk to in that office will probably ask why you think your child should be evaluated and will ask for copies of any paperwork that would support that. They might ask for letters from the pediatrician and/or current teachers. It wouldn’t hurt if you wrote a letter too, listing all of your concerns, with examples. (I like to say things like “I am concerned about my son’s x y and z, because I have observed that …. Because of the concerns mentioned above, I am asking for ….”)

Starting the Binder

The day you first call the “Special Education” department at school is also when you should start a binder to document everything and where you start filing all paperwork, including the logs of phone calls.

I learned about the binder idea in a workshop “Getting Organized” presented to our local Special Education Parent Advisory Council by the Federation of Children with Special Needs. Until then I had been just simply keeping files in my file cabinet. But just about the same time I went to the workshop I found out I routinely ended up taking the files out of my file cabinet and lugging them to various appointments and meetings, where inevitably I was asked if these are originals or copies. I had to say “these are originals,” at which point they’d go and make copies, and sometimes, not often but it did happen once or twice, a page or two from the original would get lost.

Now I still keep the originals in the file cabinet, but as soon as I get any paperwork, I make at least three copies of the originals for the binder, one of which serves as the “pseudo-original” for copying, the other one is an extra copy I can just give out if necessary, and the third one is a “mark-up” copy where I write my comments.

I learned about the phone call log from what I consider one of the best books on special education — Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy: The Special Education Survival Guide, by Pam Wright and Pete Wright, founders of the Wrightslaw web site, which is packed with useful information. Until then it never occurred to me to create a written record of meetings and phone call conversations, but it’s a great idea, because couple months down the road you may not remember the day you called, who initiated the phone call, even if you remember who you talked to, the reason for the meeting or the call, and exactly what was discussed.

What I do now is a bit different than what the Wrights suggest — I write a follow up e-mail to the person I met with starting with “Thank you for taking the time to meet with me (talk to me) on (date) to discuss x, y, and z.” and including all the pertinent information about the conversation, especially if something was decided or agreed to during the conversation. I then print the e-mail and put it in the binder in the “Correspondence” section.

My son’s binder currently has the following sections, separated by labeled tab dividers (like the Avery(R) Write-On Tab Dividers With Erasable Laminated Tabs, 5-Tab, White):

  • Current grade work by date (the work he does at school that is being sent home)
  • Current year’s correspondence by date
  • Current year’s IEP
  • Current year’s progress reports, meeting notes, and data
  • Current year’s report cards
  • Last year’s correspondence by date (for the first couple of months of meetings in a given school year, after that I file it in an “archival” binder)
  • Last year’s IEP
  • Last year’s progress reports, meeting notes, and data
  • Last year’s report cards
  • Extra copies of documents (for photocopying, each in a separate plastic sleeve)

First meeting with the school (pre-IEP)

During the first meeting the school will probably hand you a lot of forms to sign consenting to various testing. The testing is supposed to assess the child “in all areas of suspected disability.” (IDEA Statue, Title I, B, 614, b, 3, B) The typical testing at preschool age usually includes

After all the testing is done, the school will (should) send the parents all results, with raw data and an explanation and recommendations for the future, and schedule a meeting to develop an IEP. At that point the school usually also asks (should ask) the parents to write a “Vision Statement” and “Parent or Student Concerns.”

The thing is – without knowing any information beyond the basic “Procedural Safeguards” and “Special Education Guides” that the school hands out, figuring out what to include in the “Vision Statement” and “Parent Concerns” might turn out to be a tricky homework. But that’s a huge topic, probably deserving a separate blog entry. I’ll try to get to it soon. (I’ve been very busy recently, hence the decline in the number of posts.) But I hope the above, nearly two-thousand word-overview somewhat covers the “What to Expect” part covering the very beginning of the process.

By the way, the tips I narrowed down to 100 words or fewer that I sent to Karen were as follows:

1. Don’t despair. Join a parent networking group if your district has one. In some states a Special Education Parent Advisory Council is mandated by law. It may be very active and working closely with the school administration or it may not. But it’s a great place to meet other parents who understand what you’re dealing with.

2. Read, read, read! You have to know the law, your rights, and what the school is obliged to do for your child. There are several very good books on IEPs out there. My absolute favorite: Wrightslaw: From Emotions to Advocacy: The Special Education Survival Guide.

I see networking and knowledge as crucial to the whole process. You need to learn about what you’re dealing with and since you’re not the first person starting on this daunting journey (even though it might feel like it at the beginning), connecting with other parents who’ve been doing it for a couple of years usually turns out to be very helpful for several reasons.

Filed Under: Education, Intelligence, Other Blogs, PDD-NOS, Personal Information, Special Education, Testing, Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

Ethnic background and attitude toward Special Education

January 29, 2009 by 1 Comment

While I have known for a while that some parents will look the other way when a child is struggling and will not have the child tested because they’re afraid or ashamed of the “special ed kid” label, I had not realized that minority families seem to be much more wary of that, until I read “Problems with the rush to label children,” by Andrea Hermitt (Education Examiner) posted on December 30, 2008, and the follow up “From Special Ed to gifted to somewhere in between.”

Andrea writes:

I think what appalls me most about labeling of school children is that over all, kids are disproportionately labeled based on race.

In response to that post, another Education Examiner — Caroline Grannan, from San Francisco, writes in the comments:

middle-class white parents are often eager to get their kids who may have some learning difficulty identified as special education. [...] I believe the vast majority of parents who seek special-ed ID are not doing it to get an “unfair” advantage for the child but because they believe the child needs the services, I should clarify.

By contrast, in the African-American community, special-ed identification is (generalizing again) often viewed as a stigma, a brand of shame — and racist. That’s even though special-ed identification does carry those same benefits — extra (free) academic support and testing accommodations.

Our district is plurality Asian (statistically the highest-achieving demographic), and oddly, I don’t have a handle on a consistent attitude toward special ed in that community, nor in the Latino community. The white and black attitudes seem to be the most consistent and evident.

In the follow up post, “From Special Ed to gifted to somewhere in between” Andrea brings up the subject of “special ed labels” again:

As I see it, affluent people want more services for children labeled Special Ed.  Meanwhile, lower income, and minorities who feel that children are being unfairly labeled don’t want to end up in the system at all where they won’t get the help even if they need it.  So as I see it, everyone agrees.  Special Education programs do little to truly advance the children back to mainstream education.

The way I see it, Andrea is lucky she doesn’t have to deal with the “system.” I would much rather not have my son labeled “special ed” but as I wrote in my response to comments in “Engineers, Hips, and Autism,” having him labeled does give him the extra services that he would not get otherwise.

Now, would he be getting those services if we didn’t fight for it and show up for our IEP meetings with a huge folder, books on the subjects highlighted throughout, and our insistence on services? Maybe not. It’s the “squeaky wheel gets the grease” issue.

On the same topic, Lindsay, the blogger on the Autist’s Corner (which I discovered recently and happen to like a lot) quotes Anna Stubblefield in her January 14, 2009 post “Intelligence Is Racialized” as saying:

[B]lack students are both more likely than white students to be labeled as special-needs students and more likely, once labeled, to be relegated to special-education ghettos rather than receiving the least restrictive, inclusive education mandated by federal law.

I live in a small town that’s pretty much all Caucasian, so I can’t talk about minority kids being overlabeled here, but I did notice from talking to parents who have children on IEP that kids of parents who are on the lower end of the socio-economic status, or who do not have the time and the know-how of finding out more information about what their child should be getting out of school, are more likely to not get the right services. So here the divide is not along ethnic background lines but more tied to socio-economic status.

I wonder if anyone studied whether overall minority children from affluent, or middle-class homes are as likely to be diagnosed as minority children from low-income families, and whether there is a difference in how their parents view the diagnosis, specifically whether middle-class and affluent minority parents are just as opposed to “special education” services as minority low-income families, or if they are more”eager” to have their kids identified just like the middle-class white parents that Caroline Grannar mentions.

In the end, I do agree with Andrea when she says

just like in the cases of Special Education, gifted programs are no better at serving gifted students than Special Ed programs are at serving Special Ed students.  So at the end of the day, the only kids really getting an education that meets their needs are those that are truly middle of the road, mainstream children.

but I hope parents of children who struggle with reading, math, or have other problems at school will not listen when she says

I am begging and encouraging parents to question any labels that are being put on your kids.  I am asking teachers to consider if these kids really need labels, or perhaps just time to mature.

The problem is, you can’t mature out of dyslexia, learning disability, or autism. In those cases, the earlier the services start, the better chance there is of catching up.

The issue is not the “label” but getting adequate services, regardless of the child’s ethnic background or socio-economic status. We shouldn’t be fighting against labels and special education, we should be fighting for making sure all children get the right education and the help they need.

(added 1/30/2009 — Being against “special education” because some children get worse services than others is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater and I don’t think that is the real point, anyway.

I think Adrea’s main point really boils down to the sentence

We do see the trend of lumping an inordinate amount of African Americans into Special Ed as a racist activity.

but I worry that was lost in the comments.

So it is not about special education, really… It is — let’s have a courage to say it — about the “good ol’” discrimination and prejudice that the minorities and the unprivileged have been facing for centuries and unfortunately still do some time.

It is about the attitude that children from poor and minority families, tend to be seen as less intelligent, as more likely to have trouble in schools, and are not expected to perform as well as their peers, so at the first sign of “trouble” they are skirted off to “special education.” Add to that the fact that they usually live in districts that have little money not only for quality “special education” but “regular” education as well, and yes, the end result is that they get stuck behind and fall more and more behind every year. It’s not that special education is bad, what’s bad is how these children are treated.)

Filed Under: Education, Special Education, Testing

Labeling kids

January 10, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Way back in December a Washington Post article “Montgomery Erasing Gifted Label” caught my eye and I’ve been planning to write about that.  (“Montgomery Erasing Gifted Label: Implications Concern Some School Parents” by Daniel de Vise, December 16, 2008)

Of course this is old news by now, and covered widely by various blogs, including, naturally, the Gifted Exchange blog, which asks “Does the ‘Gifted’ label matter?” .

I like Laura Vanderkam’s point that although “what matters is that kids’ needs are met,” yet “when districts do label kids, then that at least creates pressure to do something for those with the label.”

That’s certainly true on the other side of the scale, and as I and many of my friends with kids on IEPs know, even the label doesn’t guarantee that kids’ needs are met.

The Washington Post article reports that

“Officials plan to abandon a decades-old policy that sorts second-grade students, like Dr. Seuss’s Sneetches, into those who are gifted (the Star-Belly sort) and those who are not. […] Montgomery education leaders have decided that the practice is arbitrary and unfair.”

Don’t even get me started on fair… As long as the quality of education a child gets depends on the income of that child’s parents and their ability to buy a house in the best school district, there is no “fair” in American education.

Gifted programs at least promise to give a chance for better education to smart kids from families who are not rich. Whether they deliver on that or not, that’s another matter.

Another reason given for scrapping the label is that

“the approach [sorting kids into gifted and not gifted] slights the rest of the students who are not so labeled. White and Asian American students are twice as likely as blacks and Hispanics to be identified as gifted.”

Interestingly, the officials do admit that “the practice is arbitrary” and their “formula for giftedness is flawed.” Well, then they should look at their identification and eligibility methods and revamp them!

Oh and apparently “A school that tells some students they have gifts risks dashing the academic dreams of everyone else.”

What about the gifted kids’ academic dreams? Why aren’t they allowed to dream of being challenged?

A lot of these kids are very excited to go to Kindergarten because they love learning and think it’s going to be so much fun learning new stuff all the time.

But then, even if they know how to add fractions, they get stuck recognizing patterns for a year or two (you know – circle, circle, square, circle, … what goes next?) And even if they can read chapter books, they are lucky if their “advanced reading group” reads four- to six-page books and when they skip forward while their classmates slowly decode the words on the page, the teacher frowns upon them.

No wonder a lot of these kids have pretty much lost their enthusiasm for learning by third grade and think the school is boring.

But, no need to worry — apparently “losing the label won’t change gifted instruction, because it is open to all students.”

I don’t get it. If gifted instruction is open to all students, then how does it differ from regular instruction? Gifted education is not what the kids are being taught, it is how they are being taught.

The thing about scrapping the label is that even though “educators have become more nimble in deciding who needs accelerated instruction” it doesn’t mean they are actually going to provide accelerated instruction. The fact that “teachers codify children’s math and reading levels with frequency and precision unknown in previous decades” doesn’t really mean anything.

Sure, at my son’s school they can “codify” that his math and reading levels are above grade. So what? There’s no gifted mandate in Massachusetts, so they don’t have to do anything about it. The only thing they care about is that he meets the curriculum requirements, which he does.

I have no doubt that “Principals and teachers say they don’t miss” the gifted identification program. It’s probably easier that way. No more fighting with parents over whether little Johny III will get into the program or not. No more proving to parents that they differentiate.

And as far as the gifted label setting “up a kind of have and have-not atmosphere at your school”… Looking at it from the SPED point of view, are then the kids with IEPs “don’t-even-dream-about-it-have-nots”?Or would the school like to scrap that label too to not make the SPED kids feel bad?

Incidentally, just as some parents fight to get their child labeled “gifted,” some parents don’t want their child labeled “SPED” and will not request or even deny testing. As a result a child is not getting the services she or he needs… But that’s a topic for an entirely different post.

Filed Under: Education, Gifted and Talented, Intelligence, Maryland, Special Education, Testing

Non-verbal Autism and Intelligence – some myths debunked

April 28, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The idea that non-verbal autistics have low IQ in general and are unaware of their surroundings is a myth that has to be debunked.

Consider Amanda Baggs, featured in the article “The Truth About Autism: Scientists Reconsider What They Think They Know” by David Wolman in the March 2008 issue of Wired Magazine.

The 27-year-old Amanda Baggs is autistic and “non-verbal” – she cannot speak, but that does not mean she does not communicate. If it wasn’t for technology, nobody would know what she’s thinking, how she’s feeling, and, quite frankly, that she’s a pretty amazing person. Luckily, she can communicate through the DynaVox VMax computer and through her very powerful YouTube videos and her blog Ballastexistenz, has become an advocate for human rights for the disabled and for the acceptance of people like her.

(As a sidenote, I have linked to the “About” page on Amanda Baggs’ blog because that’s where she explains the title of the blog and refers to the “German eugenics movement against disabled people — which, for reference, predated Nazism” and “was heavily influenced by American ideas.” By the way, Stephen Murdoch, the author of IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea also wrote about the eugenics movement in his book.)

Baggs’s “In My Language” video, “is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.” I hope you’ll watch it.

David Wolman’s piece also mentions an article by Michelle Dawson, Isabelle Soulières, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, and Laurent Mottron, titled “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence” published in the August 2007 issue of the Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, published by Blackwell Publishing.

You can’t see the full text of the article unless you are a member of the Association for Psychological Science or have a subscription to the journal, but you can see the abstract.

The first author of the article, Michelle Dawson, is autistic as well. In her blog entry about the article being accepted for publication she writes “there should be a lot more caution than is currently the case, when making assumptions about what autistics can or can’t do. Some serious rethinking is necessary, about intelligence in autism and possibly intelligence in general.”

Current APS President, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, the Vilas Research Professor and Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a co-author of “The Level and Nature of Autistic Intelligence” wrote for the April 2007 issue of the Observer (also published by the APS) an article titled “The True Meaning of Research Participation” which is worth reading as well.

Filed Under: Autism, Communication, Intelligence, Testing

Kathy Kolbe and Conation – Part Three of the Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

April 24, 2008 by Leave a Comment

The guest of the third session (Wednesday, April 23, 2008) in the Unwrapping the Gift of ADD Series was Kathy Kolbe.

Kathy Kolbe is a great speaker and her message was very inspiring – we are who we are, each of us is different, and we have to accept each other for who we are and not criticize one another and try to change one another to behave and think “our way.”

Kathy Kolbe is the daughter of Eldon F. Wonderlic, a pioneer in the field of Industrial Psychology (cognitive testing) and founder of Wonderlic,Inc.

During the show, Kolbe recalled how she used to ask her father about his tests and questioned the premise and the importance of cognitive (or IQ) testing. She disagreed with the idea that someone’s intelligence is the most crucial measure of a person and wondered “how how smart you are can have anything to do with what you can do in this world.” She thought there’s more to a person than intelligence and her father suggested she go and try to find it out.

So she did and founded Kolbe Corp.

And while the mission of the company her father founded is to help “thousands of employers worldwide hire and keep the best employees” the goal of her company, as stated on the “About Kolbe Corp.” page is to “provide materials, insights, and experts to help people of all ages identify their instinctive talents, develop their confidence, and use their innate abilities to succeed in a plethora of situations, from getting through school to running a business.”

Kolbe emphasized during the show that everyone was created to be perfect at something, so there are no best (and worst) among us, we just have a different way of seeing and doing things. We all can be successful and happy in life if we have the freedom to do things the way that shows our strengths. We also have to allow children to do the same.

To help figure out what drives us, what makes us tick, our Modus Operandi (MO), she “developed an instrument to measure the instinctive action and problem-solving styles of individuals. This dimension of the mind, called ‘conation,’ determines the way in which each individual might feel most comfortable and perform best in undertaking any action.”

On the Kolbe Corp. web site you can read more about the Kolbe Concept, about “conation,” and about the “Four Action Modes.”

You can also read about this idea in Kathy Kolbe’s books: The Conative Connection : Acting on Instinct published in 1997; Powered by Instinct: 5 Rules for Trusting Your Guts published in 2003; and Pure Instinct published in 2004.

When asked why we need to know about “conation,” Kolbe answered that there’s a tendency to misidentify ADHD as a cognitive issue, when in fact, it’s just the matter of Modus Operandi.

Kolbe used a term “false ADHD” when she talked about how some children whose Modus Operandi is to resist structure, to be active, and to learn by doing and touching, can be misidentified as having ADHD. (Unfortunately, neither Dr. Hallowell nor Dr. Handelman asked her what the difference between “false” and “true” ADHD is. I would have like that explained.)

While talking about schools, school rules, and curriculum Kolbe said something I found very interesting – that while 20% of general population has a tendency to insist on structure, following procedures, etc., as much as 70% of teachers are like that (because they instinctively choose a profession that is highly structured and organized).

Children whose MO is different from their teachers’ MO, suffer at school and are told that they have a problem, when in real world their tendency to multitask, be always “on the go” and skip the details for the big picture usually turns out to be a great strength.

Another interesting thing Kolbe said about schools is that it’s an environment where everyone has the same job, which has to be done the same way, every day after day, while in the real workplace there may not be much consistency, pretty much everyone does something different or in a different way and employees often need to switch gears, jump from project to project, etc.

(I ought to note that Kolbe pointed out that teachers do not intend to make suffer, they just simply may not understand that some of their pupils have a completely different way of doing and learning things, they need to have that pointed out and explained to them.)

Kolbe also talked about relationships and how a lot of conflicts are due to the fact that people don’t understand the “nature” of the other person and try to change them when in reality, that’s impossible and just makes the other person miserable.

To measure people’s Modus Operandi and help them explain what they’re good at, the company offers several “Kolbe Indexes/Instinct Assessments” which can be taken online (for a fee of course). You can see the questions and sample results without paying. If you don’t have much time to spend on the Kolbe Corp. site, at least view (listen to) the Sample Result for Youth (you have to allow pop-ups to be able to open that).

In closing, Dr. Hallowell praised the concept of “conation” saying we should “embrace it” because “it’s a tool to help in understanding who we are, it’s freeing and validating – I’m the way I should be.”

Filed Under: ADHD, Testing, Unwrapping the Gift of ADD series

IQ: A Smart History of A Failed Idea, by Stephen Murdoch

April 1, 2008 by 1 Comment

I have just finished reading IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea, by Stephen Murdoch, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in June 2007.

I first heard of this book on July 3, 2007 when I was listening to the interview with the author (New Book Raises Questions About IQ Test) on the National Public Radio’s program “Talk of the Nation.”

When I exchanged e-mails after the show with one of the callers I know, who primarily deals with gifted children and who earns her living in part by administering various tests, she said she wished she could have said more because the author was “spewing so much misinformation it was amazing.” That made want to read the book myself.

Overall, the book does not say much about the gifted part of the population and how the IQ tests affect them, except for a couple of places.

Chapter 1 titled “The Problem with Testing” describes a well-off, highly educated family from Washington, DC who were terrified that their 3-year-old son scored very poorly on an IQ test because that meant he would not get into one of the elite private schools in DC his daddy went to. The child got some speech therapy and occupational therapy while in preschool and went to a public kindergarten. He was tested again at five, at six, and at seven. While he scored in the 34th percentile when he was five, by the time he was seven he scored in the 98th percentile and was finally accepted at the school his father went to. Murdoch doesn’t say whether the child was “prepped” for the test by the overanxious parents. He probably was and that might explain the score difference. The author does make a strong point that although the most often used IQ tests claim to measure “intelligence,” they really measure learned information and can definitely be prepped for.

Chapter 10 talks about the eleven-plus tests in the United Kingdom and how this one test, supposedly again measuring “intelligence,” but according to the author heavily relying on educational knowledge gained in the elementary school, determined to what school a child would be sent at eleven years of age. So a child who went to a crappy elementary school that did not teach to the test and who had no private tutoring was highly unlikely to score well on the eleven-plus.

Other than that, Murdoch mostly writes about how the IQ tests were misused to mistreat people with low IQ scores, those on the left side of the bell curve. He describes how in the 1920s the U.S. began forced sterilization of the “feeble minded” which apparently continued until 1970s, and how the Nazi Germany carried the idea of not allowing the “feeble minded” to procreate into euthanasia, or basically murder. It’s truly terrifying.

I’m not a psychologist or a professional test administrator, so I cannot say if, and how much, misinformation there is in this book, but overall, I found it quite interesting and informative. And it did make me wonder about this whole IQ test business and whether it really measures anything meaningful adequately (which seems to be the main thesis of the book). Murdoch does make a good point that someone’s IQ score and a difference of a point off the scale can have too much weight in some situations—whether a murderer is executed or spends life in prison, whether a person with low IQ qualifies for a subsidy from the government, or whether a child gets into the gifted program or not. He also makes a good point that someone with high IQ scores will not necessarily have a great and successful career and happy life.

This brief description of the book is of course just a (very small) nutshell and does not really do justice to the book. Go read it for yourself. It really is interesting. Here’s the table of contents.

By the way, in the chapter titled “Alternatives to IQ” Murdoch writes about Howard Gardner’s idea of multiple intelligences, proposed in Frames Of Mind: The Theory Of Multiple Intelligences, published in 1983; Emotional Intelligence, written by Daniel Goleman, and published in 1995, and Robert Sternberg’s Successful Intelligence published in 1997. So, my list of “books to read” has just expanded.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, Gifted and Talented, Intelligence, Testing