Testing For Intelligence

This week we are talking about children with disability and how it has changed from where children that have challenging capabilities were separate from the capable children. Well children are learning from their environment therefore as an early childhood professional I will need to provide a positive environment to ensure healthy growth such as excellent learning capabilities.   I believe that children are expected to have a learning capability at a young age. For example my 5 year old niece is a kindergarten student that is reading at a first grade level. We will say that she is a smart girl! Well yes, although her mother has been working on her capability to learn new materials as well as how well she process information. She shows great progress and intelligence.

Equally important is education to ensure someone’s success in life. For instance back in 1930s through 1950s parents use to dream of having their son being an educated individual because at that time education was very important to many families and see their children go to the best college. Therefore scientist comes up with assessment to show case children’s ability in school as well as in society and daily communicating ability. It gives them self-worth as well as knowledge. Scientist has been testing children intelligent since the early 1950s at the 4 and 5 grade levels. We still look at how well children handle problem solving on their own. Although it is true that kindergarten level is more like first grade level because children do not just color, sing, and sleep anymore. They are doing basic math, they are learning sight words, and reading short story books. We ask so much of them and for that reason they are growing faster than ever. Children’s roles are changing every day academically, socially, and characteristically.

My finding shows that people all over the world are using assessment test in the school system. For example this is what Skuy, Taylor, O’Carroll, Fridjhon, and Rosenthal (2000) say about performance of black and white South Africa children on the Wechsler intelligence, “The validity of traditional intelligence tests for cultural groups that differ from those for whom the tests were normed has come under scrutiny. This is particularly the case for the previously disadvantaged black majority in South Africa. The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) is reportedly a relatively nondiscriminatory test of intellectual functioning. This study compared the performance of 21 black and 35 white third-grade South African children on the K-ABC and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale--Revised (WISC-R) at two schools for children with learning problems. While the WISC-R Verbal and Full Scale IQ of black children were significantly lower than that of whites, there was no significant difference between these groups on the K-ABC. Teachers' ratings for white and black pupils were acceptably concordant with students' performance on the K-ABC but not on the WISC-R. Support is provided for the usefulness of the K-ABC as a relatively nondiscriminatory alternative to the WISC-R for South African children.”