The Outdated Tests Far Too Many Schools Still Use to Judge a Kid’s Ability

This story about intelligence testing in schools was produced by the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Yet the change isn’t happening fast enough for many parents and researchers who say the tests remain deeply ingrained in the work of school psychologists, in particular, and that they are still regularly misused to gauge young children’s potential and assess whether they are “worthy” of extra help or investment. My low-stakes experience speaks to the long-standing criticism that intelligence tests measure a child’s exposure and early education opportunities, especially for white, middle- and upper-class language and experiences, rather than “innate” intelligence. School psychologists “had very few tools in the beginning,” said Mary Zortman Cohen, who retired last June after working for 34 years as a school psychologist in Boston, “so cognitive testing took on an outsize role in special education.” At the same time, intelligence tests faced some legal challenges. “The field is mired in the past, in 100-year-old technology that people think is good because it’s been used for so long,” he said, “not because it really works.” Educators and school psychologists need to rely less on intelligence tests, use them more wisely in some instances, and ensure that they are choosing the least biased tests.