Entry Testing and the Overrepresentation of Romani ... - UR Research

R24PITFALLS AND BIASdevelop the verbal Army Alpha and nonverbal Army Beta tests, published in 1919. These tests were correlated withthe Stanford-Binet, and by the end of World War One were administered to over two million American men (Gould1996; Sattler 2008, 220). Wechsler derived his Wechsler-Belleview Intelligence Scale, published in 1939, directlyfrom the Army Alpha and Beta tests, and it is from the Wechsler-Belleview Intelligence Scale that all subsequentWechsler tests, including the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-all editions) were derived (Sattler2008, 220). Thus, intelligence tests have their foundations in school-based notions of ability and studentachievement, constructed from comparing and measuring pupils unsuccessful at certain tasks with the performanceof pupils who are successful at those tasks. Every subsequent intelligence and ability test is standardized forthis same purpose, which, as Ceci (1991) observes, is a circular endeavor: “[s]chool failure is both explained by a lackof intelligence and is itself the basis for the definition of a lack of intelligence” (719).Cultural biasAccess to early educational experiences and equal educational opportunitiesBinet, who believed that individualized and special approaches to instruction could mediate academic difficulty,developed his test for the purpose of identifying children who needed extra assistance to be successful in school,rather than for labeling and categorizing them. Indeed, most subsequent test developers have taken the viewof tests as a means to label and categorize. Binet’s test measure acquired differences in intelligence (performance).Screening children in schools arose from the practice of early medical screening, used to detect disorders in orderto begin a treatment program. However, using educational screening to detect or predict a child’s potentialsuccess or difficulty in school is problematic, as there are dimensions to intelligence beyond the analytical andmemory abilities typically measured by intelligence tests and that can develop through school attendance andclassroom experiences (Gredler 1997, 99). Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence posits that intelligence ismanifested in three dimensions: componential (information processing, performance, and knowledge acquisition),experiential (for example, insights, dealing with novelty), and contextual (how to use individual strengths andweaknesses) (Sattler 2008, 232—233). These three dimensions of intelligence take into account students’ learnedbehaviors, how students use their creative and practical abilities “to discern their strengths and weaknesses andthen determine how to use their strengths and minimize their weaknesses” (Sattler 2008, 233).Exposure to schooling may in fact influence the ways that children take tests, and thus, may influence the interpretationof children’s performance on tests. For this reason, it is important to consider the educational, and cultural,experiences that children bring with them into the testing situation (Alcock et al. 2008, 530). For pupils who havenot attended school or who have not had the opportunity to develop facility with pen and pencil/fine motor skilltasks, the coding and symbol search subtests scores could be reduced, not out of ability or intelligence, but outof unfamiliarity with the testing conditions. Intelligence tests also measure academic and performance behaviorsthat a child learns through exposure to the cultural contexts in which the tests were created and normed. If a