The Woodcock Johnson Test of Cognitive Abilities is a test that can be given in childhood and aduthood. First developed in 1977, it has undergone two updates, and is used, at least in the schools I've been in, as the baseline indicator for students being considered for SpEd services. 

Considered a valid assessment tool by educators, WJ is a battery of tests that works to uncover a student's deficits and to obtain a general, probable IQ level. It has some definite positives: it is completed in about 1.5 hours, it is 1:1, scored and explained immediately, it can be offered anytime, and it isn't grade level specific. (www.lighthouseedu.net) 

Here's all the information in a neat little video that says it all much better than I could:

So, we know it's widely used and widely respected, and it is reliable and valid, but should it be given? That's easily asked of any test, but I'm specifically looking at this one that is administered for "special" students, whether cognitively challenged or gifted. (It is widely used for potential gifted students because of its "high celiling" measurabilitiy). 

I don't have to review why so many of us in education struggle with the idea of overtesting our students. But, when a student has challenges, and the services for those challenges are funded, we need data points to be able to prove they are qualified for those services. I understand this. It mades logistical sense. My WJ score even says I'm smart enough to know what to do with this, but it is frustrating. Why? Because a good educator, a good one, mind you, like a good parent or a good​ friend understands what someone needs without the reliance on numbers that say they aren't very quick on the uptake because they only could remember 5 numbers backwards.

And that's what really gets me thinking....is intelligence and the measure of intelligence defined, like race, by culture and society and not by some grand defnition that is accepted globally "from the beginning." I mean, we say that a strong "Visual-Spatial Thinking" score means someone could be a mathemetician or a rocket scientist, but who says those skills make someone intelligent? Our society has determined intelligence by our abilities to have a theoretical mind and a fast processing speed so that we can set our place in the world as doctors and IT professionals, and CEOs and (gasp) educators. But, what if we lived in the Upside Down?

What if the ability to walk backwards with my eyes closed without falling was the measure in the Upside Down as highly intelligent, or the ability to speak Pig Latin fluently?  Or, more seriously, the ability to fix an appliance or build a house?  What if the trades in the UD make someone a Stephen Hawking?  Before these tests existed, in a pioneering country, my ability to use rhetoric was much less desireable and sought after than my ability to construct a log cabin.  Granted, good rheotricians wrote our national documents; however, they could also wield an axe.  

Are we providing a predetermined ceiling for accomplishment with these tests? WE (whomever "we" are) have decided what skills and abilities make someone "intelligent" which ultimately makes someone "confident" which makes someone"successful" etc, etc.

I know this may all sound silly, especially from someone who can administer and who has taken the WJ, but it makes me think, you know? Though the test may be able to tell me that a student struggles with her nonsense word spelling, so I can help her strategeis to help her phonic abilities, it also is a predictor that she really shouldn't worry about too much schooling because higher education means Long Term Retrieval skills which she doesn't possess. 

I had a friend whose husband was an HVAC Technician. He wasn't particularly "intelligent," in the way we measure intelligence. She and I were sitting around her table one night complaining how little we earned. He started laughing. I asked what he found so amusing. His response: "You know...I get it. I flunked out of high school, and you have all these degrees. But you know, when someone's furnace breaks down in January, no one gives a shit that you can quote Shakespeare."

That may be the most intelligent statement I've ever heard.