A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test

Miami University art history professor Stetler delivers a persuasive takedown of standardized testing centered on her daughter, Louisa, who has Down syndrome. When Louisa was in middle school, Stetler learned that in order to qualify for an Individualized Education Plan—a legal document articulating Louisa’s specific educational needs—she would need to take frequent IQ tests. If she scored too high, she’d lose her “intellectually disabled” label, and stop receiving necessary support. Horrified, Stetler set out to rebuke the idea that standardized tests scores can determine one’s likelihood of “success, prosperity, and happiness, and that our ability to achieve that success is also a measure of our worth.” Among other evidence, she cites the test’s inability to measure the full scope of Louisa’s daily needs. She also shares research about the history of IQ tests, which are closely tied to the 1920s eugenics movement, and about shifting attitudes toward Down syndrome, quoting a 1967 Atlantic article in which a theologist asserted that “a Down’s is not a person.” Supplementing that scholarship is Stetler’s loving, three-dimensional portrait of Louisa, which highlights both her delightfully idiosyncratic observations (“This looks like Bach’s hair,” she says of a hardboiled egg with a chunk of the white part taken out) and her difficult moods. Readers will be moved. Agent: Heather Carr, Friedrich Agency. (Aug.)