Traditional IQ: 100 Years of Misconception and Its Relationship to Minority Representation in Gifted Programs

The underrepresentation of minority children in classes for the gifted has been and continues to be one of the most important problems facing educators of gifted students (Ford, 1998; Naglieri & Ford, 2005). The severity of the problem was made obvious in the United States Department of Education’s recent report that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students are underrepresented by 50–70% in gifted education programs (Naglieri & Ford, 2003). Efforts to address this situation include, for example, use of multiple criteria for inclusion, refinement of the referral procedures, and reexamination of the very definition of the term gifted. Some have argued that the content of the ability tests used and procedures followed fail to take into consideration the characteristics of culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse populations (Frazier et al., 1995; Naglieri & Ford, 2005). The concept of intelligence has been defined by the tests used to measure this construct since the early 1900s. Traditional intelligence tests have had the now familiar verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal format since Binet and Simon (1905) and Wechsler (1939) published their influential tests. The division 4