I am well aware of these controversies and the limits of assessing such an abstract construct. The point was to claify, or get you to admit rather, that "misuse" was simply your personal opinion. By using the term "misuse," you presented the issue as one where someone is violating an ethics code or standard of practice/care somehow. The term "misuse" suggests malpractice. If it is standard practice to utilizes these instruments for this purpose (which it is), then by defintition, it is not "misuse." The phrase "I disagree with that approach" would have been better fit here IMHO. Without derailing too much further, lets clarify some things.
1.Yes, Gardners theory is nice and all (and probably better), but as of today, we dont have a way to measure and quantify it. Therefore, it is of little practical utillity outside the textbook. That is-when a school request in eval for giftedness, I have no way of utilizing and quantifying Garnders model.
2. Of course enriched enviroments can inflate IQ. So called "crystalized intelligence" such as information learned in school, vocabulary, and social judegment/social comprehension are part of almost everyones theoretical model of intelligence. I (and most other researchers) see no reason to pull them out of the model, as these are obviously valued skills that contrbute to an organisms
adaptability in the modern world. Not including them as facets of the larger construct of intelligence is silly and I can not think of scientifically justifiable reason for removing them from the current model. So, since IQ tests follow these theoretical models, then naturally, these skills would be assessed by these instruments. Yes, they can be inflated temporarily. This is just the nature of the beast and another example of how primitive our understanding and conceptualization of intelligence is at the present time.
3. Binet did not design his orginal test with a high ceiling, because he was not seeking to assess giftness, you are correct. However, this does not mean the test can not be revised to assess for this. Changing the ceiling does not change make the theory its based on somehow wrong.
4. Language is a big part of IQ tests, you are correct. Fortunately there are well validated measures of nonverbal intelligenece that can give us statistically equivalent estimates of Full scale IQ. The Test of Nonvebal Intelligence (TONI) is one such example. In general, nonverbal assessments attempt to remove language barriers in the estimation of an individuals intellectual apptitude. This is a wonderful alternative when assessing deaf individuals, individuals with aquired expressive language disorders and aphasias, as well as those from verbally impoverished enviornments.
5. No, IQ is not fixed, but its not all that flexible either (except in the case a a dementing ilness). A one standard deviation rise over a lifetime would be lucky, any higher would probably be statistical artifact.
6. Yes, California had cases of this for years in the 70s. However, this was primarily incompentent examiners. One of whom gave the test in english to a girl (or boy, not sure) who only spoke spanish. As far as their scores being lower than their white counterparts, yes, this is true and it is largely a product of impoverished social enviorments that you spoke of. Demographically corrected normative data almost always has minorities scoring lower than their aged matched caucasion counter parts on IQ measures. This is fact. And I would argue that this shows that the tests are infact picking up real differences between the 2 groups. But only the foolhardy man would interpret this to mean that whites are "smarter" than minorities. Unfortunately, thats exactly what Herstein and Murray did in 1994s
"The Bell Curve"
So, as you see, all these issues are indeed real and indeed challeging. However, until we have a better theory from which to devise quatifiable measurements, we are forced to rely on what we have availble today. And as much as you may not like it, IQ as meaured by the WAIS and others is still the single best predictor of academic success that we have. And yes, its a better predictor than even SES. These are large correlation coeffcients and there is no denying that. They are real. They are there. We are tapping into something meaningful, that is for sure. Hence, our defintion of "giftedness" still hinges on having superior IQ and, hence, why schools require a validated IQ measure for placement in these classes. This is the way things are and its the best we can do at the moment. I have yet to hear an altenative model to replace this that is both valid and reliable, as well as objective. What would you suggest?
So, as you can see, intelligence testing plays a pivitol role in this process whether you like it not, or whether you agree with it or not. Your opinion that there are "other methods" does not stop the unitended harm and contamination that can take place by compromising the integrity of test items because we are not using "other methods"..........we are using "these methods."