IQ tests do not test math ability.
For the WISC-IV, these are the test areas:
verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, processing speed.
For perceptual reasoning, the different areas are block design, picture concepts, matrix reasoning, picture completion.
For processing speed, it covers codign, symbol search, cancellation.
For verbal comprehension, it covers similarities, vocabulary, comprehension, information, word reasoning
For working memory, it covers digit span, letter-number sequencing, arithmetic. (When they say arithmetic in this test it means the ability to hear a number and do the math in your head. It does not mean do the math on a sheet of paper. My daughter is much higher when she sees math than when she hears it because her hearing is impaired.)
My daughter sucked on most of the IQ tests.
Then she was given the Woodcock-Johnson III math test and these were her percentile rank:
Calculation 93 %
Applied Problems 89%
Math Fluency 99.7 %
Broad Math 97%
In her California state testing, she usually scores near perfect/perfect (100%) scores in math and she still scores advanced on reading/language arts.
The other tests also had interesting results. On spelling and writing fluency she was in the 40%, but on writing sentences and paragraphs she was in the 98%.
She also gets all As/Bs in school.
People perform differently based on different IQ tests. There are some non-verbal IQ tests that people with language problems generally score a lot better on.
So you just can't use IQ as the only measure of how a child will do in school or in life. There are a lot of other factors to include.
No one on this thread ever said that IQs are absolute in any respect; further, they are best used when making predictions about populations rather than individuals. There are always exceptions, but ingeneral, IQ tests (the Stanford-Binet, eg) are good predictors of school performance for populations.
I agree with torie, ie., I think he is saying that EVERYONE is ill-served by the current approach that the edumacashun establishment takes: the below average kids are just danced through bthe system and little is expected; the middle-grounders are not pushed and the top-tier kids do fine on their own, but their experience is not optimized.