Estimations from SAT scores imply that the IQ of teachers and education majors is belowaverage. Conscientious, hardworking students can graduate from most high schools and colleges with good grades, even if they are fairly stupid, as long as they stay away from courses which demand too much of them, and there are services available for those who are neither hardworking nor conscientious.
Education major courses are somewhat notorious for demanding little of students, and it is a stereotypically common choice for students seeking MRS degrees.
I’d like to imagine that the system would at least filter out individuals who are borderline retarded or below, but experience suggests to me that even this is too optimistic.
I don’t buy the conversion in the first link, which is also a dead link. That Ed majors have an SAT score of 950 sounds right. That is 37th percentile among “college-bound seniors.” If this population, which I assume means people taking the SAT, were representative of the general population, that would be an IQ of 95, but they aren’t. I stand by my estimate of 100.
I doubt you have much experience with people with an IQ of 85, let alone the borderline retarded.
What makes you doubt I have much experience with either? IQ 85 is one standard deviation below average; close to 14 percent of the population has an IQ at least that low. The lower limit of borderline retardation, that is, the least intelligent you can be before you are no longer borderline, is two standard deviations below the mean, meaning that about one person in fifty is lower than that.
As it happens, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with special needs students, some of whom suffer from learning disabilities which do not affect their reasoning abilities, but some of whom are significantly below borderline retarded.
At the public high school I attended, more than 95% of the students in my graduating year went on to college. While the most mentally challenged students in the area were not mainstreamed and didn’t attend the same school, there was no shortage of <80 IQ students.
An average IQ of 100 for education majors would be within the error bars for the aforementioned projection, but some individuals are going to be considerably lower.
At the public high school I attended, more than 95% of the students in my graduating year went on to college. While the most mentally challenged students in the area were not mainstreamed and didn’t attend the same school, there was no shortage of <80 IQ students.
The rates at which students progress to college have a lot more to do with parental expectations, funding, and the school environment than the intelligence of the students in question. My school had very good resources to support students in the admissions process, and students who didn’t take it for granted that they were college bound were few and far between.
Estimations from SAT scores imply that the IQ of teachers and education majors is below average. Conscientious, hardworking students can graduate from most high schools and colleges with good grades, even if they are fairly stupid, as long as they stay away from courses which demand too much of them, and there are services available for those who are neither hardworking nor conscientious.
Education major courses are somewhat notorious for demanding little of students, and it is a stereotypically common choice for students seeking MRS degrees.
I’d like to imagine that the system would at least filter out individuals who are borderline retarded or below, but experience suggests to me that even this is too optimistic.
I don’t buy the conversion in the first link, which is also a dead link. That Ed majors have an SAT score of 950 sounds right. That is 37th percentile among “college-bound seniors.” If this population, which I assume means people taking the SAT, were representative of the general population, that would be an IQ of 95, but they aren’t. I stand by my estimate of 100.
I doubt you have much experience with people with an IQ of 85, let alone the borderline retarded.
What makes you doubt I have much experience with either? IQ 85 is one standard deviation below average; close to 14 percent of the population has an IQ at least that low. The lower limit of borderline retardation, that is, the least intelligent you can be before you are no longer borderline, is two standard deviations below the mean, meaning that about one person in fifty is lower than that.
As it happens, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with special needs students, some of whom suffer from learning disabilities which do not affect their reasoning abilities, but some of whom are significantly below borderline retarded.
At the public high school I attended, more than 95% of the students in my graduating year went on to college. While the most mentally challenged students in the area were not mainstreamed and didn’t attend the same school, there was no shortage of <80 IQ students.
An average IQ of 100 for education majors would be within the error bars for the aforementioned projection, but some individuals are going to be considerably lower.
Those two sentences are not very compatible.
The rates at which students progress to college have a lot more to do with parental expectations, funding, and the school environment than the intelligence of the students in question. My school had very good resources to support students in the admissions process, and students who didn’t take it for granted that they were college bound were few and far between.