Standardized Test Scores (or even better IQ scores) by State

June 7, 2006 9:33 PM

I'm looking for a website that allows you to lookup standardized test scores for high schools by state or school? Or else...

Even better would be a state-by-state breakdown of IQ scores. I doubt it exists though. I know the other website does, I just can't find it at the moment. Anyway, IQ scores would be sweet and it would hopefully have breakdowns within the state. For instance, I'd like to know the percentage of people in the >70 IQ range, 70-89, 90-100, 100-120, 120-140 and 140+ (or whatever) in Iowa and Illinois and Minnesota and so forth. Thanks for your help MetaFilter.

posted by panoptican to education (5 comments total)

This is a page that people point to, but the IQs arrived at are from some SAT --> IQ adjustimicator that I think is likely BS (more). There isn't standardized IQ testing across states like there is standardized testing for college entrance. You're more likely to find SAT numbers, keeping in mind of course that the things that standardized tests TEST are a small subsection of what we generally consider intelligence, and the way they test those things (to achieve a bell curve distribution of responses, same as IQ) isn't the same as how you'd test any random person to see how smart they were.

People talk about it more in this Google Answers question. I'm not sure if you're looking in order to do some "political affiliation by intelligence" correlation but if so, people have been trying to do that work with varying degrees of success but I didn't see anything that looked like truly authoritative in the bunch of stuff that I just skimmed.
posted by jessamyn at 11:10 PM on June 7, 2006

If it's helpful, I'm actually looking for the data to get a better idea of how much of the population is mildly retarded and/or intellectually disabled in any given state. For this project, I'm comfortable relying on a Wealth of the Nations style methodology. These numbers won't be used for anything beyond better trying to understand the scope of the project so it doesn't necessarily have to be authoritative.

The links you provide are mildly helpful. I'm in search of IQ (or SAT/ACT) breaks within states though not just average IQ.
posted by panoptican at 1:01 AM on June 8, 2006

Many state departments of education have this information for the No Child Left Behind tests, I don't know where to get the SAT/ACT. You could check with Educational Testing Service as well. Any study they publish is available for order (all the ones I've ever ordered were free).
posted by mrmojoflying at 4:15 AM on June 8, 2006

Statemaster can give you many proxies for what your looking for, such as grade level reading achievement by state and so on. Worth a look.

http://www.statemaster.com/cat/edu-education

you also might find proxies via the health section

http://www.statemaster.com/cat/hea-health

If nothing else, they are very helpful and might respond with suggestions to an email request.
posted by Jos Bleau at 11:10 AM on June 8, 2006

The data I was looking for was linked in response to this MeTa post.
posted by panoptican at 8:02 AM on June 12, 2006