One of the purposes of juvenile IQ tests is to help identify any learning disabilities a child may have. They can may be used to clarify whether a struggling student is being hindered by a learning disability or just facing another learning potential limitation. Discovering a child's learning disability is important because intervention to counter the learning disability at a young age maximizes the student's ability to achieve in school in the long term.
IQ tests can be used to identify whether a child is academically gifted. Although IQ tests are not perfect measures of intelligence, they can pinpoint students who display outstanding aptitude at a young age, are thus they are valued tools for educators and parents, as they can help tell them what level of schooling a student should be at. Students who are identified as gifted by an IQ test can be assessed further through other aptitude tests and provided an extra challenge while at an age when their mental capabilities are still growing.
When the IQ test is used in schools, the school ends up separating students based on the results. This has a social impact on the students, as students may label their peers as "smart" and "not smart" depending on where they are placed. Though IQ test results are meant to be confidential, students know their peer's results from teaching method changes for their peers. Additionally, when schools use the IQ to separate students onto different learning "tracks," it can be hard for those on the lower tracks to jump up to the higher tracks once they have been placed based on one test taken on one day that may not have effectively measured their abilities.
Test results can be misunderstood and perpetuate negative stereotypes. IQ test results have a tendency to differ among different racial groups, which has caused theories to arise that have been perpetuated by books such as "The Bell Curve" that claim some races are more intelligent than others. Other books, on the other hand, such as "The Mismeasure of Man," emphasize that cultural biases exist in the creation of standardized tests, not excluding IQ tests. Likewise, IQ tests do take into account the effects on test performance of factors such as malnutrition and other detrimental effects of poverty. IQ tests also tend to fail to recognize creative ability, which could actually be more inherent in some races than others.