The origins of intelligence testing go back to late 19th-century France. The French government began to require that children attend at least some school. Legislators realized the system needed to identify special needs children and so commissioned psychologists, including Theodore Simon and Alfred Binet, to study mental retardation and how to determine if a child has special needs. The result of Simon and Binet's research was a cognitive intelligence test that asked progressively harder questions.
IQ tests can help identify gifted and talented individuals and place them in classes with a more rigorous curriculum and challenge their higher level of cognitive skills. Those who receive a better education have more opportunity to become part of the upper-class. This creates a cycle where smarter people achieve better salaries and give their offspring better educations.
Developing talent early benefits society by providing a higher-quality education to those who more likely to invent new technology and medical breakthroughs. The more doctors and well-educated people a nation acquires, the more taxes the government receives to spend on improvements to infrastructure and society. Scientific advances also give countries a competitive advantage against other nations in the global market.
Some believe that separating children based on the results of a standardized test increases inequality in society by forcing lower performing students into certain roles, usually ones that do not pay well. Much like the better-performing students who go on to higher paying jobs and create a positive cycle, poorer students with lower incomes create a cycle of poverty. Their children also have little educational opportunity and stay in the lower class of society.
The debate over the usefulness of IQ tests has raged for decades. Some believe that cultural biases in IQ testing work against ethnic minorities. Important court cases such as Parents in Action on Special Education (PASE) v. Hannonost and Larry P. v. Riles claimed IQ tests standardize their questions for white, middle-class citizens. Some wordings and visual aids that appear on these tests are not common in minority cultures, causing confusion and lower test scores for minorities. The courts gave conflicting views of standardized testing in the cases. The court ruled agreeing that IQ tests are biased in the Riles case. In the PASE case, the court ruled IQ tests were legitimate as long as other factors were used to place students in advanced classes.