F OR years, psychologists in the New York City Board of Education, like those throughout the country, have used the Revised Stanford-Binet as the basic technique in measuring general intelligence. Although they have found it a most useful instrument, they have felt that it is very heavily weighted with verbal items and has yielded an inadequate measure for many children from culturally limited homes. Further, the test has not lent itself too well to diagnostic analysis of abilities because of the diverse types of items at different age levels.When the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children was constructed, the psychologists were eager to try it out, for it seemed to answer many of their criticisms of the Binet. It included items to measure similar abilities at all age levels, permitted more opportunity for diagnostic analysis, gave a performance rating as well as a verbal and full-scale rating, and had material that was appealing to children and simple for the examiner to administer.Before accepting an instrument like the WISC to take the place of the Binet, however, the psychologists felt that not only would it be 1The writers would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following psychologists who participated in the testing program:

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