Oxford parent shares daughter's journey with cognitive testing in new book

When Larry Slocum, manager of the Oxford Farmers Market, sees Louisa Casper each Saturday, he dances.

“We have a little dance pattern that we’ve created,” he says. “At the end, I always dip her down … and she laughs, and I laugh and the musicians laugh.”

Louisa, 12, was born with Down syndrome, a genetic condition caused by a duplicated chromosome. The condition can lead to physical and mental challenges including a longer time learning speech, poor muscle tone, loose joints and more, according to the CDC.

The diagnosis hasn’t stopped Louisa from making friends with everyone she meets, from Slocum to her teachers and classmates in the Talawanda School District. It has, however, created some educational barriers and testing requirements that her mom, Pepper Stetler, says put pressure on parents to put undue focus on scoring.

Those testing requirements, and particularly Louisa’s experience with IQ tests, are the subject of Stetler’s new book, “A Measure of Intelligence,” set to be published Aug. 20.

How a mandated test became the basis for a book

Louisa has always been a people person. She remembers which teachers have lost loved ones recently or which friends have just started wearing glasses or gotten haircuts, and she shares those details when people come up in conversation.

“People know her really well here,” Stetler said. “She’s an incredibly kind of social and friendly person, so she’s got a lot of friends.”

Louisa hasn’t just made a lot of friends in town — she’s gotten involved in everything, too. She says her activities include ballet, violin (though she stopped playing recently), gymnastics and cheerleading. This year, she’s on the Talawanda Middle School cheerleading team.

“I made the cheerleading team,” Louisa said. “I’ve been practicing my cheering … I’ve got my backpack and my shirts.”

Stetler said her first brush with IQ tests came seven years ago when she enrolled Louisa in kindergarten. In Ohio, evaluations are required to enroll students in special education and provide Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs).

“I never really saw a school administrator saying, ‘Well, she has this score on this test; that means she can’t do this,’” Stetler said. “There was never any kind of direct cause-effect relationship that I ever saw.”

Even though Stetler didn’t think administrators were making decisions for Louisa’s education based solely on her IQ, she worried about reducing her daughter to a number. Those fears were compounded when she started digging into the history of IQ tests, which were originally created to measure for “general intelligence.” The original tests tied into eugenics and racism, and some researchers have continued to falsely link intelligence to race and class through IQ tests with publications like “The Bell Curve” in 1994.

“I just kind of wanted to understand the relationship between the past and the present and Louisa’s own situation,” Stetler said. “… There was never any kind of traumatic decision made about Louisa’s education that I saw because of this test, but it is uncomfortable to me that she has a number that quantifies her intelligence that’s part of her record for the rest of her life.”

Stetler is an art history professor at Miami University. Using her background in research, she began to explore the history of IQ tests more thoroughly as Louisa progressed through elementary school, setting the basis for her book.

The role of testing at Talawanda

Louisa didn’t have strong feelings about taking the IQ test, but more traditional tests in academic settings can be frustrating to her.

“State tests — they stink,” Louisa said.

Like state tests, though, Louisa is required to take cognitive tests every three years to keep access to the resources and support she gets through her IEP.

David Annable, a school psychologist at Kramer Elementary, said the district always receives parents’ consent for any tests or evaluations, many of which may be required to meet eligibility criteria. IQ tests specifically vary by age and can take anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes, and most of the time Annable has found that, like Louisa, students are less stressed about them since it isn’t similar to academic tests with writing.

The emphasis on parental permission doesn’t stop at testing, Annable said.

“It’s one set of consent for us to do testing,” Annable said. “It’s a whole nother set of consent for the parent to agree that the child qualifies for special education services, and then to agree to what any of the services look like.”

While Annable said educators and psychologists alike are aware of the history of IQ tests, they remain an important tool in the toolbox for childhood education. He said it’s important to put the results in context and not make any decisions about a student’s education based on a single number.

“The early history of IQ tests in the United States in particular is pretty messy and has some pretty awful periods,” Annable said. “Those tests, though, are very different from the tests we have now, although some of them share the same names.”

In the 2022-23 school year, 12.9% Annable said state law requires that schools provide education to students in the “least restrictive environment,” meaning that the district minimizes how often students with IEPs might be pulled out of class.

“The process itself is very team-based and it’s very individual to each kid,” Annable said. “Testing feels like a very structured and systematic thing, and it is, but it’s just a small part of this bigger process about how we support each student.”

What the future holds

Stetler said Louisa has had great teachers who respected their decision-making process for her education throughout her time at Talawanda. Her goal in writing about “A Measure of Intelligence” is to start a broader conversation on what it means to discuss intelligence and whether such a complex trait can be summed up with a number.

“My wanting to write this book was also motivated by seeing the kinds of pressures on most mothers,” Stetler said. “What the expectations of intelligence are in society, and the pressures on most mothers in the world to kind of fulfill those.”

As for Louisa, after spending the summer watching gymnastics (and Snoop Dogg) at the Olympics and traveling to Switzerland, she has big plans for her own future beyond seventh grade.

“I want to be an artists, and I really want to be a gymnast, and a ballerina,” Louisa said. “And I like to cook and bake, so I’m going to be a baker.”

“A Measure of Intelligence” is set to be published by Diversion Books on Aug. 20 and is available for preorder on Amazon and Bookshop.

Editor's note: A version of this story which appeared in the Aug. 9 print edition of the Oxford Free Press incorrectly included Louisa's last name as Stetler. It has been changed online to reflect that Louisa's last name is Casper.