[tptacek]

Be very careful extrapolating from Wikipedia on IQ. The science is subtle and not at all as stable as the encyclopedia makes it sound. One of the reasons people in the field talk about this stuff so gingerly is the proclivity laypeople have for taking half-baked science and turning it into public policy.

[Thamiel]

I know the difficulties surrounding IQ, I was just quoting it to show that predictions about future ability can be made at that age.

[tptacek]

... and my point was, probably no they cannot.

[Thamiel]

I quoted a source for my claim, imperfect though it may be. Can you support your assertion?

[tptacek]

Your source was Wikipedia.

More to the point: you can't in one breath say "I know the difficulties surrounding IQ" and in the next say "any source I cite about IQ must represent settled science". One or the other of those statements must not be true.

[Thamiel]

Would you kindly elaborate on what you perceive to be the subtleties about IQ? Besides the danger of mistakenly thinking an important factor is the only factor, which is of course a common problem. About predictive qualities in childhood, take a look at [0], maybe this study is more to your liking. But anyway, this discussion is about the predictability of academic success in young children, so please provide a source for your claim that such predictions are infeasible.

[0] Deary, I. J., Whalley, L. J., Lemmon, H., Crawford, J. R., & Starr, J. M. (2000). The stability of individual differences in mental ability from childhood to old age: Follow-up of the 1932 Scottish mental survey. Intelligence, 28, 49 -55