Suit Filed Over Denial of IQ Test to Black Girl : Schools: Mother’s civil rights filing charges Saddleback Valley school district with discrimination.

A Laguna Hills mother whose 7-year-old daughter was denied an intelligence test because she is African American filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Friday charging a local school district with discrimination.

The dispute stems from a landmark 1979 federal court ruling that prohibits California public schools from giving standardized intelligence tests to African American children to determine mental retardation. The ruling, which found the tests were racially and culturally biased, was expanded in 1986 to prohibit IQ tests for all African American children who are candidates for special education and other remedial classes.

Students of other races are not included in the ban.

In the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Wendy Strong alleges that the Saddleback Valley Unified School District has failed to provide adequate and fair testing for her daughter, Brianna Combash, because of her race.

“The bottom line is that Brianna hasn’t been getting a proper education,” said Strong, whose daughter is struggling in school. “The school district is going to have to put together comparable and efficient testing for African American students, so no other parent or child has to go through this.”

District officials denied the allegations of discrimination, but could not comment further, citing policy that prohibits them from talking about pending lawsuits or individual student matters.

“The district is working closely with the state Department of Education regarding this case,” spokeswoman Elaine Carter said. “As a district, we must comply with both state and federal mandates, including the federal court order dealing with IQ testing. We’re interested in working cooperatively with all the parties involved.”

Added district lawyer Dave Larsen: “The district has consistently and properly complied with state and federal court directives in this matter.”

Strong said she was shocked last month to learn that the 15-year-old federal court ruling prevented Brianna from taking an IQ test that might help identify possible learning problems, such as attention deficit disorder.

While Strong said she could understand how such a law might protect some children, she doesn’t believe it should apply to her daughter. Brianna, a second-grader at Linda Vista Elementary School in Mission Viejo, has grown up in a middle-class Laguna Hills neighborhood. Her father is African American and Strong is white.

Strong said she was even more upset when she learned of her options in dealing with the situation: Brianna could be given an alternative test that does not involve intelligence quotients or she could be reclassified as white, which would make her instantly eligible for an IQ test.

Strong said she believed the alternative test was inferior and inconclusive, and that changing Brianna’s ethnic classification would be morally wrong. A single mother with two children, Strong said she couldn’t afford the estimated $700 for a private IQ test, nor should she have to pay for something that other children get free.

Meanwhile, Brianna has complained that she feels “branded, as though she could not win, and inferior,” according to the lawsuit, which also names Brianna’s principal and a school psychologist as defendants.

Strong’s lawyer, R. Brian Oxman, described the policy of allowing the change in racial classification as a form of “ethnic cleansing which was designed to force black children to abandon their racial heritage and change their race to white in order to get an education.”

“No child should be forced to change their racial heritage,” he said.

He said the school district, as well as others in the state, have had enough time to develop fair tests for all children.

“This controversy has been going on since 1979,” he said. “You would think in all these years somebody would come up with a test that is not culturally biased.”

District officials have said alternative testing methods that do not rely on intelligence quotients are more difficult and time-consuming to use, but have been used before locally with success.

There is no state or federal law requiring the use of IQ tests, although they are used commonly throughout the state as tools to help place children in special education classes. They also are used to place students, including African Americans, in programs for the gifted.

State education officials, however, have urged school districts to stop using IQ tests for any child. Some urban districts, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, have eliminated IQ tests to determine placement in special education classes.