Suit Charges Bias in District’s Refusal to Give IQ Test

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 accusing an Orange County school district of 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 that 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 would 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.”

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.

Such a law might protect some children, Strong conceded, but not her daughter. Brianna, a second-grader, 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: 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 believes 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 cannot 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 . . . and inferior,” according to the suit, 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.”

Oxman argued that the school district, as well as other education agencies in the state, has 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.”