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Commentary of the Special Issue Regarding Black Children: a California School Psychology Perspective

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Abstract

As editors for this special journal, Graves and Woods have compiled a discussion of the accuracy of the labels for Black children. It is exciting that they have brought together a team of scholars to tackle the very specific question posed by Hilliard (1991) and Guthrie (1976/2002) about the validity of IQ testing in regards to accurately and predictively focusing on high quality assessments for Black youth. As practitioner[1]scholars who have trained and practiced for nearly 50 combined years in California, we appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective regarding the important topic of this special issue. In America, 49 other states and its territories do not have a ban on tests that can be used with students. However, in California, since the 1970’s, due to the Larry P v. Riles court case and resultant directives from the Special Education Department within the California Department of Education (CDE), there has been a ban on using Intellectual Quotient (IQ) tests for use in special education placement for Black students in any of the 13 handicapping conditions, which is an expansion of the findings for Larry P. v. Riles , 495 F. Supp. 926 (California 1979) which dealt exclusively with Intellectual Disability and whose expansion was ruled against in Crawford v. Honig 37 F .3d 485 (9 th Cir. 1994). For this commentary, the authors answer the following questions. What would happen if the ban was lifted in California? How does California special education eligibility, with its injunction not to use cognitive ability/intelligence tests for Black students, compare to the rest of the nation that does not have such an injunction? Should school psychologists use IQ tests or not and is that the best question to ask? The authors conclude with recommendations for practitioners and scholars.

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Contributions

Both authors contributed to the commentary conception, lit review, research, and information in the manuscript. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by the second author, and the lit review by the first author. The first draft of the manuscript was written by the authors who also commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Brandon Gamble.

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Ethical Consideration and Informed Consent

Ethical consideration for data reviewed in the commentary was taken regarding the data being available in the public domain (i.e., State or Federal webpages). All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest other than unpaid positions on the board for the California Association of School Psychologists as well as the Association of Black Psychologists.

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Gamble, B., Hiramoto, J. Commentary of the Special Issue Regarding Black Children: a California School Psychology Perspective. Contemp School Psychol 25, 213–218 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-021-00382-5

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