Letters to the Editor It Is No Time To Reinst

To the Editor:

I write to demand correction of two serious errors in a recent article ("Appeals Court Upholds Black Parents' Right To Learn Child's I.Q.," Oct. 12, 1994). You were absolutely wrong to report that U.S. District Court Judge Robert F. Peckham "never reached a conclusion about whether [I.Q.] tests are racially biased" and that the appeals-court ruling now reinstitutes I.Q. testing for African-American students.

In his landmark 1979 ruling in Larry P. v. Riles , Judge Peckham detailed the racist animus behind the development of I.Q. tests in the country, the inability of these tests to define, much less measure, "intelligence," and the fact that these tests are designed to measure the learning of only those children from white cultural backgrounds. Judge Peckham most definitely concluded that the I.Q. tests used in California's public schools "are racially and culturally biased" and halted their use in identifying African-Americans as mildly mentally impaired and placing them in...