July 12, 2009

Civil Rights v. Civil Service

From the New York Times:
Trial by Firefighters
by Lani Guinier and Susan Sturm

... But the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision last month — that New Haven should not have scrapped the test — perpetuates profound misconceptions about the capacity of paper-and-pencil tests to gauge a person’s potential on the job. Exams like the one the New Haven firefighters took are neither designed nor administered to identify the employees most qualified for promotion. And Ms. Torre’s identity-politics sloganeering diverts attention from what we need most: a clear-eyed reassessment of our blind faith in entrenched testing regimes.

New Haven used a multiple-choice test to measure its firefighters’ retention of information from national firefighting textbooks and study guides. Civil service tests like these do not identify people who are best suited for leadership positions.

This one sentence is the most interesting part of the op-ed: Sturm und Guinier give away the hushed up fact that "civil rights" -- as currently understood by, say, Sonia Sotomayor -- is an assault on America's once proud tradition of civil service reforms.

As you'll recall, when a disappointed government job-seeker assassinated President James Garfield, elevating the Republican ringmaster of the spoils system, Chester Arthur, to the White House, a national outcry against the politicization of lower level government jobs forced Arthur to sign a major Civil Service bill.

Objective written tests for would-be government employees originated in Imperial China, and the idea was transmitted to Europe by early Jesuit missionaries, such as the great Matteo Ricci, who were impressed by how much better China was administered than their own countries. The Chinese tests were not seemingly all that "job-related" -- they consisted of questions requiring elegant essays on the Confucian classics, with bonus points for artistic calligraphy. That doesn't, at first glance, seem to have much to do with, say, keeping the Grand Canal dredged and open to shipping. But, of course, they were tests of IQ, literacy, and diligence, which predicts a lot more about job performance than, say, who you know.

Civil service testing in the U.S. consistently improved in the 20th Century, with the PACE federal civil service test introduced in the mid-1970s being a masterpiece of state of the art social science.

Objective civil service benefited blacks in the first half of the 20th Century, with the heart of the black middle class settling in Washington D.C. because they could get federal jobs by passing blind-graded written tests.

However, as minority political power grew, minorities stopped wanting blind-graded testing extended to fight bigotry and instead wanted it rolled back to benefit themselves over more qualified job applicants. Thus, in January 1981, the outgoing Carter Administration signed a consent decree in the Luevano discrimination case junking PACE, and promising that the federal government would replace it in the future with a test that would be both predictively valid and have much less disparate impact. Of course, 28 years later, the federal government, despite its vast resources, has never been able to come up with that mythical replacement test. So, federal hiring has been based ever since on a hodge-podge of evaluative techniques, with unfortunate consequences for the competence of the federal government.

The most important skills of any fire department lieutenant or captain are steady command presence, sound judgment and the ability to make life-or-death decisions under pressure. In a city that is nearly 60 percent black and Latino, the ability to promote cross-racial harmony under stress is also crucial.

I dunno. I kind of think that knowing what the hell you are doing has something to do with leadership. And, how, exactly does promoting minorities who know less about what they are doing into leadership positions over whites promote "cross-racial harmony under stress"?

Look, I think a reasonable argument could be asserted that police jobs are so inherently political (as the etymological roots suggest) in terms of interviewing suspects and witnesses and the like that a racial quota system might make, sometimes, police departments more effective. That's a much, much harder argument to make plausible for fire departments, however, since fires don't have race.

Fire departments, like most government agencies, are monopolies, so they aren't inherently incentivized by market competition to hire the most effective managers and employees. Thus, strict civil service rules have been developed to produce objective competition for jobs. The diversicrats like Guinier and Sotomayor hate blind-graded competitions, precisely because they are honest and fair.

These skills are not well measured by tests that reward memorization and ask irrelevant questions like whether it is best to approach a particular emergency from uptown or downtown even when the city isn’t oriented that way.

Jeez, this uptown / downtown question is going to be the Regatta Question of the next three decades, isn't it? Instead of calling these kind of specious talking points "folklore," we should call them "elitelore."

As far as I can see from this essay, "uptown/downtown" is the entire factual content of their critique of the New Haven test.

The Civil Service Board in New Haven declined to certify the test not only because of concerns about difference in scores between black and white firefighters but also because it failed to assess qualities essential for firefighting.

C'mon, stop yanking our chains. The city spent a huge amount of money having a good test devised. Read Alito's opinion for the full behind the scenes play by play. The politicians only decided to change the rule after they found out what the score was. That's a violation of Hammurabi 101.

As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent, tests drawn from national textbooks often do not match a city’s local firefighting needs.

May I respectfully suggest that Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn't know much about fire department testing. Moreover, she's not interested in learning. Look, New Haven spent $100k having the test customized, so that's wildly misleading. Personally, I suspect a national test would have worked fine.

The point of the customization is to get minority leaders, such as the black guy who is #2 in the NHFD, to agree that the test is fair and valid -- which he did. As Alito pointed out, the mayor's staff maneuvered to keep the black deputy chief's opinion of the test's fairness hushed up.

Most American fire departments have abandoned such tests or limited the multiple-choice format to 30 percent or less of an applicant’s score. In New Haven, the test still accounted for 60 percent of the score.

Gosh, why do you think so many fire departments have gone over to subjectively graded tests where the judges can see the race of the applicant? In order to racially discriminate. (This really isn't that complicated.)

Compounding the problem, insignificant numerical score differences were used to rank the firefighter candidates.

This is the kind of thing that people say after the game has been played and they know the outcome. "Hey, when our would-be tying baserunner got tagged out by the catcher at home plate with two outs in the 9th inning, he was only 3 inches from scoring, so therefore, there should be like a 3 inch wide penumbra around home plate that counts the same as home plate, so we shouldn't have lost!" Obviously, when you put it that way, you can see the special pleading involved. But people don't think as rigorously about law and public policy as they about baseball, so this kind of sophistry is very appealing to the Who? Whom? crowd.

Guinier rolls on:

What should a city do when its promotion test puts a majority of its population at a disadvantage and is also unlikely to predict essential job performance? People who excel on such a test may expect to be promoted. But testing should not be about allocating prizes to winners. No one has a proprietary right to a particular open job, even if that person worked hard preparing for a test.

There's a basic rule of ballfield fairness that you don't wait to see what the final score is and then change the rules to benefit one side.

When a city replaces a bad test, as New Haven wanted to do, the employees who did well on it do not lose their right to compete for promotions; they merely need to compete according to procedures that actually identify people who advance the mission of saving lives and property — and enhance the department’s reputation in the community for treating all citizens with respect.

All the evidence that it was a "bad test" was ginned up post hoc, after the results were in. The city had spent a lot of money to have a legally defensible test, but, having seen the results, it junked it.

Yet many Americans believe so strongly that tests are fair that they never question the outcomes, especially when those outcomes conform to stereotypes about people of color. Such preconceptions lead to the conclusion that blacks or Latinos who don’t do well must lack individual initiative or ability.

I wonder where those stereotypes come from?

The basic statistical fact is that, relatively on average, blacks and Latinos lack individual initiative and ability. But you can get Watsoned out of your job for pointing that out in public.

As the plaintiff in the New Haven case, Frank Ricci, declared, “If you work hard, you can succeed in America.” His lawyer went further: White officials who voted for a better assessment system must have been lowering “the professional standard of competence,” she said, “for the sake of identity politics.” Yet, in New Haven, no one was promoted instead of the white firefighters.

Jeez, the politically favored folks got "acting" promotions. Can't the NYT afford better dissimulators than these two?

In fact, many fire departments with a history of discrimination, like New Haven’s, still stack the deck in favor of candidates who have relationships to people already in the fire department. Those without $500 for the study materials or a relative or friend from whom they might borrow the books were put at a disadvantage.

Those damn "fire buffs" are racist because they try hard to learn their jobs.

Moreover, it was the firefighters union — which sided with the white firefighters in the Supreme Court — that negotiated the contractual mandate giving disproportionate weight to the multiple-choice test. Those negotiations occurred two decades ago when the leadership of the department was virtually all white.

So, the guys who will be risking their lives under the officers wanted the officers selected by a method that is at least 60% objective and blind-graded. You'll note that the 40% that was oral was rigged by the city in 2003 by having two out of three judges on the panels be minorities.

Taking this into account, after five days of public hearings, Malcolm Webber, one of the white members of the New Haven Civil Service Board, said: “I’ve heard enough testimony here to give me great doubts about the test itself and the testing — some of the procedures. And I believe we can do better.”

Oh, come on... Please read Justice Alito's account of what really happened in this charade.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court blessed entrenched testing regimes that do not advance public goals and fell for the story about identity politics run amok. That doesn’t mean, though, that cities need to hire and promote firefighters who are “book smart” but “street dumb.”

Fortunately the court left room for municipalities to develop alternative assessments to promote people with the skills needed to advance public safety in a diverse citizenry. Indeed, most American fire departments have already rejected written tests in favor of “assessment centers” that simulate on-the-job challenges and focus on problem-solving in the relevant context. In so doing, city officials demonstrate that their decisions are wiser than the Supreme Court’s.

In other words, let's use testing methods where the judges can see the race of the applicant, so a proper thumb can be put on the scale.

Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Susan Sturm, a Columbia law professor, are the authors of “Who’s Qualified?

The jokes write themselves.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

65 comments:

Rider Ride said...

Steve, the two authors of the article represent big scary reservoirs of intellectual firepower that your small mind obviously cannot fathom trash. Give it up.

Why not just leave the heavy lifting to the great thinkers of our time dirt? Ruth Bader Ginsberg on Law, Al Gore on the Environment, Paul Krugman on Economics, Barack Obama on Foreign Policy dump.

These are names that will go down in history as great geniuses drool. Together they represent a cohesive intellectual vanguard for global governance and morally defensible social engineering diaper.

You are like a small mindless dog snapping at the heels of legends garbage. It's really a pathetic display.

Anonymous said...

Civil service tests like these do not identify people who are best suited for leadership positions.




Yeah, everybody knows that the best way to indentify people who are best suited for leadership positions is by counting the number of people in different ethnic groups in the community.

This "leadership" claptrap seems to be the designated escape hatch for the left on this matter. The black firefighters may be dumb and lazy but we're expected to believe that they possess wonderful "leadership" abilities.

Anonymous said...

These people are never going to stop, ever. I wish bad things would happen to them.

Unknown said...

Steve Sailer says:

Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Susan Sturm, a Columbia law professor, are the authors of “Who’s Qualified?”

The jokes write themselves.


I think that we will be hearing from these jokers alot more over the next period. Ms Guinier in particularly, seems pretty well-connected. She was a condidante of President Clinton and, according to Wikipedia has been very influential in promoting a new theory of democratic voting that will give greater weight to minority preferences, instead of the Tyranny of the Majority.

Also, the NYT reports that Barak Obama is well-versed in her theories, but, as always, is too canny to come out on one side or the other:

In his voting rights course, Mr. Obama taught Lani Guinier’s proposals for structuring elections differently to increase minority representation. Opponents attacked those suggestions when Ms. Guinier was nominated as assistant attorney general for civil rights in 1993, costing her the post.

“I think he thought they were good and worth trying,” said David Franklin, who now teaches law at DePaul University in Chicago.

But whether out of professorial reserve or budding political caution, Mr. Obama would not say so directly. “He surfaced all the competing points of view on Guinier’s proposals with total neutrality and equanimity,” Mr. Franklin said. “He just let the class debate the merits of them back and forth.”

Nanonymous said...

Sickening. Two professional race hustlers demonstrate how one does not need to pay attention to the facts or even common sense to be PC "scholars" in our most prestigious universities. Lie. Lie through your teeth. That's the ticket. These two women are intelligent enough to know they are lying. Their entire careers were build on lies. This is not a case self-delusion.

Black Sea said...

"Unfortunately, the Supreme Court blessed entrenched testing regimes that do not advance public goals . . ."

It's those "public goals" that are the crux of the argument. Actually, they are the sum of the argument. How can you oppose "public goals," particularly those articulated by Ivy League law professors, rather than the public?

eh said...

What a farce. We all know the test is probably a joke, intellectually -- the kind of thing you'd expect to be given to a bunch of firefighters, most of whom have never seen the inside of a college classroom, much less cracked a calculus book. And all the fulsome language about firefighting and firefighters in this article -- enhance the department’s reputation in the community for treating all citizens with respect. Huh? They're supposed to put out fires. Look, I don't want to denigrate the job (it is necessary, although more communities could no doubt get along nicely with an all volunteer force) or those who do it (they're decent enough), but most of them wanted that job because of the fat pay, extremely generous benefits (including a cushy retirement), and the many do-nothing days on the job. All of which together was, in most cases, for more and far better than they could have done in the private sector. It's kind of an inside joke, like all the guys in high school who wanted to drive a beer delivery truck for a living.

And now these Sotomayor hearings. Can't wait.

Dennis Dale said...

Perhaps not quite a straight line to this, but:
The Crooked Road

Chen said...

The problem is that the more predictive the test the greater the disparate impact. This is because groups differ on average by 1 std deviation on IQ.

This dilemma is discussed here by Professor Linda Gottfredson, in the context of a new exam for the Nassau County Police:

"Research in the last two decades helps to explain why. The research has provided a fairly clear picture of what kinds of worker traits and aptitudes predict different aspects of job performance and how those traits differ across demographic subgroups (e.g., see the review by Russell, Reynolds, & Campbell, 1994). It has thus been able to explain why some selection devices have more validity or disparate impact than others, and begun to chart how much of both different selection batteries produce.

The major legal dilemma in selection is that the best overall predictors of job performance, namely, cognitive tests, have the most disparate impact on racial-ethnic minorities. Their considerable disparate impact is not due to any imperfections in the tests. Rather, it is due to the tests' measuring essential skills and abilities that happen not to be distributed equally among groups (Schmidt, 1988). Those differences currently are large enough to cause a major problem. U.S. Department of Education literacy surveys show, for example, that black college graduates, on the average, exhibit the cognitive skill levels of white high school graduates without any college (Kirsch, Jungeblut, & Kolstad, 1993, p. 127).

This dilemma means that the disparate impact of cognitive tests can be reduced only by reducing their ability to predict job performance. In fact, this problem is so well known among personnel selection professionals that there is considerable research estimating how much productivity is lost by reducing the impact of cognitive tests by different degrees (e.g., Hartigan & Wigdor, 1989; Hunter, Schmidt, & Rauschenberger, 1984; Wigdor & Hartigan, 1988; see also Brody, this issue, for a more general discussion of the same dilemma). There are two general methods of reducing the impact of cognitive tests: lower the hiring standards only for the lower-scoring groups, or lower standards for all races and ethnicities. Double standards lower productivity less than low common standards because they maintain standards for the majority of workers. Their drawbacks are that they are obviously race-conscious and that they create disparate impact in future promotions. In contrast, low common standards have the virtue of being race-neutral, but they devastate workforce performance across the board."

http://www.ipacweb.org/files/nassau/gottfredson3.html

testing99 said...

The broader issue is, why is their so much political support for quotas in hiring, promotions, and so on?

Because most of the alliance of Women, Gays, Blacks, and Hispanics benefit. That's the elite's political alliance, all across the West (substitute Muslims for non-Whites in Europe) to thwart populism.

It's only going to get worse with Obama's election and power-grab. Indeed since AA benefits women greatly, you'll see considerable support for Sotomayor and her theories, and the defenestration of Frank Ricci. Who is about to get the full Joe the Plumber treatment. To be reminded who is boss.

This is the politics behind the editorial. Who gets hired by New Haven to fight fires should in the universe of say, 1955, be of no interest to the New York Times or it's readers. It is of intense interest because government is the only economic game in town, post-Bush (and he grew it horribly in his term, worse under Obama) AND it allows for "total victory."

I.E. all hiring, everywhere, and college admission, every aspect of life, quota-ized. All the time, everywhere.

Anonymous said...

I wish Testy were here to explain to us exactly WHO benefits from AA and WHO supports it. I wonder how single women and white beta males fit into his scheme. Too bad we'll never know.

Mr. Anon said...

"eh said...

Look, I don't want to denigrate the job (it is necessary, although more communities could no doubt get along nicely with an all volunteer force) or those who do it (they're decent enough), but most of them wanted that job because of the fat pay, extremely generous benefits (including a cushy retirement), and the many do-nothing days on the job. All of which together was, in most cases, for more and far better than they could have done in the private sector."

You may not have wanted to denigrate the job, but you did. It's certainly true that firemen have a cushy civil-service job with great benefits and retirement. The difference between them and other civil service employees, and most private-sector employees for that matter, is that they are called upon to risk their lives from time to time. One often reads about firemen who are killed in the line of duty. That doesn't usually happen to a DMV examiner, a software developer, or a claims adjuster.

BTW, I found your comment comparing guys who want to be firemen to the high-school kid who wants to drive a beer truck funny, as I once knew a guy who drove a beer truck who aspired to be......a fireman. Perhaps there's some truth in all that.

Mr. Anon said...

"The most important skills of any fire department lieutenant or captain are steady command presence, sound judgment and the ability to make life-or-death decisions under pressure. In a city that is nearly 60 percent black and Latino, the ability to promote cross-racial harmony under stress is also crucial."

As you said, Steve, how is "command presence" enhanced by a relative ignorance of one's own job? Nothing undermines morale in an organization better than the realization by the workers that their manager is incompetent. And why is there often an underlying assumption that blacks will have greater command presence than whites? Because they often talk loud? Because they often possess a self-confidence unwarranted by their abilities?

"But testing should not be about allocating prizes to winners. No one has a proprietary right to a particular open job, even if that person worked hard preparing for a test."

Aren't Guinier and Sturm saying here that certain people DO have a proprietary right to the job - in the interests of a racial representation in the fire department that is proportional to that in the city? I guess we are supposed to read what they meant (and didn't write) rather than what they wrote (and didn't mean).

Mr. Anon said...

"Jack said...

I think that we will be hearing from these jokers alot more over the next period. Ms Guinier in particularly, seems pretty well-connected. She was a condidante of President Clinton and, according to Wikipedia has been very influential in promoting a new theory of democratic voting that will give greater weight to minority preferences, instead of the Tyranny of the Majority."

I have come to the conclusion that Ms. Guinier was on to something, with her proportional representative (PR) voting (it's probably not her idea, but she was a vocal exponent of it). As we conservatives are no longer a majority in this country, I favor a system which relieves, at least to some extent, the tyranny of the now liberal and non-white majority. PR may be the only way for us to elect genuine conservative (or even - dare we hope - reactionary) politicians, and so get ourselves some representation in the halls of government. And as minorities are more likely to be poor, and the poor are less likely to vote, it still may not help them as much as Ms. Guinier thinks.

Proportional Representation. A bad idea, whose time has come.

Anonymous said...

As a German reader, I've read Guinier's and Sturm's paper with interest. It recalls some points national socialists made in the Thirties. National Socialists were, like Guinier and Sturm, very skeptical about book smartness. In fact the N.S. army psychologists invented the idea of "assessment centers" in order to choose candidates for officer's training. Questionably, in those times it may have been less a matter of race but of class (I never heard that "nordic looking" persons were favorised, but that's open to discussion).

noseworm said...

This made me think back to South Africa. The official solution there was to have white crews for white neighborhoods and black crews for black neighborhoods. Many white neighborhoods also had blacks in their crew because few whites wanted to become fire fighters, choosing rather to become cops or go to the army.
The uncanny thing about all this race hustling a la Sotomayor, is that unwittingly we are slowly moving back to a segregation regime.

OT: I find the Goldmann Sachs profit prediction much more worrisome. These people have just recovered from the greatest financial correction since the Depression, and are making money again, perhaps 3 months after it hit. Do they have a tunnel connecting their vaults with that of the treasury? Its gotta be a bankers dream, being financed by and secured by the tax payer, yet being private and having no accountability to the tax payer. Is there a historic precedent for this? What are the underlying mechanisms which make this incestuous relationship function? At face value it seems fraudulent.

Anonymous said...

"As a German reader, I've read Guinier's and Sturm's paper with interest. It recalls some points national socialists made in the Thirties. National Socialists were, like Guinier and Sturm, very skeptical about book smartness. In fact the N.S. army psychologists invented the idea of "assessment centers" in order to choose candidates for officer's training. Questionably, in those times it may have been less a matter of race but of class (I never heard that "nordic looking" persons were favorised, but that's open to discussion)."



What many people don't realize is that National Socialism was foremost about leveling the playing fields for working class people in Germany, a country which at that time was still very class conscious. The Jewish issue was initially secondary. In that sense the modern left has a lot more in common with Nazism than they would want to know.

Billare said...

Mr. Anon,

No, I disagree. While proportional preferences may make sense on a micro level to maintain some higher standard of productivity, they inflame political passions and demarcate ethnic groupings, precisely something that we need to moving away from in a time of demographic change. You will validate identity politics and racial bloc voting if hiring quotas are ever codified into law.

Slightly OT: I was passing by a chattering TV a couple of days ago and overheard a puff piece on CNN about Obama's foreign-policy trip to Ghana and it they were explaing how he supposedly thought it quite important to explain to his two children their "heritage" while he was there (implying a legacy of bondage from slavery or something like that). I just thought it remarkable how megalithic and stupid the slavery culture in universities has become, such that an East African Nilotic, who if anything would experience slavery at the hands of an Arab, would think that West African history and the Triangular Trade had any relevance to him whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

These two authors - fighting in the featherwieght class - ever wonder where all those Jewish and Asian firfighters are?

OneSTDV said...

I also don't understand the "leadership" criticism. Isn't one requirement of good leaders that they have a comprehensive mastery of the relevant material? Do we want leaders to have good people and organizing skills, but have no idea how to apply them in various situations, like, say, when a fire is going on?

I wrote a similar blog post when the Ricci decision came down.

MSM on Ricci Decision

TH said...

As a German reader, I've read Guinier's and Sturm's paper with interest. It recalls some points national socialists made in the Thirties. National Socialists were, like Guinier and Sturm, very skeptical about book smartness.

It is often claimed that the Nazis banned IQ tests because Jews outscored "Aryans" in them. I've never seen that claim substantiated, but I've propagated it anyway, rebuking anti-IQ crusaders for taking side with the Nazis.

AMac said...

On the "uptown downtown" question:

It was cited by Judge Janet Arterton of the US District Court for Connecticut in her 9/28/06 denial for motion of summary judgement. Arterton's decision is Appendix B, here .

--- begin quote ---

The CSB held five hearings between January and March 2004 on the issue of whether to certify the test results.

[snip]

During the first hearing, the CSB also took statements from several New Haven firefighters who complained that some of the questions were not relevant to knowledge or skills necessary for the positions (see, e.g., Statement of James Watson, id. at 85 ("I think this test was unfair. We don't use a lot of things that were on that test" such as whether to park a firetruck facing "uptown" or "downtown"))...

--- end quote ---

Arterton got the firefighter's name wrong; it was James Watkins.

From the 1/23/04 New Haven Register story "Fire exams pose problems, city lawyer says": "'I think the test was unfair,' said firefighter James Watkins, an African-American who echoed the sentiments of many others in the department. He said some of the questions were misleading and outdated and related to tactics in New York, not here."

That story's archived at this pro-Ricci site, which also has all test-takers' scores of the Captain's and Lieutenant's exams listed by race. (It would be interesting to correlate oral and written scores by stated race of test-taker.)

Diversity cheerleader Tim Wise spins the issue this way:

"...some material on the test was completely inapplicable to the New Haven community... For instance, one question asked whether it was best to approach an emergency from uptown or downtown--terminology with no valid meaning in New Haven given the way in which the community is constructed..."

Volokh commenter "Guest In the Know" rebutted Wise with:

"One candidate (belatedly I might add) complained about a question that used the terms 'uptown-downtown' and said those were ‘New York’ terms and there was no 'uptown-downtown' in New Haven. Had this candidate bothered to read two basic exam texts, he would have realized (like passing candidates did) that those are not 'New York' terms but staging terms used to describe established tactical protocols in staging a response to a fire or incident on a congested one-way street."

But “Guest” doesn't provide substantiating cites or links. His claim could be puffery.

*** continues… ***

AMac said...

*** Continuing on the Uptown/Downtown question ***

Ricci's team had this to say on the matter in their 4/7/09 brief to the Supremes (PDF):

--- begin quote ---

Similarly unfounded is respondents’ suggestion (never presented below) that 2 of the 200 written-examination questions were inappropriate. Respondents never attempt to demonstrate how two purportedly irrelevant questions could have invalidated the tests,
or changed the outcome. Cf. id. at 547 (criticizing allowing “picayune analysis to discredit a prior test” and emphasizing the importance of evaluating “the totality of the test”).

Moreover, these two alleged flaws are based not on the actual tests, but on two test-takers’ faulty recollections to the board months later. Resp.Br. 29. The complained-of uptown/downtown question was drawn directly from the study text, and simply tested for the knowledge that on a one-way street it is better to park up the street to prevent traffic from interfering with fire operations. Contrast J.A. 48 with Pet.App. 1094a (filed under seal); V. Dunn, Command and Control of Fires and Emergencies 67 (1999); Pet.App. 354a.

--- end quote ---

I oouldn't find the text of the actual "uptown-downtown" question. Was it on the Captain's exam as well as the Lieutenant's one?

How did an irrelevant NYC-specific question make it through vetting into a supposedly New Haven specific exam, if it did? This 6/28/06 ruling by Judge Arterton(PDF) explains:

--- begin quote ---

On February 11, 2004, the CSB heard from Chad Legel, Vice President of IOS, who was the “project manager” in charge of developing the exams at issue. He stated that IOS had prepared “both an entry-level exam and a physical ability test for the firefighter position” in New Haven, but had not previously prepared a New Haven promotional exam. Id. at 10. However, in recent years his company had worked with similarly-sized public safety departments with demographics similar to New Haven, including Lansing, Michigan, Orange County, Florida, and the North Miami Police Department, among others. Id. at 9. Legel described the way in which the test was developed.

[snip]

Legal further stated that all the questions were firmly rooted in the study materials on the syllabus, which was distributed with the promotion applications. See Def. Ex. 16 (“Written Examination Reference List”). Once the test was completed, an “independent reviewer,” a Battalion Chief from the Cobb County, Georgia, Fire Department, “reviewed the written exam for content and fidelity to the source material.” Pl. Ex. Vol. IV(B) at 24-25. Another independent reviewer, a retired Fire Chief from outside Connecticut, reviewed the oral exam questions. Id. at 26. IOS refrained from utilizing reviewers from Connecticut because the RFP had specified that examiners must come from outside Connecticut, due to concerns that utilizing internal personnel could potentially facilitate cheating on the test.

--- end quote ---

Emphasis added.

Anonymous said...

"But testing should not be about allocating prizes to winners. No one has a proprietary right to a particular open job, even if that person worked hard preparing for a test."

I have to wonder. Is this thinking? The first sentence is false: testing is about allocating prizes to winners. The second sentence is true, but irrelevant. The firefighters who passed were not passed because they worked hard preparing, but because they passed.

Anonymous said...

"In a city that is nearly 60 percent black and Latino, the ability to promote cross-racial harmony under stress is also crucial."

This is an admission that racial hatred gains rewards, and that racial hatred is inherent in non-whites.

Anonymous said...

It seems that Prof. Guinier is smart enough to realize that she would never be tenured at Harvard if it was based on merit.

Truth said...

"Indeed, most American fire departments have already rejected written tests in favor of “assessment centers” that simulate on-the-job challenges and focus on problem-solving in the relevant context....In other words, let's use testing methods where the judges can see the race of the applicant, so a proper thumb can be put on the scale."

You've got to be kidding me! You mean to tell me that fire departments now base promotion exams on actual events that might occur during a fire, rather than guys sitting down at desktops, or with a peice of paper answering questions? This is a travesty that cannot be overlooked!

Steve, you are one of the more interesting voices in the Blog-o-Sphere, but this is not one of your stronger efforts. This is written from the viewpoint of a man who simply spent too much time in school.

You probably edited your high school newspaper (I was sports editor), and then because you were a good boy (got good grades, never did anything wrong) got accepted to Rice and then UCLA.

Had you left school after graduating from HS, read a lot of books and decided to go into what you are doing now, what would have been the difference?

That is the essence of the problem with a lot of the scholastic feminization of America that we see now, it precludes men of action from achieving, and favors bean-counters; and of course you have a soft spot in your heart for bean-counters, because that's what all those years a Rice and UCLA have made you.

I think this is why you tend to be burned up by the success of a biracial Canadian who went to a second-rate Canadian University, and insist upon sly insinuations that he gets his plumb assignments through "racism" rather than talent. I've read his stuff, he has talent.

There is a great Zen story that illustrates this parable:

After winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master who was renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull's eye on his first try, and then split that arrow with his second shot. "There," he said to the old man, "see if you can match that!" Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain. Curious about the old fellow's intentions, the champion followed him high into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out onto the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit. "Now it is your turn," he said as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground. Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, no less shoot at a target. "You have much skill with your bow," the master said, sensing his challenger's predicament, "but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot."

Anonymous said...

"In a city that is nearly 60 percent black and Latino, the ability to promote cross-racial harmony under stress is also crucial."

I don't want them to "promote harmony", I want them to PUT THE FIRE OUT, NOW.

Nothing's going to create stress more than incompetent leadership and the perception that certain groups have unmerited advantages.

"Those without $500 for the study materials or a relative or friend from whom they might borrow the books were put at a disadvantage."

Is it actually true that the "study materials" for the firefighter test, whatever those materials may be, are not freely available in the public library? If they're not, then it seems to me that anyone who can't come up with $500 doesn't want to succeed badly enough. In the grand scheme of things that's not a lot of money, especially if that's what you have to pay to secure lifetime employment.

AMac said...

Guinier and Sturm have Ricci's lawyer Karen Torre asserting that those white officials who voted for an assessment system that is better than the disputed 2003 test were lowering professional standards of competence for the sake of identity politics.

Huh?

Why would Ricci's lawyer say that? Why would she stipulate that there is an assessment system that is superior to the oral/written exam that Ricci worked to pass? What does she mean by singling out white officials for attack?

We'd better look again at what the NYT saw fit to print:

"His [Ricci's] lawyer went further: White officials who voted for a better assessment system must have been lowering 'the professional standard of competence,' she said, 'for the sake of identity politics.'"

Ah--the punctuation! Guinier and Sturm are actually quoting Torres as uttering the sentence fragment "the professional standard of competence for the sake of identity politics."

This article also quoted Torres at the news conference where Ricci talked about working hard.

--- begin quote ---

"In 2006, we were handed a ruling right here in this courthouse that we believed was not only wrong on the law, but improperly put political considerations ahead of public safety and the safety of firefighters. Convinced that this ruling would endanger the lives and safety of firefighters everywhere, the New Haven 20 resolved to do everything possible to try to get that ruling overturned.

"In this very long, arduous process, these men became a symbol for millions of Americans who have grown tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.

"The justice they sought was delayed, but they're finally going to get it."

--- end quote ---

Here's a multiple-choice question.

Characterize how Guinier and Sturm quoted and paraphrased Karen Torres.

(a) Clearly and correctly
(b) In a misleading and self-serving fashion


Who's Qualified?

sabril said...

"In a city that is nearly 60 percent black and Latino, the ability to promote cross-racial harmony under stress is also crucial."

They might not admit it, but I suspect most blacks and Latinos would prefer white firefighters to show up if they were trapped in a burning building.

"more communities could no doubt get along nicely with an all volunteer force"

This is something I've wondered about. How does volunteer firefighting work in small towns which are predominantly black or hispanic?

B322 said...

I haven't gotten a strong sense of the details of Guinier's PR proposal, only I'm pretty sure it wasn't about parties and ideologies like it is in Europe. I.e., it's conceivable that this plan would result in whites represented in proportion to their population, but white slots filled almost entirely by Guinier-loving leftists. I'll scratch around for the details though.

B322 said...

Here are some more details on LG's idea of PR.

Ms. Guinier proposes as an alternative a variation on proportional representation which she calls "proportionate interest representation." It's really a modified at-large system. In a citywide election for five council seats, say, each voter would have five votes, which she could distribute among the five candidates any way she likes. If a fifth of the voters opted to "cumulate," or plump, all their votes for one candidate, they would be able to elect one of the five. Blacks could do this if they chose to, but so could any cohesive group of sufficient size. This system is emphatically not racially based: it allows voters to organize themselves on whatever basis they wish.

To me, this is a disadvantage as well as an advantage. Voters who accepted more candidates as worthy of support would have their power diluted; voters married to a narrow ideology would get their way. But then again, oversupporting a candidate would hurt the movement again. Spoilers start to matter a lot under these circumstances; if blacks or Libertarians or Naked Vegetarians have the support of 20% of the voters, they're styling if they have a candidate in the race, and screwed if they have two. And who is to prevent a second from joining the race? The whole thing sounds very chaotic. (Japan makes a vaguely-similar system - single non-transferable vote - work, because the Japanese are so disciplined.)

Pressed to justify his abandonment of Ms. Guinier, Mr. Clinton said that she had seemed to advocate proportional representation, a position he called "antidemocratic and very difficult to defend." Antidemocratic? That will come as news to the good people of Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, among other countries.

Of course, the people of Germany, etc., don't use "proportionate interest representation". They use party-list systems with things like quotas, thresholds, etc. - all "election technologies" which work quite well but aren't particularly easy to explain. For example, the only reason why someone in Germany would cast their two parliamentary votes for different parties is, if one of the two largest party's district candidate is much better relative to that party's list candidates compared to other parties. This is a somewhat difficult concept to really get your head around! Yet Germany's system has spread to New Zealands, and certain elections in the UK.

Steve Sailer said...

Dan Seligman pointed out that Lani Guinier's interest in "proportionate-interest representation" stems from her childhood when her West Indian immigrant father was a famous Communist Party USA labor leader (thrown out of the AFL-CIO for being a Communist in the late 40s). The high water mark for CPUSA electoral victories was winning one or two NYC city council seats under just such a proportional system, which allowed centrally disciplined CPUSA voters to concentrate their votes.

Anonymous said...

This is something I've wondered about. How does volunteer firefighting work in small towns which are predominantly black or hispanic?


Volunteering is not a concern for those you mention, now is it?

Anonymous said...

Civil services test do not measure one's ability to be a leader.The reason we have them is to look at the application without looking at the applicant. Historically, blcaks have not been given jobs as firefighters because those hiring were white and decided not to hire blacks because they are black not because we are perceived to be dumb and lazy. I happen to very smart and work very hard and I worked as civil servant for 32 years. So, lets; first get rid of the stereo type that blacks are dumb and lazy. Also understand and this is scientifically documented that whites prefer to hire whites because they are more comfortable being around people who look like them.

I am sick and tired of fighting the same battle -get over it and do the right thing.

Anonymous said...

Excellent fisking, Steve. For the people here who think the test was a joke, or for the lawyers who think it is less relevant to the job than the LSAT is to theirs (this is from Karen Lee Torre, the firefighters lawyer):

I think a fundamental failure is the application of these concepts to this job as if these men were garbage collectors. This is a command position of a First Responder agency. The books you see piled on my desk are fire science books. These men face life threatening circumstances every time they go ou...You need to know: this is not an aptitude test. This is a high-level command position in a post-9/11 era no less. They are tested for their knowledge of fire, behavior, combustion principles, building collapse, truss roofs, building construction, confined space rescue, dirty bomb response, anthrax, metallurgy, and I opened my district court brief with a plea to the court to not treat these men in this profession as if it were unskilled labor.

Firefighters die every week in this country. ... [There was a case ] a few miles away where a young father and firefighter Eddie Ramos died after a truss roof collapsed in a warehouse fire because the person who commanded the scene decided to send men into an unoccupied building, with no people to save on Thanksgiving Day, with a truss roof known to collapse early in the fire because of the nature of the pins that hold the trusses together. And for 20 minutes he couldn't find any air and he suffocated to death. And the fire chief had to go tell a 6 year-old that her father wasn't coming home.

So if I were a firefighter, I don't think I'd necessarily want the biggest guy who talks the loudest telling me what to do. I'd want the guy who best knows how the fire is going to behave.

dr kill said...

Few issues amuse me more than observing the varied and storied Democrat factions battle over government cheese.

Imagine that in the USA it has been possible for almost fifty years for people to live an entire lifetime and never work, or know someone who worked, at a real job.

Intellectual firepower, my left nut.

Lucius Vorenus said...

sabril: This is something I've wondered about. How does volunteer firefighting work in small towns which are predominantly black or hispanic?

There's no way in Hades that Komment Kontrol would allow me to speak my mind on that question, but here's a recent MSM story for you to ponder:

Down the Mississippi: Barack Obama effect ends white rule in Deep South town
By Toby Harnden in Alligator
Published: 4:13PM BST 12 Jul 2009
telegraph.co.uk

In a shock result in Alligator (population 220), Tommie "Tomaso" Brown, 38, defeated Robert Fava, the mayor since 1979, owner of the general store and once his opponent's boss...

"They wanted a black mayor," said a philosophical Mr Fava, 71. "Another Obama - I think that's what brought it on. I ran on '30 years of dedicated service' and he ran on 'Change'. He promised a swimming pool and a recreation centre, which he can't do...

Some youngsters ran into Mr Fava's store to taunt him. "They was pulling down their pants, shouting, 'Kiss my black ass, because we got a black mayor', swinging their things around and throwing stuff," said Jennifer Green, 31, a black mother of 10.

Miss Green is dubious about whether Mr Brown, whose duties will include organising contract labour, overseeing the water and sewer systems and distributing any grant monies, can deliver. "He says there's going to be lots of changes and everything with all these kids running around here.

"But he do the same thing they do, drinking beer and stuff. You've got to stay at home and study the town. Alligator is the kind of place where if you leave your door open, when you come back there ain't nothing in your house.

"There's guns. Kids knock on your door asking for a beer at three and four in the morning. I get 14-year-olds asking me if I want weed or whatever. They should have just left Mr Robert in there.

"Tomaso won't do anything about any of it. He's going to put his hand in the cookie jar just at the wrong time and get caught"...

Anonymous said...

If this is true about 2 out of 200 questions being inappropriate for New Haven...

Then surely everybody taking the test would be in the same boat - they would pass on those or guess or whatever.

Anonymous said...

That is the essence of the problem with a lot of the scholastic feminization of America that we see now, it precludes men of action from achieving, and favors bean-counters




Truth's fantasy, and it's a common one, is that African-American men are "men of action", in comparision to those nerdy white bean counters.

In reality African-American men are not noted for being "men of action". For instance, they are under-represented in the combat arms of the US armed forces, and over-represented in rear-echelon units.

ben tillman said...

These two authors - fighting in the featherwieght class - ever wonder where all those Jewish and Asian firfighters are?

The Hispanic plaintiff in the Ricci case (Ben Vargas) has a classic Sephardic/Marrano name.

regularjoe said...

Look, its seems facially plausible that 'assesment centers' and subjective standards of 'leadership ability' and other character testing could, ideally, be as important, or even more so, than IQ in Fireman leadership. Fine, I don't see why we need to pretend that a pencil paper IQ test is the sole gold standard in an ideal world for high testasterone physical professions.

The problem is that of course in politics, tests that allow knowledge of specific identities, subjective tests, invite corruption. And in racially charged environments, they invite racial corruption on top. So we're stuck with IQ tests, flawed though they may be if over weighted, because at least they are objective, whereas character tests are hard to make so.

Now the military seems to have solved this. Sure, you pass an IQ test to get into Officer Candidate School or West Point etc, but then you are promoted by other means than mere paper testing. And the defendants of the written tests surely can acknowledge a smart seargent with big balls might be better at taking that enemy position than the seargent with a bit higher IQ who's a low testasterone dweeb. I guess the army has a scale thing where it can send you around the country to 5 differant training schools under numerous commanders, all too disconnected from any system of personal influence, to average out character assessment. And it is protected from excessive outside pressure on race because its the military. Even the supremes blush at telling the military how to run its internal systems.

Plus, of course, whatever Lani in all her wisdome thinks of the quality of New Haven's test, she knows it was decided to be bad only post hoc.

Not perfect, but objective, and only tossed after the scores were in, case closed Miss Lani.

And of course, I'm 100% positive that Miss Lani would whip out the same argument for hiring data entry clerks or whatever, where a paper test is 100% applicable, if the racial outcomes proved undesirable to her.

Anonymous said...

Billare, West African slaves sold to the Americas aren't Barak Obama's ancestors, but they are his daughters'.

Chapin Disciple said...

I realize that not all places are like New York City, but it's where I grew up and so it's my reference point. Fires may not have "race" but firefighters to live in neighborhoods that have "race." I don't doubt that firefighters are brave (you couldn't pay me enough money to charge into a burning building that I didn't own or one in which no friend or family member occupied). I don't doubt that they are skilled. I don't doubt that they love their job (in fact, I understand that the really good firefighters really really like fire). But firefighters do serve the community and should have some bond or connection to the community. I think that this bond or connection makes them better firefighters. They shouldn't all be a semi-heriditary caste of white guys living outside the community who rotate in and out of the firehouse two-weeks at a time, and who basically treat their stint at the firehouse like cavalry in indian country.

Chapin Disciple said...

Billare--you forget that Barack Obama's kids have to trace their ancestry through the father and their mother. Though Barack is the son of an East African, Michelle Obama is most likely the daughter of west African's transported the western hemisphere to serve as slaves.

anony-mouse said...

1/ Aren't there government jobs where you'd actually want a hopeless incompetent to be hired? (Not firefighting of course)

2/ One advantage of patronage is that the incumbent actually has to make sure that the job, if important, is actually done. Since everyone knows that the incumbent is only there through favoritism, if the snow falls and is not shovelled away quickly, there can be actual hell to pay (see Chicago).

An unqualified boob has no credentials or protection to hide behind (see Blago)

Anonymous said...

.. firefighters do serve the community and should have some bond or connection to the community.



Ok. But why does that bond have to be one of skin color? Seems like it's time black people got over their obsession with that particular trait. And what makes you think that white fire-fighters live in some other town and helicopter into New Haven?



basically treat their stint at the firehouse like cavalry in indian country



Congratulations, I've never seen anyone cram as many logical errors into so few words.

Anonymous said...

Michelle Obama is most likely the daughter of west African's transported the western hemisphere to serve as slaves.



I'm quite confident she is not the "daughter", unless she's a lot older then she looks. But it's possible that one of her many great-great-grandparents was a slave.

Truth said...

"In reality African-American men are not noted for being "men of action". For instance, they are under-represented in the combat arms of the US armed forces, and over-represented in rear-echelon units."

That would make African-American men men "men of intellect" because if you are going to get shot in the face for a fancy seven-gun salute, and to make Dick Cheney richer, YOUZE A FOOL!

Anonymous said...

YOUZE A FOOL!

A devastating riposte from our resident "man of intellect".

The Anti-Gnostic said...

That would make African-American men men "men of intellect" because if you are going to get shot in the face for a fancy seven-gun salute, and to make Dick Cheney richer, YOUZE A FOOL!

No, it just means most black men think of the military as nothing more than another government jobs program.

For white grunts, combat MOS's are a shot at Blackwater where the real money is getting to be.

Man, that's gonna be real awkward for the State: when its military is reduced to a bunch of affirmative-action generals and female helicopter pilots, and all the true warriors are in the private sector.

Anonymous said...

Troofus sed...
I once read a very interesting discussion of abortion with a Japanese Zen Monk...

There is a great Zen story that illustrates this parable...


LOL. Zen master Troofus in da house!

Looks like it really chapped Troofie's ass that he got caught cribbing from Wikipedia when spouting off about Zen Buddhism a couple of weeks ago. Now he's sounding like Sarah Palin, who started irrelevantly reciting the names of former Pakistani presidents in her speeches to "prove" to everyone that she was a foreign-policy wiz.

Troofus, don't ever stop being the clown you are. You were born for unintentional comedy.

Truth said...

"No, it just means most black men think of the military as nothing more than another government jobs program."


It is another government jobs program.

"Looks like it really chapped Troofie's ass that he got caught cribbing from Wikipedia when spouting off about Zen Buddhism a couple of weeks ago."

Actually, I've been practicing the faith since 1988. Of course you wouldn't know anything about that, you can't even commit to a screen name.

Anonymous said...

"Man, that's gonna be real awkward for the State: when its military is reduced to a bunch of affirmative-action generals and female helicopter pilots, and all the true warriors are in the private sector."


Same thing happened in South Africa and Rhodesia. The real warriors are now making money in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new transformed armies have basically already capitulated. Like you sed, it’s just another jobs program. Fly a chopper here, and drive a truck there. And then write lots of fancy articles about how the babe from next door can now fly an army chopper. Or the poor black can now fly a jet. The fact that untold aircraft have been totaled during training alone is conveniently left out. And of course a war will never even start because the gov. would have to declare defeat before the first shot is fired.

Anonymous said...

Troofus sed...
Actually, I've been practicing the faith since 1988.


Riiight. Sure you have.

Of course you wouldn't know anything about that, you can't even commit to a screen name.

Non sequitur much? Keep 'em coming, Spike. You're a scream.

Anonymous said...

---Actually, I've been practicing the faith since 1988. Of course you wouldn't know anything about that, you can't even commit to a screen name.---


Yeah, you, me and Richard Gere...

-One Hand Clapping

Truth said...

One hand clapping

That's a good choice of name for you Old Boy!

Somewhat equivalent to the response you'd get if you gave the tired, worn out, mediocre shtick you write here in front of a live audience.

Anonymous said...

One Hand Clapping, you should listen to Zen Master Troofus. He's an expert in tired, worn out, mediocre shticks.

Anonymous said...

Now we know a tree fell in the forest. There was noise...

- One Hand Clapping

Anonymous said...

Truth,
So you're telling us you won't be down at The Laugh Factory this Friday night?

Truth said...

Only if you're buying, Sport.

B322 said...

So I guess nobody wants to talk about election systems ... guess I'll go eat worms.

Anonymous said...

testy sed

"That's the elite's political alliance, all across the West (substitute Muslims for non-Whites in Europe) to thwart populism."

Wonder what an anti-populist elite might say about Iran?

Anonymous said...

TH said

"It is often claimed that the Nazis banned IQ tests because Jews outscored "Aryans" in them. I've never seen that claim substantiated, but I've propagated it anyway,"

Thanks for doing your part to add to the sum of human confusion.

Anonymous said...

" How does volunteer firefighting work in small towns which are predominantly black or hispanic?"

I've known several volunteer firefighters, all white. Their jobs consist largely - not of putting out fires - but of helping out with the mop-up of violent crime scenes. They spent most of their time driving the fire truck to and from the black neighborhoods.

A typical call was one black guy knifing another black guy in the rear end. I am not making this up; this was their daily grind.

I asked if they had ever put out a fire. Two of the guys stuttered and punted. A third answered forthrightly: "NEVER."

Firefighting in that city (Nashville TN, 15 years ago) was sort of an adjunct to the ambulance service.

By the way, the common firefighter term / code word for that clientele (then) was "Bubbas." Not sure what the term would be now, or if it's changed.