New Haven firefighters promotion exam

Despite all the controversy and the close vote surrounding the Supreme Court’s decision in the New Haven firefighter promotion exam case, it’s really not that complicated. Industrial engineers and hiring managers have been dealing with this kind of issue forever. From a purely “workplace efficiency” point of view, it makes sense to have exams that directly test someone’s ability to do a job before assigning them to that job. We call these KSAs, for knowledge, skills, and abilities. It makes no sense to have an exam that tests irrelevant KSAs – it would hurt the company’s (or firefighting unit’s) performance by hiring and promoting less qualified candidates.

The Civil Rights Act made an important contribution to this. The clause in question says that if there is a big disparity between the scores of minorities and non-minorities, then we should look at the exam with suspicion. That’s a good idea even if there was not a law requiring it. If the test is biased, it’s not good for the company either because it leads to less qualified individuals getting the job (or promotion). The Civil Rights Act was necessary because of the prevalence of discrimination at the time, which could lead companies to prefer less qualified workers that were white males. But even if that is no longer true today (a complicated question that is beyond today’s post), the idea to check our employment tests for subtle bias is still a good idea. There is evidence that ethnic minorities are not as good at pencil and paper exams but are just as good at realistic job simulations (which are better predictors of job performance anyway).

So it would make sense to look “with suspicion” at a test in which the white and Hispanic firefighters passed at much higher rates than black firefighters. That’s what the district should have done. They should have hired a professional to look at the exam and see if it effectively focused on real firefighting KSAs. If it did, then their "suspicions" should have been alleviated and they could have promoted the passing firefighters. If the test did not, then they should have thrown it out.

The problem was that they didn't do this. They got scared that different passing rates would lead the black firefighters to sue, so they threw the exam out without the necessary evaluation. With a small sample size, like in this case, it is possible than an unbiased test will lead to different passing rates of different groups. This is especially true if there are other differences, for example socio-economic, between the groups as well. If the white firefighters had more money to prepare, that could explain the difference in passing rates as well.

But the point is that looking at the exam with “suspicion” is different than throwing it out. The Supreme Court got it right this time. Companies should look at their exams to see if they are biased. If they are, they should change the exam. If not, they should keep the exam until a better one comes along. That’s what civil rights is all about. Knee jerk reactions are not the answer.