Tuesday, July 14, 2009
New Haven paid $100,000 to a high stakes diversity testing firm, IO Solutions, Inc. of Illinois, to design the exams to be completely free of any racial bias. This is a necessary step these days in order to avoid charges of disparate impact upon protected minority groups -- and New Haven does have a large population of protected minority groups.
IO Solutions, Inc. is one of a few dozen firms which specializes in this kind of politically correct test design, and they are very good at it. According to court filings, IO Solutions did everything right in designing the New Haven fire department's promotional exams to be completely race-neutral, i.e., to not have a disparate impact upon selected, preferred skin colors.
Yet, when the New Haven FD administered the race-neutral tests in November and December of 2003, white firefighters scored so much higher than their black and brown counterparts that very few preferred minorities would have been promoted to the seven open Captain vacancies, nor to the eight open Lieutenant vacancies, if the exam scores were used.
New Haven's city charter requires that they follow a "rule of three" which requires that each open promotional position be filled from among the top three scorers on the exams.
If the "rule of three" were strictly applied to the 2003 promotional exams, it would have resulted in all of the open Captain and Lieutenant positions being filled by the best-qualified, highest scoring candidates.
Unfortunately the best-qualfied, highest scoring candidates turned out to be mostly white.
Oops.
The City Fathers and Mothers of New Haven reacted quickly to this politically unacceptable turn of events. They simply refused to certify the results of their fire department's race-neutral exams, thus effectively nullifying the results.
A reverse discrimination lawsuit was filed by the mostly white, highest-scoring firefighters who insisted that the race neutral exam scores should be used to promote them. Their lawsuit was thrown out by a liberal judge (a Clinton appointee), and the firefighters have filed an appeal which they stand a good chance of winning. More on that later.
The upshot is that as of the date of this posting (12-11-06) -- three years after the race-neutral exams were administered -- vacancies have been allowed to go unfilled and are temporarily occupied by firefighters in an 'acting' capacity. Some of the temporary 'acting' firefighters occupying these positions actually failed the Lieutenant and Captain exams, thereby endangering firefighters under their command and the public at large.
This, then, is a saga of dysfunctional racial sensitivity, political correctness, and a discriminatory policy which demands that selected skin colors (preferred or protected minorities) be hired in proportion to their numbers in the locally available labor pool even if those individuals do not hold the highest qualifications (or exam scores).
The question is, if the firefighters filing the lawsuit were black would it have been thrown out of court? How would this case be different if they were black?
IO Solutions, Inc. is one of a few dozen firms which specializes in this kind of politically correct test design, and they are very good at it. According to court filings, IO Solutions did everything right in designing the New Haven fire department's promotional exams to be completely race-neutral, i.e., to not have a disparate impact upon selected, preferred skin colors.
Yet, when the New Haven FD administered the race-neutral tests in November and December of 2003, white firefighters scored so much higher than their black and brown counterparts that very few preferred minorities would have been promoted to the seven open Captain vacancies, nor to the eight open Lieutenant vacancies, if the exam scores were used.
New Haven's city charter requires that they follow a "rule of three" which requires that each open promotional position be filled from among the top three scorers on the exams.
If the "rule of three" were strictly applied to the 2003 promotional exams, it would have resulted in all of the open Captain and Lieutenant positions being filled by the best-qualified, highest scoring candidates.
Unfortunately the best-qualfied, highest scoring candidates turned out to be mostly white.
Oops.
The City Fathers and Mothers of New Haven reacted quickly to this politically unacceptable turn of events. They simply refused to certify the results of their fire department's race-neutral exams, thus effectively nullifying the results.
A reverse discrimination lawsuit was filed by the mostly white, highest-scoring firefighters who insisted that the race neutral exam scores should be used to promote them. Their lawsuit was thrown out by a liberal judge (a Clinton appointee), and the firefighters have filed an appeal which they stand a good chance of winning. More on that later.
The upshot is that as of the date of this posting (12-11-06) -- three years after the race-neutral exams were administered -- vacancies have been allowed to go unfilled and are temporarily occupied by firefighters in an 'acting' capacity. Some of the temporary 'acting' firefighters occupying these positions actually failed the Lieutenant and Captain exams, thereby endangering firefighters under their command and the public at large.
This, then, is a saga of dysfunctional racial sensitivity, political correctness, and a discriminatory policy which demands that selected skin colors (preferred or protected minorities) be hired in proportion to their numbers in the locally available labor pool even if those individuals do not hold the highest qualifications (or exam scores).
The question is, if the firefighters filing the lawsuit were black would it have been thrown out of court? How would this case be different if they were black?
Labels: crooked politics, current news, racisim
