https://manhattan.institute/article/affirmative-action-lands-in-the-air- traffic-control-towers its final descent, are the passengers more concerned
The Obama administration forces the Federal Aviation Administration to
move away from merit-based hiring criteria.
When a plane start
quit.
about the competence or about the skin color of the air-traffic
controllers on the ground who will help the pilot land safely? The answer
may be obvious to readers, if not to the Obama administration.
A recently completed six-month investigation by Fox Business Network found that the Federal Aviation Administration has quietly moved away from merit-based hiring criteria in order to increase the number of women and minorities who staff airport control towers. The changes come despite the fact that the FAA's own internal reports describe the evidence for
changing the hiring process as “weak.”
Until 2013, the FAA gave hiring preference to controller applicants who earned a degree from one of its Collegiate Training Initiative schools and scored high enough on an eight-hour screening test called the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT, which measures cognitive skills.
The Obama administration, however, determined that the process excluded
too many from minority groups. In May 2013, the FAA's civil rights administrator issued “barrier analyses” of the agency's employment procedures, which recommended “revising how the AT-SAT is used in establishing best-qualified lists.”
By the start of last year, the FAA was using a biographical questionnaire (BQ) to initially vet potential hires. The questions—“How many sports did you play in high school?”, “What has been the major cause of your failures?”—seem designed to elicit stories of personal disadvantage or family hardship rather than determine success on the job.
“The FAA says it created the BQ to promote diversity among its workforce,” reported Adam Shapiro of Fox Business. “All air traffic control applicants are required to take it. Those who pass are deemed eligible and those who fail are ruled ineligible.”
The FAA would not tell Fox Business what the biographical test is trying
to measure and did not return my phone calls. But an FAA report released
in October, “Using Biodata to Select Air Traffic Controllers,” concluded that the AT-SAT exam, not the biographical questionnaire, is a much better predictor of performance. “The biodata items assessed did little to
improve our ability to select applicants most likely” to complete training successfully, said the study. “If biodata are to be used to select controllers, additional research is required to identify those biodata
items that will add to the prediction of controller training performance
over and above the effect of AT-SAT score.”
Given that training an air-traffic controller can cost more than $400,000
on average, selecting candidates based on who is likely to complete the process makes economic sense. Hans Bader, a legal scholar at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes that the FAA's focus on diversity
is not only inefficient but may be a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
“The FAA's jettisoning of merit-based hiring criteria violated the Supreme Court's Ricci decision, [Ricci v. DeStefano, 2009] which limits agencies' ability to discard hiring criteria in order to increase minority representation, especially when there is no strong evidence that the
criteria are not job-related,” said Mr. Bader.
After the FAA changed its screening process in 2014, thousands of
applicants who were already in the pipeline—people who had obtained an FAA-accredited degree, taken the AT-SAT exam and had been designated “well-qualified” to become air-traffic controllers—were told by the government that they would have to start the process again. “But this
time, when they applied for a job, their college degrees and previous military experience would mean nothing,” reported Fox Business. “They
would now compete with thousands of people the agency calls ‘off the
street hires'; anyone who wants to, can walk in off the street without any previous training and apply for an air traffic control job.”
In other words, the current policy is to deliberately favor less-qualified applicants over more qualified applicants in the name of obtaining the “right” racial and gender mix among air-traffic controllers. Advocates of “diversity” insist that discounting objective measures of ability and competence is harmless, but history shows that it can be deadly.
In 1973 Patrick Chavis was one of five black students admitted to a
medical school in California through an affirmative-action program
designed to increase minority enrollment. Allan Bakke, a white applicant
who was rejected despite having much higher test scores than the black applicants, sued. In 1978 the Supreme Court struck down the program, but Chavis would go on to earn his medical degree and become a poster child
for advocates of racial preferences. In 1995 he made the cover of the New York Times magazine. Sen. Ted Kennedy called him “the perfect example” of how affirmative action worked. In 1998 the California medical board
revoked Chavis's medical license, noting his “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a physician” after several patients in
his care died or were severely injured.
Admitting poorly qualified students to medical school increases the number
of incompetent doctors. A selection process for air-traffic controllers
that favors race and gender over ability is no less dangerous.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
https://manhattan.institute/article/affirmative-action-lands-in-the-air
- traffic-control-tower
The Obama administration forces the Federal Aviation Administration to
move away from merit-based hiring criteria.
When a plane starts its final descent, are the passengers more
concerned about the competence or about the skin color of the
air-traffic controllers on the ground who will help the pilot land
safely? The answer may be obvious to readers, if not to the Obama administration.
A recently completed six-month investigation by Fox Business Network
found that the Federal Aviation Administration has quietly moved away
from merit-based hiring criteria in order to increase the number of
women and minorities who staff airport control towers. The changes
come despite the fact that the FAA's own internal reports describe the evidence for changing the hiring process as “weak.”
Until 2013, the FAA gave hiring preference to controller applicants
who earned a degree from one of its Collegiate Training Initiative
schools and scored high enough on an eight-hour screening test called
the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT, which measures cognitive skills. The Obama administration, however, determined that
the process excluded too many from minority groups. In May 2013, the
FAA's civil rights administrator issued “barrier analyses” of the
agency's employment procedures, which recommended “revising how the
AT-SAT is used in establishing best-qualified lists.”
By the start of last year, the FAA was using a biographical
questionnaire (BQ) to initially vet potential hires. The
questions—“How many sports did you play in high school?”, “What has
been the major cause of your failures?”—seem designed to elicit
stories of personal disadvantage or family hardship rather than
determine success on the job.
“The FAA says it created the BQ to promote diversity among its
workforce,” reported Adam Shapiro of Fox Business. “All air traffic
control applicants are required to take it. Those who pass are deemed eligible and those who fail are ruled ineligible.”
The FAA would not tell Fox Business what the biographical test is
trying to measure and did not return my phone calls. But an FAA report released in October, “Using Biodata to Select Air Traffic
Controllers,” concluded that the AT-SAT exam, not the biographical questionnaire, is a much better predictor of performance. “The biodata
items assessed did little to improve our ability to select applicants
most likely” to complete training successfully, said the study. “If
biodata are to be used to select controllers, additional research is
required to identify those biodata items that will add to the
prediction of controller training performance over and above the
effect of AT-SAT score.”
Given that training an air-traffic controller can cost more than
$400,000 on average, selecting candidates based on who is likely to
complete the process makes economic sense. Hans Bader, a legal scholar
at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes that the FAA's focus
on diversity is not only inefficient but may be a violation of the
Civil Rights Act. “The FAA's jettisoning of merit-based hiring
criteria violated the Supreme Court's Ricci decision, [Ricci v.
DeStefano, 2009] which limits agencies' ability to discard hiring
criteria in order to increase minority representation, especially when
there is no strong evidence that the criteria are not job-related,”
said Mr. Bader.
After the FAA changed its screening process in 2014, thousands of
applicants who were already in the pipeline—people who had obtained an FAA-accredited degree, taken the AT-SAT exam and had been designated “well-qualified” to become air-traffic controllers—were told by the government that they would have to start the process again. “But this
time, when they applied for a job, their college degrees and previous military experience would mean nothing,” reported Fox Business. “They
would now compete with thousands of people the agency calls ‘off the
street hires'; anyone who wants to, can walk in off the street without
any previous training and apply for an air traffic control job.”
In other words, the current policy is to deliberately favor
less-qualified applicants over more qualified applicants in the name
of obtaining the “right” racial and gender mix among air-traffic
controllers. Advocates of “diversity” insist that discounting
objective measures of ability and competence is harmless, but history
shows that it can be deadly.
In 1973 Patrick Chavis was one of five black students admitted to a
medical school in California through an affirmative-action program
designed to increase minority enrollment. Allan Bakke, a white
applicant who was rejected despite having much higher test scores than
the black applicants, sued. In 1978 the Supreme Court struck down the program, but Chavis would go on to earn his medical degree and become
a poster child for advocates of racial preferences. In 1995 he made
the cover of the New York Times magazine. Sen. Ted Kennedy called him
“the perfect example” of how affirmative action worked. In 1998 the California medical board revoked Chavis's medical license, noting his “inability to perform some of the most basic duties required of a
physician” after several patients in his care died or were severely
injured.
Admitting poorly qualified students to medical school increases the
number of incompetent doctors. A selection process for air-traffic controllers that favors race and gender over ability is no less
dangerous.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal
On 2025-02-01, Leroy N. Soetoro <democrat-insurrection@mail.house.gov>
wrote:
https://manhattan.institute/article/affirmative-action-lands-in-the-ais its final descent, are the passengers more concerned
r- traffic-control-tower
The Obama administration forces the Federal Aviation Administration
to move away from merit-based hiring criteria.
When a plane start
quit.
about the competence or about the skin color of the air-traffic
controllers on the ground who will help the pilot land safely? The
answer may be obvious to readers, if not to the Obama administration.
A recently completed six-month investigation by Fox Business Network
found that the Federal Aviation Administration has quietly moved away
from merit-based hiring criteria in order to increase the number of
women and minorities who staff airport control towers. The changes
come despite the fact that the FAA's own internal reports describe
the evidence for changing the hiring process as “weak.”
Until 2013, the FAA gave hiring preference to controller applicants
who earned a degree from one of its Collegiate Training Initiative
schools and scored high enough on an eight-hour screening test called
the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT, which
measures cognitive skills. The Obama administration, however,
determined that the process excluded too many from minority groups.
In May 2013, the FAA's civil rights administrator issued “barrier
analyses” of the agency's employment procedures, which recommended
“revising how the AT-SAT is used in establishing best-qualified
lists.”
By the start of last year, the FAA was using a biographical
questionnaire (BQ) to initially vet potential hires. The
questions—“How many sports did you play in high school?”, “What
has been the major cause of your failures?”—seem designed to elicit
stories of personal disadvantage or family hardship rather than
determine success on the job.
“The FAA says it created the BQ to promote diversity among its
workforce,” reported Adam Shapiro of Fox Business. “All air traffic
control applicants are required to take it. Those who pass are deemed
eligible and those who fail are ruled ineligible.”
The FAA would not tell Fox Business what the biographical test is
trying to measure and did not return my phone calls. But an FAA
report released in October, “Using Biodata to Select Air Traffic
Controllers,” concluded that the AT-SAT exam, not the biographical
questionnaire, is a much better predictor of performance. “The
biodata items assessed did little to improve our ability to select
applicants most likely” to complete training successfully, said the
study. “If biodata are to be used to select controllers, additional
research is required to identify those biodata items that will add to
the prediction of controller training performance over and above the
effect of AT-SAT score.”
Given that training an air-traffic controller can cost more than
$400,000 on average, selecting candidates based on who is likely to
complete the process makes economic sense. Hans Bader, a legal
scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes that the
FAA's focus on diversity is not only inefficient but may be a
violation of the Civil Rights Act. “The FAA's jettisoning of
merit-based hiring criteria violated the Supreme Court's Ricci
decision, [Ricci v. DeStefano, 2009] which limits agencies' ability
to discard hiring criteria in order to increase minority
representation, especially when there is no strong evidence that the
criteria are not job-related,” said Mr. Bader.
After the FAA changed its screening process in 2014, thousands of
applicants who were already in the pipeline—people who had obtained
an FAA-accredited degree, taken the AT-SAT exam and had been
designated “well-qualified” to become air-traffic controllers—were
told by the government that they would have to start the process
again. “But this time, when they applied for a job, their college
degrees and previous military experience would mean nothing,”
reported Fox Business. “They would now compete with thousands of
people the agency calls ‘off the street hires'; anyone who wants to,
can walk in off the street without any previous training and apply
for an air traffic control job.”
In other words, the current policy is to deliberately favor
less-qualified applicants over more qualified applicants in the name
of obtaining the “right” racial and gender mix among air-traffic
controllers. Advocates of “diversity” insist that discounting
objective measures of ability and competence is harmless, but history
shows that it can be deadly.
In 1973 Patrick Chavis was one of five black students admitted to a
medical school in California through an affirmative-action program
designed to increase minority enrollment. Allan Bakke, a white
applicant who was rejected despite having much higher test scores
than the black applicants, sued. In 1978 the Supreme Court struck
down the program, but Chavis would go on to earn his medical degree
and become a poster child for advocates of racial preferences. In
1995 he made the cover of the New York Times magazine. Sen. Ted
Kennedy called him “the perfect example” of how affirmative action
worked. In 1998 the California medical board revoked Chavis's medical
license, noting his “inability to perform some of the most basic
duties required of a physician” after several patients in his care
died or were severely injured.
Admitting poorly qualified students to medical school increases the
number of incompetent doctors. A selection process for air-traffic
controllers that favors race and gender over ability is no less
dangerous.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
DEI is a disaster and does nothing good for anyone.
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