"Just Kidding."
Posted on 02/02/2024 6:24:41 AM PST by MtnClimber
A lawsuit that has flown under the radar for years shows how the Federal Aviation Administration undermined a skills-based test to help select air traffic controllers in an effort to promote workforce diversity.
The Federal Aviation Administration under the Biden administration has pledged to continue diversifying its workforce under its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility goals.
At the same time, a lawsuit that has long flown under the radar provides a glimpse into just how far the agency is willing to go to achieve those goals, even at the expense of skills-based tests for air traffic controllers.
In December 2013, thousands of students who had participated in the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI)—a program specifically designed to prepare individuals to become Air Traffic Control Specialists—were informed that their previous scores on a cognitive and skills-based test—known as the AT-SAT—would be discounted. Instead, these students would have to pass a biographical survey before retaking the cognitive portion of the test.
“Recently, the FAA completed a barrier analysis of the ATC occupation pursuant to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) Management Directive 715. As a result of the analysis, recommendations were identified that we are implementing to improve and streamline the selection of ATC candidates,” an email sent by the FAA to CTI programs in 2013 reads.
What the program graduates did not know is that only 14% of them would pass this new biographical questionnaire, despite half of them having previously passed the skills-based test and met all of the FAA pre-qualifications to be referred on the next step to becoming Air Traffic Control Specialists.
Eventually, one of the CTI graduates, whose career was derailed by the biographical questionnaire, sued the FAA for discrimination in a class action lawsuit.
The lawsuit uncovered a years-long plan by the FAA to diversify the pool of Air Traffic Control Specialists after the barrier analysis concluded that minority candidates were hindered by the cognitive test.
The efforts to achieve increased diversity in physical characteristics came at the expense of many CTI graduates, which in the FAA’s own studies concluded were likely to succeed at higher rates than candidates recruited from other sources.
Concerns about FAA’s hiring practices have recently taken center stage again. In 2023, the FAA recorded 19 “near misses” at airports across the country that could have led to deadly air disasters. An internal review, conducted, in part because of these near-fatal accidents, found that staffing shortages and low funding levels were contributing to rising danger levels.
Yet, some elected officials view the FAA’s prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion in its hiring practices as a potential cause of the agency’s failure to fulfill its responsibilities.
Last week, Utah Senator Mike Lee, along with Ohio Senator J.D. Vance and Indiana Senator Mike Braun, wrote a letter to the FAA raising questions about the agency’s use of hiring quotas to achieve its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) goals.
Highlighting the near misses and a system-wide outage in 2023 that grounded hundreds of aircraft, the senators expressed concern that the “FAA has struggled to fulfill its core function of keeping the American people safe while traveling the skies.”
“That is why it is particularly disturbing to learn that the FAA is pursuing an identity-based hiring strategy that places an individual's personally identifiable characteristics over their merit,” the senators wrote.
What is next? How about diversity based surgeons.
How about diversity based nuclear engineers?.............
Surgeons can only kill one at a time..................
“Federal Aviation Administration undermined a skills-based test to help select air traffic controllers in an effort to promote workforce diversity.”
Does that explain why there have been so many close encounters involving aircraft the last couple of years?
Where are all of the blind bus drivers? I smell, feel and hear discrimination.
“Biographical questionnaire?” 1. Hey Bro, you be black?
Work force diversity, based on demographics alone, is an unattainable goal and a fool’s errand. Nothing beats merit, no matter where it is found. But to select randomly, in the hope or wish that the selected candidate will somehow rise to the occasion because the responsibility is thrust upon him or her, is betting of massive failure.
On the job is no place to winnow out the highly incompetent. Or even the marginal applicant. The best of the best is an absolute essential in a high-pressure position.
They are working for the NFL as referees..................
NO! Get with the program. The white people are "triggering" the diversity hires.
I think it comes back to Green Agenda...
Big poluting jets.
make it unsafe enough that people are unwilling to fly.
Is speaking english required? I am sure there are a lot of muzzies wanting the job. Will they hire illegals?
English is the required language of Air Traffic Controllers all over the Earth. Even Moscow and Beijing...........................
One of the things most people miss with DEI strategy is one of the plums for the deep state. The hiring of mediocre people results less production which means more hiring to offset the drop. Almost all government workers are dues paying union members. More dues mean more money for the unions/democrats. The stupid Republicans should be shrinking government instead of playing along with the dems.
People knowing statistics commented that the survey was rigged for American born blacks and rigged very incompetently. That’s why the rigging was so obvious.
Srednik highly recommends Thomas Sowell’s WHITE LIBERALS AND BLACK REDNECKS and his INSIDE AMERICAN EDUCATION for analysis of the preposterous notion that some Americans are not smart enough to succeed. He contends quotas hurt minorities. Srednik agrees wholeheartedly. It is very hard work to get qualified at something. If one’s education was inadequate in that area, then the age-old way of earning things — hard work, and more hard work is the way to achieve it. Anything worth having is worth working hard to get. Signaling to some, through a quota, that they aren’t smart enough to get the reward on their own is degrading and dehumanizing.
On the job is no place to winnow out the highly incompetent. Or even the marginal applicant. The best of the best is an absolute essential in a high-pressure position.
* * *
Thank you, alloysteel, for the most eloquent, down-to-earth, and easily understood critique of diversity hiring I've ever read.
Before I retired, I followed as an industry analyst the niche software market that serves the telecom industry. And I'm happy to report back that when I attended a company sponsored event or heard execs talk at conferences, I detected no DEI foolishness. Very few women had high level executive positions, but the few that did showed their competence. And for good reason, competition in the B2B software space is a brutal business.
For decades, Fortune Magazine used to a great publication, and I was an avid reader. But soon after it was a acquired by the Chinese interests, it became a partisan pub that satisfied the DEI fans, the climate hoaxers, and the anti-Trump / anti-common sense forces.
But somehow a in 2018 Fortune has the good sense to allow seasoned pro Shawn Tully the freedom to write a stellar piece of corporate journalism, entitled, Paper Jam! How Carl Icahn And a Billionaire Partner Blocked Xerox’s Merger with Fujifilm.
The full story is at the link, and parts of it read like a corporate thriller. Essentially Icahn's team saved Xerox from bad management decisions at the top, especially from CEO Ursula Burns, a DEI hire and her "acolyte" Jeff Jacobson.
It's a classic example of how incompetent leadership at the top of major companies can destroy tens of thousands of jobs.
FTA: concluded that minority candidates were hindered by the cognitive test.
In short they could not think straight!
Just what you do not want in a air traffic controller.
That is an airplane.
Candidate: It looks like a bird to me.
In December 2013, thousands of students who had participated in the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) - a program specifically designed to prepare individuals to become Air Traffic Control Specialists - were informed that their previous scores on a cognitive and skills-based test - known as the AT-SAT - would be discounted.
Instead, these students would have to pass a biographical survey before retaking the cognitive portion of the test.
BTTT
This race-based scoring is racism and anti-white.
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