Fire Test Inadequate

To the Editor:

I am writing to thank The Chief for encouraging a forum of ideas by printing my Aug. 11 opinion piece on FDNY diversity and the responses of EMT Jeff Nichols, Joseph M. Kearney of HazMat Co. 1, and Battalion Chief Paul Mannix.

EMT Nichols correctly identifies the department's racial power imbalances that have historically informed FDNY hiring practices, as well as the corrective role of the Department of Justice. The reason we are having this discussion is because of the Vulcan Society lawsuit.

That being said, the department should use the diversity crisis as an opportunity to revamp itself to better meet the city's changing demographics and incident responses. The lack of diversity is but one manifestation of a stagnant organizational mindset ready to implode.

With emergency medical responses outnumbering fire responses 3:1, EMS pay structure, promotional opportunities, and working conditions must be more fairly aligned with those of firefighters. The Jim Crow racial divide long used in the South to depress wages and exploit both black and white workers has no place in the FDNY.

Kearney and Battalion Chief Mannix both miss the significance of the Federal EEOC's finding that the skills the written exam measures had no relationship to job skills. If the exam doesn't predict candidate ability - as the EEOC found - then rankings based on exam scores have no relationship to merit. At best, using these test results to pick firefighters is an administrative tool for randomly weeding out the pool of candidates. But when the practice routinely bars entry of otherwise qualified black candidates into the department, it is discriminatory.

Mr. Kearney does assert solid, valid arguments regarding the complexities of affirmative action in a general context. I agree. Fine-tuning college admissions and employment opportunities in consideration of such factors as one's socioeconomic background, gender, and racial identity will likely present challenges to lawmakers and judges for decades to come.

This is not Appalachia, however. In the context of New York City, the issue is far more transparent. The city's public schools are still largely segregated, with the lower-performing schools concentrated in black neighborhoods.

Former school Principal and Superintendent Bernard Gassaway articulated this in his response to a recent New York Times article reporting the drop of minority representation in the city's elite schools. Gassaway wrote, "We do not need test results to tell us what we already know. Black children in urban schools receive an inferior education. No amount of test preparation can make up for years of social, cultural and educational neglect."

We don't need FDNY test results to state the obvious. In the context of hiring the best-qualified, using a test score irrelevant to measuring differences in ability functions as affirmative action for white candidates having access to better schools. The question is not one of using standards; the question is one of what standards are relevant and quantifiable in hiring the best-qualified.

Loaded language and miscasting the issue as a pejorative "dumbing" down of standards further impedes progress by shining a "stereotype spotlight" on black applicants. In his expert report to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing for diversity in law school admissions, Claude Steele presented research on a form of test anxiety he categorized as "stereotype threat." Steele prepared the report while Chair of the Department of Psychology at Stanford University.

The effect impairs performance in individuals taking high-stakes exams when they apply negative stereotypes to themselves. Not just a black phenomenon, "stereotype threat" cuts across racial, ethnic, age and gender lines regardless of socio-economic background.

Steele found that black students with similar backgrounds to whites performed worse when told difficult test questions would measure their ability. When a separate group of black and white sophomores were told the questions were part of a problem-solving task, the black students matched the performance of equally qualified white students. The effect was most pronounced with students heavily vested in performing well.

Steele's research was expanded to reveal stereotype threat interferes ".. with test performance of any group whose abilities are negatively stereotyped in the larger society: Women taking difficult math tests .. White male athletes being given a test of natural athletic ability; White males taking a difficult math test on which they are told 'Asians do better'; as well as Hispanic students at the University of Texas being given a difficult English test."

To rely on written test scores in this context is just as unfair to blacks as relying on test scores of natural athletic ability would be to whites. FDNY entrance exams are necessary for indicating threshold competencies. The results are misused when considered bona fide occupational qualifications demanding a strict scoring gradient.

The Fire Department can easily remedy charges of disparate impact and neutralize "stereotype spotlight" by emulating other major municipal fire departments. Two of the nation's most diverse departments, Los Angeles and San Francisco, use a pass/fail standard on both their written and physical exams rather than numerical scores.

KEVIN JAMES, Retired Supervising Fire Marshal and Vulcan Society Member