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Candidates Flunk Fuzzy Fire Test;
Multiple Right Answers
Multiple Right Answers
Muddied Waters He attributed the difference in his scores to a redesigned test format that for the first time in the city's history introduced numerous questions with more than one correct answer to the entry-level Firefighter exam. Previous tests were made up mostly of straightforward questions with multiple answer choices - one correct and four wrong - on topics closely associated with reading comprehension and basic learning skills. DCAS Commissioner Martha K. Hirst last fall said the revamped exam was meant to better assess candidates' resilience, spatial and interpersonal relationships and situational judgment. Eighty-eight of its 195 questions had two or more correct responses among the five multiple-choice options, including one that had no wrong answer at all because it was written incorrectly. The first part of the exam consisted of a speed-and-agility exercise, which asked candidates to glance at a series of street addresses, then compare them to other addresses and note discrepancies in a short span of time. Candidates were then shown a visual picture, given a few minutes to study it, and asked to answer questions from memory. 5 Degrees of Desirable Approximately 100 questions included queries about how a candidate might respond to a variety of situations. Test-takers were asked to assess five possible responses to a scenario and rate each one as highly desirable, desirable, neutral, undesirable or highly undesirable. Many of the questions required the candidates to envision themselves involved in a hypothetical task or discussion, sometimes in the role of a senior firefighter who'd been on the job for many years. "I don't understand that at all," commented one FDNY veteran, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This is an entry-level exam that's supposed to test for basic ability to learn on the job. Who knows if half these kids would make it to senior firefighter? They shouldn't be tested on what may happen 20 years down the line." DCAS officials said about 490 candidates showed up at a protest meeting in late February to lodge formal challenges to some of the answers, and more protests are expected. Questions DCAS Logic A group of disappointed test-takers has also formed a coalition to protest the fact that they weren't made aware of the changes in structure and format prior to the exam. One candidate, a student at an Ivy League school, said he'd gotten 10 answers wrong, according to the answer key DCAS recently mailed to his house. Nine of the incorrect responses were on "situational" questions, he said. "I studied real hard for this exam, went to all the free tutorials, bought my own study guides, and scored between 95 and 100 on all the practice exams, but apparently I still didn't do all that well on this test, although I contend that many of my answers were right," the candidate commented. "I know that DCAS claims a small population is whining because we didn't do well. But there is more to it than that. The small population is the group that studied hard enough to know what was going on." Call-of-Duty? Wrong One question that tripped him up related to a rookie firefighter responding to a call for an apartment fire at the end of an extremely busy day. With no smoke or flames visible from the 32nd floor where the call originated, but a broken elevator in the building, should the rookie tell his supervisor he was too tired to climb the stairs? "I saw that as a highly undesirable response, because the question didn't say that you felt sick or you were having an asthma attack or anything. I thought the answer was clear," the applicant said. "But I got it wrong. Later I talked to some other people who took the test and I was surprised to hear they clearly saw the correct answer as A or B, and they were right, so I guess a lot of this was in how you interpreted the questions." The protest coalition currently has about 80 participants, many of them Fire Science students at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. That group is mulling its legal options. Race an Unspoken Issue All of them are wary of injecting race into the issue, even though many FDNY critics - including some rank and file and top brass - have privately slammed the department for making too many changes to the hiring process in the name of diversity. The FDNY last summer announced that the Firefighter physical exam would be scored pass/fail, making the written test the only marker by which to rank potential hires, and slashed its college credit requirements in half for new recruits. The department is currently facing a Department of Justice probe over allegations of discrimination in its hiring practices. City and FDNY officials have defended their new initiatives, including the $1.5-million recruitment campaign launched last fall to increase the minority showing at the Firefighter test in January. FDNY officials instead point to the growing job description of firefighters, which now includes medical runs and heavy counter-terrorism work, both of which have the potential to bring them into far greater contact with the public. The new criteria and hiring exams have been designed to better reflect the changing nature of the job, DCAS officials contend. Protest Change-Up That's fine with the group of candidates unhappy with the current test. Their agenda doesn't include rolling back the clock, they said. In fact, most said they would have no problem with the changed format - if DCAS had given them a heads-up on what to expect. "[Our group has] a mixed representation of Latinos, Asians, blacks, whites, men and women who are really upset with the test," said one of the co-founders. "We were led to expect something entirely different - straightforward questions testing reading comprehension and basic learning skills. That's what the FDNY prep manual covers. Instead we got a lot of hypothetical 'what ifs.''' The coalition, which can be reached at protestfdny6019@gmail.com, has planned a tentative protest March 25 in Union Square.
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