The Tension Between Testing and Integration

The civil-service merit system and the extent to which written tests can determine that the fittest candidates are chosen for government jobs came under scrutiny in August in two distinct but related cases: a Federal Judge’s ruling that a Teacher certification exam was fair despite the disproportionate number of minority candidates who failed it, and a Fire Department proposal to create a cadet program whose members would be given a leg up for Firefighter jobs by not having to compete on an open-competitive exam taken by thousands of candidates.

Both pivoted on the issue of how to increase minority representation in the two jobs, in a city where the population has become increasingly minority, without relaxing standards to such a degree that it could actually hurt the interests of the minority residents being served by both the city and state Departments of Education and the Fire Department.