I have a medical license. It required passage of both written and oral examinations (as in multiple). I could not do poorly on one type of exam and have that result expunged or discounted by doing well on the other. You passed them all or you didn't pass. Obviously the 'victim' knew there was both a written and an oral exam for this promotion. Prior to the effort he had to understand that the written exam would weigh more in determining his promotion. Is this written exam a mystery? Are there NO study guides or reference materials outlining the content or structure of the exam? What questions would be on this exam that only white "legacy" firefighters would be able to study for or answer correctly? They are alleging that the city intentionally uses a written exam to discriminate in favor the white race. How do you do that? Are there exams that would discriminate against Asians and Hispanics too? If they only wanted white guys in charge that exam would have to be pretty outrageous in is design. Written exams cover a lot more material than do oral exams. If a 150 question written exam was delivered in an oral format it would take hours to complete. They test for different things which is why both are commonly employed for a number of purposes. But it is the written exam that more clearly demonstrates the depth of knowledge of the candidate. That's why you intensely study for both.

Medical school exams are not the same as firefighting ones. Firefighting doesn't require the depth of knowledge that medicine does, but it requires practical knowledge, quick thinking, a cool head along with lots of courage. That's why the sort of written test administered in New Heaven isn't used anywhere else in the country. Fire fighting is practical knowledge and that's what the oral test was measuring.

Can you just imagine you're trapped in a building on fire and the fire captain is standing outside trying to rack his or her brain trying to remember which question on the multiple choice exam applied to your situation: was it A or B or C? Good luck!

PS: some medical students do great on written test and flank their internship.....

You could just as easily claim the same thing of the oral portion of the exam. When I'm inside a burning building, I don't want the guy that charmed the examiners in the oral portion of his exam. I want the guy who knows a lot about fires.

Perhaps the building I'm in has an unusual fire, and the captain has never seen it in real life, but because he studied intensively he remembers that he needs to do things differently.

Maybe a written test is not a good way to judge firefighters, but the same could be said of an oral exam.

he did not have to study.

He took the easy way out, because he believed that (before the ruling) his skin color was worth all the points he needed for promotion.

Human beings have endeavored to find and then take the easy way out with regards to just about everything.

Who cares? The issue isn't whether they're PREDICTIVE. That's an unanswerable question. The issue is whether they're DISCRIMINATORY, and no, they're not, unless (like most of the dummy libs on this site) you think that black people can't pass written exams.

yup!

to retain information and problem solve.

both needed skills for an officer.

"Firefighting doesn't require the depth of knowledge that medicine does, but it requires practical knowledge, quick thinking, a cool head along with lots of courage."

Rubbish, it requires considerable cognitive skills. And, the more predictive tests are for cognitive skills the greater disparate impact they have.

"The major legal dilemma in selection is that the best overall predictors of job performance, namely, cognitive tests, have the most disparate impact on racial-ethnic minorities. Their considerable disparate impact is not due to any imperfections in the tests. Rather, it is due to the tests' measuring essential skills and abilities that happen not to be distributed equally among groups (Schmidt, 1988). Those differences currently are large enough to cause a major problem. U.S. Department of Education literacy surveys show, for example, that black college graduates, on the average, exhibit the cognitive skill levels of white high school graduates without any college (Kirsch, Jungeblut, & Kolstad, 1993, p. 127)."

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I didn't know that you knew this Plaintiff personally. It is good to have your informed opinion regarding the subject.

It was my pleasure.

Is there anything else I can assist you with?