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In a move that appears to have largely flown under the radar, President Trump has signed an EO aimed at eliminating disparate impact analysis/theory. CNN devoted a whole 11 sentences to this EO, the Washington Post bundled it with six others, and the New York Times gave it two sentences in an article about another order. I have to wonder how this is flying under the radar, because 🦀🦀🦀 DISPARATE IMPACT IS DEAD 🦀🦀🦀.
Of course it's not gone gone yet, it is still part of the Civil Rights Act (1964), but the EO instructs that:
and
This will of course result in litigation, which will likely drag on for years, but the fact that this started now, in April of the first year of his term, means that there's a very good chance this ends up before SCOTUS before President Trump's term is up and a new face takes the oval. I'm very excited to see where this goes, and have my fingers crossed that this means we'll see a return to civil service exams and meritocratic hiring.
Tests and meritocratic hiring already exists. Look at top quant firms or top tech firms. You got to be whip-smart to get those jobs. They already have tests, like Wonderlic, white board/leetcode, or phone interviews (typically multiple gauntlets of testing). These tend to be 'on the fly', so harder to practice. Even crap jobs have huge screening and long applications.
The problem with any exam system is those are really prone to being gamed or people cramming for them. So you end up with a situation where lots of people score well on the exam, yet there isn't much useful information gleaned from this. This is common with the AP exams, where almost everyone gets 4s and 5s, so elite colleges have ignored them. Employers instead have learned to rely more on surprise-- hence phone interviews, Wonderlic (in which it tests for literacy/numeracy, but also acts like an IQ test, and you cannot really raise your score that much for it), on-the-spot coding or other challenges, brainteasers, and so on. or college degrees, which not only screen for competence, but also conscientiousness due to the large time investment.
Ouch. 4-pleb detected. The cool kids are over here getting a dozen 5s each and couldn't imagine getting a 4.
But more seriously, getting good AP scores isn't going to guarantee admission anywhere, but getting bad or not enough AP scores is gonna tank your application unless you have something else like dark skin to compensate.
Wonderlic is the test that literally lost Griggs. The burden of proof is on the employer to "prove" that the test isn't discrimination, and now Wonderlic (and Indeed and co) has a team of lawyers you need need to pay millions to who will preemptively produce tomes of legal documents to prove that, yes, being retarded will in fact reduce job performance on your specific job. Those tomes will of course need to be paid for and recreated for every distinct job title you have.
If disparate impact is actually ended, expect every Walmart level job to have the equivalent of an IQ test.
is this supposed to be a diss. Maybe I can send some passages of the math paper I am working on, and you can proofread them, as you've obviously way smarter. You must be so successful at life with that attitude.
This what the Wonderlic accomplishes (along with interview, which also is a screening mechanism), and according to people on reddit, it's very common and many companies use it. AFIK, the Wonderlic or any company that has used it has never been successfully sued for disparate impact on the grounds off the test itself. https://old.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/x5qv4v/an_employer_gave_me_a_wonderlic_test_is_this/
What makes the Wonderlic particularly useful is it's not only very quick and cheap to proctor (no psychologist, unlike a full-scale IQ test), but it screens for both competence, like reading and math, and also functions as an IQ screen/filter on the high-end, due to rarity of top scores, which map to a bell curve and highly correlated with full-scale IQ.
The outcome is more nuanced. https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/645/articles/Cognitive%20AbilityTesting%20EF%20wonderlic.pdf
My broader point being: The tests are widespread, as shown on reddit. Wonderlic and employers work together to ensure the tests are compliant and used appropriately, hence and there are a paucity of lawsuits, let alone successful ones, indicating it has been a success. I support unconditional use of tests for hiring, but it's wrong to say such testing does not exist or that a full-scale IQ test would be better, when the Wonderlic is by many measures better and already does that.
Nice worthless anecdote
Absolutely irrelevant in this case
It's not cheap to get access. That's literally the point of my entire post, that the legal ass-covering needed to give the wonderlic is why testing is not done more often.
It is often, which was my point which you missed. I support the unconditional use of IQ tests for hiring/promotion, but it's wrong to say that testing is uncommon or that Griggs is preventing companies from using screening.
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