In 2013, the Obama administration forced the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to abandon its Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative (AT-CTI) schools, which used clinically verified aptitude tests to admit and train air traffic controllers (ATCs).
"This abrupt change in hiring practices for the sake of affirmative action left nearly 3,000 aspiring ATCs suddenly ineligible for employment because they did not fit the FAA’s new preferred racial profile," Revolver News noted.
Andrew Brigida, who is white, was one such student. He spent $40,000 and four years on his degree, achieved the highest possible score on the FAA’s aptitude test, and was still filtered out for consideration as an ATC. He is now leading a class-action lawsuit against the FAA.
Related: Team Biden’s diversity hiring policy even applies to air traffic control system, October 30, 2023
President Donald Trump slammed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) standards at the FAA after Wednesday night's deadly in-air collision at DC's Reagan National Airport.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room on Thursday, highlighted efforts by the Biden administration to lower aviation standards
"We must have only the highest standards for those who work in our aviation system," Trump said. "Only the highest aptitude – you have to be the highest intellect – and psychologically superior people, were allowed to qualify for air traffic controllers."
"We have to have our smartest people. It doesn't matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. What matters is intellect, talent. The word talent. They have to be talented geniuses," he continued. "We can't have regular people doing that job. They won't be able to do it."
Trump noted that he had raised the qualification standards for air traffic controllers during his first administration, but he said the Biden administration had lowered them once he left office.
Trump reinstated the higher standards last week with an executive order, he said.
"We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we'll probably state those opinions now, because over the years I've watched as things like this happen and they say, well, we're always investigating. And then the investigation, three years later, they announce it," Trump said, going on to detail an investigation including the FAA, Department of Defense and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Revolver News noted: "The aggressive substitution of merit in favor of diversity has led to a so-called competency crisis, jeopardizing not only our ability to generate innovative technology but, in a more dire sense, our ability to simply maintain the proper functioning of various complex systems vital to our existence as a first-world civilization. Despite the superficiality of 'diversity' as a matter of rhetoric, the reality of diversity as an ideological, cultural, and legal imperative is not merely cosmetic—far from it."
The decline in air traffic control quality can be traced "directly to new hiring policies implemented by the Obama administration," Revolver News added.
In 2012, three years before Obama put policies to increase diversity in air traffic control into effect, the FAA released an <a href="https://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/faa-aviation-medicine-reports/AM12-19.pdf">unclassified report</a> titled, “Development, Validation, and Fairness of Biographical Data Questionnaire for the Air Traffic Control Specialist Occupation.”
The report explicitly recommends the use of biographical data, or “biodata” — personal information about applicants — in place of the blind method of measuring competency to promote racial equality. Of their key findings, one is especially instructive: "From a test fairness perspective, biodata yielded nearly identical mean scores across gender and ethnicity scores that were well below differences typically found for tests of general mental ability."
A co-author of the FAA report, Dr. Michelle Dean, a professor of Human Resource Management at San Diego State University, wrote in her 1999 doctoral dissertation about the use of biodata to specifically cover up differences in performance among ethnic groups:
"Organizations are faced with the dilemma that general cognitive ability tests predict job performance while exhibiting adverse impact on racial and ethnic minority groups. Adverse impact occurs if a test causes employers to reject a larger proportion of minority than majority applicants. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made clear that when conducting validation studies, employers should consider available alternatives which will achieve their legitimate business purpose with lesser adverse impact."
The dissertation continued: "The continued concern that cognitive ability tests unfairly screen out minorities from selection consideration (Gottfredson, 1986) coupled with increasing workforce diversity has made alternative prediction techniques with less adverse impact, such as biodata, more attractive."
Or, in other words, as Revolver News noted, "the way to remove differences is to remove the questions that led to them. It’s essentially creating a test that doesn’t test for anything."
Revolver News investigators asked Dr. Mike McCormick, former Vice President of the Air Traffic Organization, the operational division of the FAA, about the quality of air traffic controllers and whether or not there has been a decline in competency.
This is his truly remarkable response:
I feel comfortable sharing my assessment that the air traffic control workforce skillset is vastly improving. Four things contribute to that. First, prior to 1981, all controllers were primarily prior military controllers with little to no college/university experience. That dynamic reversed and the vast majority of air traffic controllers have college/university experience. Second, as technology and automation improved, the workforce brought experience in applying that technology in their daily lives. This makes the transition to advanced technologies much easier. This includes keyboarding skills. Next, the newer controllers grew up playing ever more advanced video games on various platforms. Therefore, they developed the skill necessary to multi-task… rapidly and seamlessly transitioning back and forth from various tasks. This is a critical skillset in the air traffic workforce. Last, the air traffic controller profession is a well-compensated workforce with high job satisfaction. Therefore, when the FAA advertises for employing new controller, the number of interested candidates exceed the vacancies by a factor 30 or 40 times the vacancies. This enables the FAA to select the best or well qualified candidates.Revolver News responded: "Yes, you read that right. A former senior air traffic official assures us that the elimination of merit-based criteria to select employees in order to maximize diversity has not in fact diminished the quality of the talent pool because, among other things, the new employees grew up playing more advanced video games!
"This is not only intuitively ridiculous, but it contradicts the assessments of every senior air traffic controller we spoke with, all of whom agreed to speak on background. It’s worth repeating that these senior employees are in their forties and are not stereotypical old curmudgeons who hate fresh blood. Addressing Dr. McCormick’s points one by one with information from current ATCs: (1) military ATCs were better skilled than those coming out of universities; (2) technology has become a crutch, and over-reliance (the Google Effect) has resulted in less skilled ATCs; (3) the notion of improvements based on experience with video games is laughable; and (4) the FAA cannot select the best qualified candidates because of its hiring methods, which do not select for quality or merit."
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