Affirmative action in the control tower

I don't fly. When folks ask me why, the short answer is that I know too much: I'm a former FAA air traffic controller.

It's been recently reported that the FAA is now actively recruiting new trainees to work in the towers and control rooms directing airplanes and that the criteria they now utilize to screen applicants is a curiously absurd "biographical questionnaire." Jason L. Riley in the Wall Street Journal:

A recently completed six-month investigation by Fox Business Network found that the Federal Aviation Administration has quietly moved away from merit-based hiring criteria in order to increase the number of women and minorities who staff airport control towers. The changes come despite the fact that the FAA's own internal reports describe the evidence for changing the hiring process as "weak."

Until 2013, the FAA gave hiring preference to controller applicants who earned a degree from one of its Collegiate Training Initiative schools and scored high enough on an eight-hour screening test called the Air Traffic Selection and Training exam, or AT-SAT, which measures cognitive skills. The Obama administration, however, determined that the process excluded too many from minority groups. In May 2013, the FAA's civil rights administrator issued "barrier analyses" of the agency's employment procedures, which recommended "revising how the AT-SAT is used in establishing best-qualified lists."

By the start of last year, the FAA was using a biographical questionnaire (BQ) to initially vet potential hires. The questions – "How many sports did you play in high school?", "What has been the major cause of your failures?" – seem designed to elicit stories of personal disadvantage or family hardship rather than determine success on the job.

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