Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be extra wary of stories like this being massaged.
Respectfully, thats not accurate.
The article actually shows that dei considerations were central to the original changes, not just recent framing. The FOIA requests show explicit discussions about "diversity vs performance tradeoffs" from the beginning. The NBCFAE role and the "barrier analysis" were both explicitly focused on diversity outcomes in 2013.
The article provides primary sources (internal FAA documents, recorded messages, investigation reports) showing that racial considerations were explicitly part of the decision making process from the start. This is documented in realtime communications.
The scandal involved both improper hiring practices (cheating) AND questionable DEI implementation. These aren't mutually exclusive; they're interrelated aspects of the same event.
> Taking old, resolved scandals
In what way do you consider this resolved?
The class action lawsuit hasn't even gone to trial yet (2026).
The FAA is still dealing with controller shortages. (facilities are operating understaffed,controllers are working 6-day weeks due to staffing shortages, training pipelines remain backed up)
The relationship between the FAA and CTI schools remains damaged, applicant numbers have declined significantly since 2014.
For example, here's an FAA slide from 2013 which explicitly publishes the ambition to place DEI as the core issue ("- How much of a change in jo performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?"):
The evidence in this source does not discuss cronyism, although I believe you that it could have been relevant to your personal experience; it's just false to claim the issue as a whole was unrelated to DEI.
If you are understaffed, AND you are hiring traditionally, it would make sense that recruiting people would go up. That would mean diverse hires anyway - based on the article, it seems that even increasing diversity was not between undeserving candidates and ideal candidates (the second band section of the article)
Is the third variable at play here a lack of funding from congress for recruitment?
Also I heard "math" with a youtube overlay.
So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants. Worse, if you hire based on highest test scores you'd only hire 2 of the black applicants and end up with 99.6% white hires. The obvious thing to do to improve the optics is to figure out how to hire all 10 of the qualified black applicants, which is the thing that would have "minimal impact to performance", but you have two problems. First, picking them explicitly because of their race is illegal, so you have to manufacture some convoluted system to do it in a roundabout way. Second, even if you do that you're still screwed, because even hiring all 10 of them leaves you with 98% white hires and that's still bad optics.
Their workaround was to use a BS biographical test to exclude most of the white applicants while giving the black applicants the answers. If you do that you can get 90 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants. That'll certainly improve the optics, but then you have 400 unfilled slots.
What they didn't appear to do, at least it is not discussed, is targeted advertising towards underrepresented groups.
If there's a test used as the basis of consideration, and some process has decided that any score over X makes the candidate qualified, but then you are later going to claim that actually, given that there were candidates with a score of X+Y, a score of just X does not really constitute "qualified" and the higher scoring candidates should have been chosen, then the whole nature of the test and the ranking becomes rather suspect.
So either everyone who is judged to be qualified really is qualified, and it makes no difference that they were not necessarily the highest scoring candidates ... or ... the test for "qualified" is not suitable for purpose.
What you're supposed to do is go to places with more black people and start advertising to people in general they can become air traffic controllers. Then take them through air traffic controller training school and at the end, you *don't* have only 10 qualified black applicants.
But if you have to fill 5 slots and you have 10 candidates who all scored above 70, you now have to choose between them somehow. And the candidates who scored 95 are legitimately expected to perform the job better than the ones who scored 75, even though the ones who scored 75 would have been better than an unfilled position.
1. there is a test that is a decent proxy for job performance
2. the relationship between job performance and test score above some passing score is linear
These both sound "common sense", but I suspect fail for a huge number of real world scenarios.
The second assumption is not required. If people who score a 95 are only 5% better at the job than people who score a 70, all else equal you'd still pick the person who scored a 95 given the choice.
Performance on the AT-SAT is not job performance.
If you have a qualification test that feels useful but also turns out to be highly non-predictive of job performance (as, for example, most college entrance exams turn out to be for college performance), you could change the qualification threshold for the test without any particular expectation of losing job performance.
In fact, it is precisely this logic that led many universities to stop using admissions tests - they just failed to predict actual performance very well at all.
As for the article, it's not given me particular solid vibes, a feeling not helped by some of the comments here (both pro and con).
Satisfying the first assumption means "still monotonic".
Also, if you had a better test then you'd use it, but at some point you have 10 candidates and 5 slots and have to use something to choose, so you use the closest approximation available until you can come up with a better one.
No, but it was the best predictor of job performance and academy pass rate there was.
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA566825.pdf
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear... (page 41)
There are a fixed number of seats at the ATC academy in OKC, so it's critical to get the highest quality applicants possible to ensure that the pass rate is as high as possible, especially given that the ATC system has been understaffed for decades.
Sorry, but I just don't agree. There are "qualifying tests" for jobs that I've done that just do not have any sort of monotonic relationship with job performance. I'm a firefighter (volunteer) - to become operational you need to be certified as either FF I or FF II, but neither of those provide anything more than a "yes, this person can learn the basic stuff required to do this". The question of how good a firefighter someone will be is almost orthogonal to their performance on the certification exams. Someone who gets 95% on their IFSAC FF II exam is in no way predicted to be a better firefighter than someone who got 78%.
> "The empirically-keyed, response-option scored biodata scale demonstrated incremental validity over the computerized aptitude test battery in predicting scores representing the core technical skills of en route controllers."
I.e the aptitude test battery is WORSE than the biodata scale.
The second citation you offered merely notes that the AT-SAT battery is a better predictor than the older OPM battery, not that is the best.
I'd also say at a higher level that both of those papers absolutely reek of non-reproduceability and low N problems that plague social and psychological research. I'm not saying they're wrong. They are just not obviously definitive.
It says the answers were sent from the FAA to members of the "National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees". It went to all of them, not just friends. It was DEI, not cronyism.
Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA employee Shelton Snow:
You might be confused by this line:
As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees
That may or not be cronyism, but once she joined, the whole org got the answers, so clearly it was aimed at getting more Blacks through the process.
The US population is around 1/8 black. Which means, if every kid has an equal opportunity (in an absolute sense or on average) to develop the requisite skills to be an air traffic controller and if every kid was equally inclined to apply, and the application process were fair, then eventually around 1/8 of air traffic controllers would be black. Which seems like a good outcome.
If 1/8 of the population is black and someone is trying to get 1/4 of air traffic controllers to be black, that seems like a mistake.
You're mistaken, it's the opposite. The first one found that AT-SAT performance was the best measure, with the biodata providing a small enhancement:
> AT-SAT scores accounted for 27% of variance in the criterion measure (β=0.520, adjusted R2=.271,p<.001). Biodata accounted for an additional 2% of the variance in CBPM (β=0.134; adjusted ΔR2=0.016,ΔF=5.040, p<.05).
> In other words, after taking AT-SAT into account, CBAS accounted for just a bit more of the variance in the criterion measure
Hence, "incremental validity."
> The second citation you offered merely notes that the AT-SAT battery is a better predictor than the older OPM battery, not that is the best.
You're right, and I can't remember which study it was that explicitly said that it was the best measure. I'll post it here if I find it. However, given that each failed applicant costs the FAA hundreds of thousands of dollars, we can safely assume that there was no better measure readily available at the time, or it would have been used instead of the AT-SAT. Currently they use the ATSA instead of the AT-SAT, which is supposed to be a better predictor, and they're planning on replacing the AT-SAT in a year or two; it's an ongoing problem with ongoing research.
> I'd also say at a higher level that both of those papers absolutely reek of non-reproduceability and low N problems that plague social and psychological research. I'm not saying they're wrong. They are just not obviously definitive.
Given the limited number of controllers, this is going to be an issue in any study you find on the topic. You can only pull so many people off the boards to take these tests, so you're never going to have an enormous sample size.
It doesn't mean that at all.
Well, depending on what you mean. It could just be that your premise is known to be false.
How is that a criticism? It is always possible that someone could invent a better test.
In any case, the second citation directly refutes your point in another sub-thread with AnthonyMouse, the assertion that higher-performing applicants above the cutoff do not perform better on the job:
"If all applicants scoring 70 or above on the AT-SAT are selected, slightly over one-third would be expected to be high performers. With slightly greater selectivity, taking only applicants scoring 75.1 or above, the proportion of high performers could be increased to nearly half."
Also:
"The primary point is that applicants who score very high (at 90) on the AT-SAT are expected to perform near the top of the distribution of current controllers (at the 86th percentile)."
We had 500 open positions. We filled 100, and argued over 10.
That’s still a gap of 400 positions. We have only 110 qualified applicants.
The Math is missing a third variable.
Large American employers basically all face the same double bind: if they do not disriminate in hiring, they almost certainly will not get the demographic ratios the EEOC wants, and will get sued successfully for disparate impact (and because EVERYTHING has disparate impact, and you cannot carry out a validation study on every one of the infinite attributes of your HR processes, everyone who hires people is unavoidably guilty all the time). But if they DO discriminate, and get caught, then that's even more straightforwardly illegal and they get sued too.
There is only one strategy that has a chance of not ending you up on the losing end of a lawsuit: deliberately illegally discriminate to achieve the demographic percentages that will make the EEOC happy, but keep the details of how you're doing so secret so that nobody can piece together of the story to directly prove illegal discrimination in a lawsuit. (It'll be kinda obvious it must've happened from the resulting demographics of your workforce, but that's not enough evidence.) The FAA here clearly failed horribly at the "keep the details secret" part of this standard plan.
And the beauty is, the more brackets, the more true this is, and the more can be extracted from the system.
Alternatively, this is a way for your boss to meet budget targets while not explicitly laying people off, and giving hope to people that help is coming.
Especially since the market of people willing to work the job AND take the pay AND work in the area is not infinite.
We’re talking about a group which went out of its way (apparently) already to recruit folks with the specific colors they wanted + these other criteria.
Don’t forget, everyone else in the country has been having similar constraints and has been trying to do the same thing near as I can tell.
Why do you think they were sharing test answers (it seems), and still only got x candidates in?
And also, doesn’t this entire thing seem actively unfair and racist (albeit to everyone except the chosen minority) instead of what at worst was perhaps a passively unfair and racist situation before? (Albeit to everyone except the majority)
How is that actually any better, except that it pisses off the majority instead of the minority?
Seems like a good way to lose elections, frankly. Or have a majority of the population angry at every minority out there.
There are enough differences in socialization, current population education levels, current incarceration rates/history in the population, etc. to make that essentially impossible yes?
As to if they are fair or not? Probably not. are you going to fix it, and if so, how?
We can argue about theoretical from birth path differences all we want, but no one on the hiring side has the time to deal with those or to control them - and if looking at things from a coarse population level - it just doesn’t reflect actual reality right now, yes?
But, to me, it would be absurd to suggest that the air traffic controllers should be “diverse” in the sense that a “minority” group should be represented in excess of its representation in the overall population, that there aren’t enough black people the US for a fair hiring process to achieve this, and that therefore an unfair process should be used to increase this sort of “diversity”. That’s all kinds of wrong!
But to actually answer the question: while it can absolutely be both, you need to provide proof of the additional claim. "People cheated for DEI reasons" and "People cheated for cronyism reasons" are two separate claims. The article provides plenty of evidence for the former and not much for the latter.
No, this is false. You don't appear to know what you're trying to postulate.
What I think is weird is how many firms have this reason, but do it for other stated reasons and don't simply state this compliance nuance. I figure more people would accept your "paragraph three strategy" as an acceptable means to a required end. Maybe this threat is more of a "what if" that has lower probability of enforcement so in practice, getting hunted for this is not that likely.
In addition, this is a diversion from the elephant in the room, which is that right after some dramatic executive action, many people died within a short amount of time due to a crash that had nothing to do with race and everything to do with chaotic governance.
Cronyism is advancing the interests of your personal connections. Friends and family. If you want an explicit cutoff, the Dunbar Number suggests this group should have 100, maybe 150 people in it.
Conversely, there's 40 million black people in the US, and I really doubt anyone is even associated with all of them, much less calling them one of their friends.
You can change who you're friends with a lot easier than you can change your skin color, so the two result in different problems. They're both bad, of course. Similar to how "wage theft" and "shoplifting" are different crimes, even though both of them involve taking money from someone else.
Only hiring people who belong to the same fraternity is also cronyism, and is the same problem.
In this case, a criteria for joining this ‘fraternity’ is the color of their skin.
Hence double applicable with DEI.
Why do you keep insisting on ignoring half of what you are pasting?
First, the FAA and the NBCFAE are different organizations.
Second, "Associate" does not mean "employed at the same massive organization". It means someone you actually know, on a personal level. You and I are not "associates" just because we both post on Hacker News.
Third, the question is whether you're associated with the individual, not the organization that they're a part of.
> Only hiring people who belong to the same fraternity is also cronyism
If you only hire from Harvard or some other prestigious university is that also cronyism?
Are all internal promotions cronyism?
If you only hire people who live in your city, is that also cronyism? Keep in mind that there's plenty of rural towns that have fewer people than a big fraternity does. Does this change if all th qualified workers in the town are black, so you're only hiring black workers?
You presumably have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise "only hiring US citizens" is also cronyism. Where, exactly, are you suggesting that line should be?
Now that's proof that white hiring managers are incompetent! (that's a joke)
Also, going out of your way to hire people of specific skin color where you work, is racism.
Seems like a bunch of folks at the FAA were doing both here, yes?
I'll offer up the Wikipedia definition, since it is perhaps slightly clearer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cronyism defines it as "friends or trusted colleagues".
Straight from the president up until Trump (for many administrations), affirmative action is required.
And what the gov’t expects is that your workforce composition aligns with the population as a whole, percentage wise.
You have 100 open positions.
You filled 50.
You left the other 50 spots open so that you could have the right composition amongst HALF of the required workforce?
Heck, if you hire everyone, you solve this problem completely.