Search

STANDING on the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven, the lawyer Karen Torre reveled in her clients' victory in a recent case before the Supreme Court. She anointed her clients -- the white firefighters who scored well on a promotion test -- ''a symbol'' for millions of Americans who are ''tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.'' But the Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision last month -- that New Haven should not have scrapped the test -- perpetuates profound misconceptions about the capacity of paper-and-pencil tests to gauge a person's potential on the job. Exams like the one the New Haven firefighters took are neither designed nor administered to identify the employees most qualified for promotion. And Ms. Torre's identity-politics sloganeering diverts attention from what we need most: a clear-eyed reassessment of our blind faith in entrenched testing regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]