Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990 TAG: 9007120280
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The VEC acted after the U.S. Labor Department announced Tuesday it would discontinue the General Aptitude Test Battery pending a two-year study.
The policy change was made "because of concerns over whether the test adequately serves all individuals, including minorities, veterans, those with disabilities and older workers," the federal agency said in a statement.
VEC Commissioner Ralph Cantrell said that effective Aug. 1, VEC will not accept job orders from companies that require applicants to take the aptitude test.
"It is gratifying to see our call for elimination of a discriminatory policy has been met," Agee said Wednesday.
Agee joined with other Republican legislators in calling for a stop to the testing, or at least a policy of informing employers and applicants of the test weighting system.
Agee said dropping the test still "leaves many unanswered questions as to how a policy of racial discrimination was adopted by an agency of state government essentially in secrecy and how much injury was done to the thousands of workers who took the test in good faith and whose employment was affected by the discriminatory policy."
Del. Frank R. Hargrove, R-Hanover County, also was among the group of GOP legislators who spoke out against the testing.
"I think it's appropriate. I think they never should have used it in the first place," said Hargrove. "I don't think unless we had focused on it that anybody would have known it existed."
Hargrove had asked the VEC to tell job applicants and potential employers about a policy of adjusting test scores based on the applicants' race. He also asked the VEC to give employers an applicant's raw test scores rather than a percentile ranking by racial group.
The Justice Department in 1986 raised legal questions about the score adjustments, which have the effect of giving lower percentile rankings to white and Asian job applicants.
The department agreed to withhold legal action until the testing process could be reviewed by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.
The academy last year issued a report that said the test and its application by local employment offices needed improvement to ensure fair treatment of all applicants.
Of the state's 12 largest employers, only Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. uses the test, according to a survey by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
"We were aware there were some adjustments [in scoring based on race], but we were not aware of the extent of those adjustments," Newport News Shipbuilding company spokesman Jack Schnaedter said.
About 12 percent of the 350,000 people who sought job placement assistance from the VEC during the last program year took the test, and fewer than 175 of the state's 126,000 employers require the test for applicants, according to VEC records.
The 12-part, 2 1/2-hour test includes sections on vocabulary and mathematics. It contains timed exercises in which test-takers must match shapes and objects.
It also includes several exercises with peg boards, washers and bolts that test manual dexterity.
Test results are reported to employers by percentile in five broad "job families" that include about 12,000 occupations in the United States.
Percentile scores are intended to indicate an individual's aptitude for jobs in each family.
Staff writer Rob Eure contributed information to this story.
by CNB