Biographical Questionnaire - ATC Hiring video

C_Ro

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I just saw this, and found it fascinating. I was pool 1 so I was able to skip it, but I think most that are in the next hiring bid or those in the past that got disqualified might find this interesting.

ATC Bio Q - Youtube
 
Thought I would share this with the group. Tucker Carlson on Fox News did a segment the other night regarding the FAA’s biographical assessment...
Is the FAA sacrificing your safety for diversity?
I find it interesting that they left out the percentage of CTI, Vets, and OTS applicants that pass the academy. Since CTI students have such overwhelming success at the academy compared to other students. :rolleyes:
 
I find it interesting that they left out the percentage of CTI, Vets, and OTS applicants that pass the academy. Since CTI students have such overwhelming success at the academy compared to other students. :rolleyes:
I just watched that the other day and the whole thing is pretty misleading. They purposely leave out the fact that prior experience, CTI, and vets don’t have to take the BioQ and they don’t even mention the ATSA which measures aptitude. I have my private pilot license, have been interested in ATC for a while, and I made it through the BioQ.
 
I understand you guys are not familiar with the history, I'm going to correct a few things here to help educate before this turns into full on stuckmic speculation.,
answered contrary to all of the questions he called out as being important on the BA and had no problem myself....also i think theres a topic about this already!
The basis of their lawsuit is the 2014 BA. That BA eliminated ~95% of all applicants. When you factor in how many passed the AT-SAT (the predecessor to the AT-SA) and then the academy, the FAA missed their hiring goal by over 50%. The scoring and the BA itself has changed significantly since then.
I find it interesting that they left out the percentage of CTI, Vets, and OTS applicants that pass the academy. Since CTI students have such overwhelming success at the academy compared to other students. :rolleyes:
It's left out because it does not exist. The FAA's stance since the inception of the BA is "We don't track that." Now, clearly, they have the ability to and if the ultimate goal was to hire the best and brightest, wouldn't a rational person believe they should track the success rates of their 3 primary, differentiated hiring sources? To take it a step further, if I was in charge of hiring and it was my job to determine future success rates, call me crazy, but I'd track success rates from each military branch and from each individual CTI school. Some CTI schools track each individual students progress and some that I'm aware of are hovering around an 80% success rate to CPC, that's not an 80% success rate just through academy, that's through the academy and CPC-ing at their first facility. I'd then meet with the CTI schools producing the most successful graduates, find out how they're accomplishing it, and work with them to set up a nationwide curriculum for CTI schools(does not exist). To put it in perspective, despite how rational this seems, the FAA is doing none of this despite the academy having its worst success rate in the past few decades.
I just watched that the other day and the whole thing is pretty misleading. They purposely leave out the fact that prior experience, CTI, and vets don’t have to take the BioQ and they don’t even mention the ATSA which measures aptitude. I have my private pilot license, have been interested in ATC for a while, and I made it through the BioQ.
See above, the basis of the lawsuit is from the 2014 BA, where everyone took the BA and there were no separate pools. You were able to make it through the watered down version of the BA. For comparison, ~5% of applicants passed the BA in 2014, ~33% passed in 2017.
 
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I understand you guys are not familiar with the history, I'm going to correct a few things here to help educate before this turns into full on stuckmic speculation.,
The basis of their lawsuit is the 2014 BA. That BA eliminated ~95% of all applicants. When you factor in how many passed the AT-SAT (the predecessor to the AT-SA) and then the academy, the FAA missed their hiring goal by over 50%. The scoring and the BA itself has changed significantly since then.
It's left out because it does not exist. The FAA's stance since the inception of the BA is "We don't track that." Now, clearly, they have the ability to and if the ultimate goal was to hire the best and brightest, wouldn't a rational person believe they should track the success rates of their 3 primary, differentiated hiring sources? To take it a step further, if I was in charge of hiring and it was my job to determine future success rates, call me crazy, but I'd track success rates from each military branch and from each individual CTI school. Some CTI schools track each individual students progress and some that I'm aware of are hovering around an 80% success rate to CPC, that's not an 80% success rate just through academy, that's through the academy and CPC-ing at their first facility. I'd then meet with the CTI schools producing the most successful graduates, find out how they're accomplishing it, and work with them to set up a nationwide curriculum for CTI schools(does not exist). To put it in perspective, despite how rational this seems, the FAA is doing none of this despite the academy having its worst success rate in the past few decades.
See above, the basis of the lawsuit is from the 2014 BA, where everyone took the BA and there were no separate pools. You were able to make it through the watered down version of the BA. For comparison, ~5% of applicants passed the BA in 2014, ~33% passed in 2017.
I agree with you in large part. I believe that some CTI schools do a great job with training and that this case was based off of a faulty BA during its inception. But the narrative Tucker and the lawyers are portraying in this specific case is that the hiring of OTS and non-prior aviation experience was somehow favored for applicants, when I believe that the change of policy initiated with the Obama administration was to allow more people the opportunity to become controllers. Also in a workplace setting that has trainees learn everything the FAA way start to finish it’s kind of absurd to assume that non-prior experience applicants would lead to a drastic compromise in the safety of the NAS when everyone has to train the same way to become a CPC.
 
I understand you guys are not familiar with the history, I'm going to correct a few things here to help educate before this turns into full on stuckmic speculation.,
The basis of their lawsuit is the 2014 BA. That BA eliminated ~95% of all applicants. When you factor in how many passed the AT-SAT (the predecessor to the AT-SA) and then the academy, the FAA missed their hiring goal by over 50%. The scoring and the BA itself has changed significantly since then.
It's left out because it does not exist. The FAA's stance since the inception of the BA is "We don't track that." Now, clearly, they have the ability to and if the ultimate goal was to hire the best and brightest, wouldn't a rational person believe they should track the success rates of their 3 primary, differentiated hiring sources? To take it a step further, if I was in charge of hiring and it was my job to determine future success rates, call me crazy, but I'd track success rates from each military branch and from each individual CTI school. Some CTI schools track each individual students progress and some that I'm aware of are hovering around an 80% success rate to CPC, that's not an 80% success rate just through academy, that's through the academy and CPC-ing at their first facility. I'd then meet with the CTI schools producing the most successful graduates, find out how they're accomplishing it, and work with them to set up a nationwide curriculum for CTI schools(does not exist). To put it in perspective, despite how rational this seems, the FAA is doing none of this despite the academy having its worst success rate in the past few decades.
See above, the basis of the lawsuit is from the 2014 BA, where everyone took the BA and there were no separate pools. You were able to make it through the watered down version of the BA. For comparison, ~5% of applicants passed the BA in 2014, ~33% passed in 2017.

I knew the basis of the lawsuit was from the first year of the BA, and I agree that CTI grads/Vets got absolutely screwed by taking a test they should have been exempt from taking to begin with. My problem with the news story is Tucker Carlson uses some pretty extreme hyperbole, and makes it seem like no other pre-employment testing was done and the NAS is unsafe as a result. Just out of curiosity, has the percentage of applicants passing the BA risen every year, or has it remained steady around 30% since the split to two pools? I didn't take it in 2017, I passed it in 2016.
 
I knew the basis of the lawsuit was from the first year of the BA, and I agree that CTI grads/Vets got absolutely screwed by taking a test they should have been exempt from taking to begin with. My problem with the news story is Tucker Carlson uses some pretty extreme hyperbole, and makes it seem like no other pre-employment testing was done and the NAS is unsafe as a result. Just out of curiosity, has the percentage of applicants passing the BA risen every year, or has it remained steady around 30% since the split to two pools? I didn't take it in 2017, I passed it in 2016.
Gotta ensure that the people who watch that "news" channel fear people of color and women controlling. So that when these same people look at me, they become angry at the thought that I got in due to being black, not due to be an AC in the Navy
 
I agree with you in large part. I believe that some CTI schools do a great job with training and that this case was based off of a faulty BA during its inception. But the narrative Tucker and the lawyers are portraying in this specific case is that the hiring of OTS and non-prior aviation experience was somehow favored for applicants, when I believe that the change of policy initiated with the Obama administration was to allow more people the opportunity to become controllers. Also in a workplace setting that has trainees learn everything the FAA way start to finish it’s kind of absurd to assume that non-prior experience applicants would lead to a drastic compromise in the safety of the NAS when everyone has to train the same way to become a CPC.
There's no doubt sensationalism plays a large role in a news broadcast in 2018. The main issue I had with this broadcast (and the previous one a few years back that exposed a cheating scandal on the BA) is the narrative that it creates an unsafe NAS. I understand the reason for the narrative because that type of sensationalism is what it takes to trigger a news outlet to bring awareness to what really happened. Simply saying, this will not effect safety due to the checks and balances in the training process, but will cost taxpayers millions of dollars due to additional training failures isn't going to make the news.

To touch on the first point, the hiring shift to the BA was strictly due to lack of diversity in the FAA. The Barrier Analysis's opening line is, "Administrator Michael Huerta has made an historic commitment to transform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) into a more diverse and inclusive workplace that reflects, understands, and relates to the diverse customers we serve."
You can view the full Barrier Analysis report here, which prompted the change in hiring practice in 2014...
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_or...irm_program/media/Barrier_Analysis_Report.pdf
If you're ever bored and have a few hours to kill, it's a pretty ridiculous deep dive. Some of my favorites are...
- The AT-SAT is a barrier to entry because a higher percentage of certain races and genders score in the high qualified band (85-100). It's not fair to the people who score in the qualified band 70-84.9 that people who scored higher are selected over them.
- They went through each portion of the AT-SAT test and each time the white applicants scored higher then other races, it was deemed that this portion of the test was a barrier to entry (same for male vs female).
- The security clearance was a barrier to entry because some races were more likely to pass it.

Here is arguably my favorite verbatim quote...
"More troubling, there is evidence that White applicants scoring 85 or higher on the AT-SAT over the last three years have generally been increasing (see Table 11). "

To provide some context into why they continue to fight, CTI schools were kept in the dark until just prior to the 2014 panel going live. (The good, moral CTI schools) had to walk into their classes and tell their students the FAA changed their hiring process and their CTI degree, (which at the time the military or CTI were your only two ways in) is effectively worthless. One school that I'm aware of had 75% of their students walk out and leave the program immediately following the announcement. Now, due to repeated FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, you can now see how certain questions were scored and given the make up of the barrier analysis above, it certainly makes you wonder why they gave people the most points for being unemployed for 3 years or why they gave you the least amount of points for being a pilot.

For those that say, there's Pool 1 and 2 now why won't they let this go? The FAA did not change the hiring process. CTI schools fought back, NATCA joined in, they lobbied congress and effectively changed the law. The FAA was told, this is how you have to hire people now. They didn't admit a mistake. Animosity still exists and the people responsible (including the person who illegally gave the BA answers to thousands of applicants) are not only still employed by the FAA, but are some of their highest paid employees. This gives them a voice to expose these people and has the potential to provide some type of closure.

I knew the basis of the lawsuit was from the first year of the BA, and I agree that CTI grads/Vets got absolutely screwed by taking a test they should have been exempt from taking to begin with. My problem with the news story is Tucker Carlson uses some pretty extreme hyperbole, and makes it seem like no other pre-employment testing was done and the NAS is unsafe as a result. Just out of curiosity, has the percentage of applicants passing the BA risen every year, or has it remained steady around 30% since the split to two pools? I didn't take it in 2017, I passed it in 2016.
Agree on the hyperbole, the BA has continued to rise, 2016 was ~25% pass rate.
Gotta ensure that the people who watch that "news" channel fear people of color and women controlling. So that when these same people look at me, they become angry at the thought that I got in due to being black, not due to be an AC in the Navy
While I sincerely hope this doesn't happen, this is one of the many reasons a lot of controllers did not agree with the barrier analysis. The potential for division was high, when in reality we don't care what race or gender you are, all we care about is if you can push traffic.
 
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The additional training failures still stumps me. To my understanding the academy was passing students that were not up to par to the training standards they would undergo at the centers/towers. Thus causing the AG’s to wash out at their facilities instead of at OKC. It is cheaper to have students fail in OKC rather than at a facility so that’s what I’ve been attributing the higher OKC washout rates.
 
The additional training failures still stumps me. To my understanding the academy was passing students that were not up to par to the training standards they would undergo at the centers/towers. Thus causing the AG’s to wash out at their facilities instead of at OKC. It is cheaper to have students fail in OKC rather than at a facility so that’s what I’ve been attributing the higher OKC washout rates.
The new grading scale for the terminal classes went into effect late 2014. The poor passing rates didn't start until 2017. If we're going to talk semantics, it's far cheaper for the FAA to have the military or CTI programs 'wash' people out prior to ever getting to OKC. Back in it's heyday, CTI programs (again, the good ones) whittled their student pool down throughout the program. There were only X amount of spots available in the SIMS that went to the students with the highest grades going in. Fail one sim class, you don't move on. Wash out rates in the military (depending on where you were stationed) were considerable as well.

Also, the last available true data of the OTS vs CTI vs VRA (military) debate was published in 2012. They used to look back 6 years and determine the success rate of each hiring pool over the course of their first and second facility. In that report, they viewed the hiring data for 2006. After this report the hiring freeze went into effect, the Barrier Analysis was conducted, and the new hiring system was put into place. Now, if you're looking at this and contemplating a new hiring change, would you go, "We need to stop hiring so many CTI and VRA's." Of course not. Conveniently, no other report has come out after this and the FAA has publicly stated, "We no longer keep track of the hiring source".

This really only scratches the surface into the hiring history and hopefully gives everyone here a better understanding of why CTI schools continue to fight. (congrats to everyone who got through multiple walls of text)
 

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That’s a lie. When I went to Cami on the second day of the academy they asked in the questionarre if I went to CTI. When I selected yes a drop down with all tha CTI schools appeared and asked me to select which one.
 
That’s a lie. When I went to Cami on the second day of the academy they asked in the questionarre if I went to CTI. When I selected yes a drop down with all tha CTI schools appeared and asked me to select which one.
Just because they asked doesn’t mean they care enough to track it. He already said they have the ability to track it but are choosing not to
 
If the process has been changed (twice I think) since this whole debacle, what are they trying to achieve here? CTI graduates get to skip the BQ now. Is this to try and get some kind of waiver for the small percentage of people who aged out after getting DQ'd back in 2014?
 
That’s a lie. When I went to Cami on the second day of the academy they asked in the questionarre if I went to CTI. When I selected yes a drop down with all tha CTI schools appeared and asked me to select which one.
Stinger's answer below is correct.
CAMI tracks everything though... maybe they haven’t chosen to ask for a report since that time.
They have...repeatedly
Those CAMI questions are self-reported, voluntary, and not verified.
 
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