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.