U.S. Officials to Spend $6 Million on Study of Controversial Job Test

The Labor Department said Friday it would spend $6 million to study ways to improve a job aptitude test that came under fire when the scores of minorities were adjusted.

At issue is the General Aptitude Test Battery, or GATB, a standard job placement test used in about 30 state employment agencies to evaluate about 600,000 job applicants a year. The test measures basic cognitive, motor and numerical skills.

Until recently, the Labor Department encouraged states to adjust test scores of minorities and grade black and Latino job-seekers against only black and Latino test-takers. The “race-norming” process sometimes gave minorities higher percentile scores than some whites and Asian-Americans with higher raw, unadjusted scores.

When controversy erupted over the practice, the Labor Department suspended the policy. It was outlawed with Congress’ recent passage of the new Civil Rights Act.

On Friday, the Labor Department said it still considered the GATB a valid test but that it “shouldn’t be the sole means of referrals and shouldn’t be used to the exclusion of such other factors as experience and education.”

Civil rights advocates who had backed race-norming said the GATB test had an error rate that falls most heavily on minorities and that there was evidence of cultural bias in the way it was administered.