Trials By Firefighters

The controversy over the New Haven multiple choice standardized testing firefighters are put through has reached a new level of chaos. Lani Guiner and Susan Strum forcefully expressed their opinions of the standardized test in the article “Trial By Firefighters”. Which, not only does the test decide which firefighter is ready for a promotion, the results have had consistently polar results when it comes to a white or a minority. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled for the test needing to stay in effect to help add rigor to the promotion expectations by using book smarts. With this a new question arises, if firefighters are mainly using street smarts and problem solving on the job, why would it be necessary to test them with book smarts to account for sixty percent of their promotional scorings? By using common sense and logic, one would come to the conclusion that it doesn’t. Standardized testing may have worked at some point in history however, with a fast paced society around, it contradicts most tools you need in life to be successful. Firefighters should not be tested at all with book knowledge. Doing this would eliminate the races getting treated differently and even the playing fields. This is not to say however, that firefighters should not have some sort of mental challenge. Firefighters need to be tested by problem solving under pressure in addition to tests done about the city, with various facts about the buildings included.

“Trials By Firefighter” feels as if the authors are trying to control your opinions bluntly. It is obvious that Guiner and Strum feel strongly about the issue, so much so that in many instances it felt as if they were fighting for a couple different issues instead of just focusing in on one and really going at it. At times throughout the article, it was a struggle to differentiate whether they were fighting because the tests were racist, illogical, or unneeded. The most troubling part as a reader comes with the last line, “In so doing, city officials demonstrate that their decisions are wiser than the Supreme Court’s.” In adding this last line to their article, it opened a whole new can of worms. Was the article talking about the issues within the test the whole time or was it trying, and epically failing, to make the reader realize the Supreme Court serves no actual justice when the city makes better judgment calls anyways?