Testing and the Paradoxes of Fairness

How can admissions officers, employers, and scholarship committees maximize the accuracy of prediction of individual performance while minimizing adverse impact due to group differences? Testing offers a straightforward solution to the first half of this problem. Tests are the best way to predict how someone will perform in school, in the military, in medicine, or while controlling airline traffic and flying a plane. Tests are also useful beyond personnel selection, such as for selection of a college major or courses. However, the other side of this problem is more complex. Using tests is always accompanied by group differences that could result in continued systemic discrimination by limiting opportunities for those who are marginalized. This book charts an approach to using tests that incorporates evidence, transparency, and societal values to maximize efficiency and fairness.

Table of Contents:
Preface; 1. Introduction to the history of testing; 2. Why tests are so widely disliked; 3. The origins of mental testing in the US military; 4. Testing in grades K-12; 5. Licensing exams: physicians, pilots and teachers as examples; 6. Admission testing for higher education; 7. Tests used for awarding scholarships and prizes; 8. Using student test scores to evaluate teachers: an assessment of value-added modeling; 9. Dividing test scores into subcomponents; 10. On cost functions in testing; 11. Evidence in science: what data can we trust?; 12. Testing zombies; 13. Coda; References; Index.

About the Author :
Howard Wainer is an award-winning American statistician and research scientist. His areas of work include testing, graphical methods for data analysis and communication, and robust statistical methodology. He has served on the faculty of the University of Chicago, at the Bureau of Social Science Research during the Carter Administration, and as Principal Research Scientist in the Research Statistics Group at Educational Testing Service for twenty-one years, and in 2016, he retired after fifteen years as Distinguished Research Scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners. Daniel H. Robinson is the K-16 Mind, Brain, and Education Endowed Chair at the University of Texas at Arlington. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in 1993 from the University of Nebraska where he majored in both learning/cognition and statistics/research. He previously taught at Mississippi State University, the University of South Dakota, the University of Louisville, the University of Texas at Austin, and Colorado State University. He has served as department chair, director, and associate dean of research.

Review :
'There is not a more pragmatically effective, yet maligned field in the behavioral sciences than the measurement of human abilities. It has been effective precisely because it has been built around measurement, and yet it is maligned precisely because it has been so effective in addressing real world issues. In 'Testing and the Paradoxes of Fairness' Howard Wainer and Daniel Robinson masterfully describe how and why this has occurred.' David Lubinski, Intelligence 'One of the best books I ever read on the place of testing in our culture.' David C. Berliner, Arizona State University 'Wainer and Robinson present an unblinking, data-based look at the discriminatory effects of both standardized testing—and the absence of standardized testing—on admissions, selection, licensing and other personnel decisions. The results for individuals, groups, institutions and society make clear the substantial costs of ignoring evidence in these decisions.' Arthur E. Wise, Education Author, Advocate and Policymaker