Race-norming

Race-norming, more formally called within-group score conversion and score adjustment strategy, is the practice of adjusting test scores to account for the race or ethnicity of the test-taker.[1] In the United States, it was first implemented by the United States federal government in 1981 with little publicity,[2] and was subsequently outlawed by the Civil Rights Act of 1991.[3]

Prior to being banned by the federal government, race-norming was practiced by 38 U.S. states' employment services.[4] The aim of this practice is to counteract alleged racial bias in aptitude tests administered to job applicants,[3] as well as in neuropsychological tests.[5] The argument was that it guarantees racial balance and this was confirmed by a National Research Council panel evaluating its validity when predicting job performance. The practice converted and compared the raw score of the test according to racial groups. The score of a black candidate is only compared to the scores of those who had the same ethnicity. If his score, which is reported within a percentile range, fell within a certain percentile when compared to white or all candidates, it would be much higher among other black candidates.[6]

University of Delaware professor Linda Gottfredson has been very critical of this practice,[7][8] as have conservative columnist George Will[9] and law professor Robert J. Delahunty.[10] Criticism was based on the perception that race-norming was biased in favor of blacks.[11] In the 1980s, the Reagan administration ordered a study into the unadjusted General Aptitude Test Battery (without race-norming); the results, released in 1989, showed that unadjusted test scores were not strongly related to job performance.[12]

References
  1. Miller, Leslie A.; McIntire, Sandra A.; Lovler, Robert L. (2011). Foundations of Psychological Testing: A Practical Approach, Third Edition. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. p. 50. ISBN 9781412976398.
  2. Rabin, Jack (1994). "Race Norming, Validity Generalization, and Employment Testing". Handbook of Public Personnel Administration. CRC Press. p. 451.
  3. Greenlaw, Paul S.; Jensen, Sanne S. (March 1996). "Race-Norming and the Civil Rights Act of 1991". Public Personnel Management. 25 (1): 13–24. doi:10.1177/009102609602500102.
  4. Miller, Leslie; McIntire, Sandra; Lovler, Robert (2011). Foundations of Psychological Testing: A Practical Approach. SAGE. p. 50. ISBN 9781412976398.
  5. Gasquoine, Philip G. (19 March 2009). "Race-Norming of Neuropsychological Tests". Neuropsychology Review. 19 (2): 250–262. doi:10.1007/s11065-009-9090-5. PMID 19294515.
  6. Edwards, John (2005-06-29). When Race Counts: The Morality of Racial Preference in Britain and America. New York: Routledge. pp. 117. ISBN 0415072921.
  7. Gottfredson, Linda S. (1994). "The science and politics of race-norming". American Psychologist. 49 (11): 955–963. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.464.2586. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.49.11.955.
  8. Gottfredson, Linda S (December 1988). "Reconsidering fairness: A matter of social and ethical priorities". Journal of Vocational Behavior. 33 (3): 293–319. doi:10.1016/0001-8791(88)90041-3.
  9. Will, George F. (23 May 1991). "Seeing Nothing Normal in 'Race-Norming'". The Baltimore Sun.
  10. Delahunty, Robert J (December 1988). "Perspectives on within-group scoring". Journal of Vocational Behavior. 33 (3): 463–477. doi:10.1016/0001-8791(88)90051-6.
  11. Kolb, Charles (1994). White House Daze: The Unmaming Domestic Policy in the Bush Years. New York: The Free Press. p. 256. ISBN 068486388X.
  12. "Test Cases: How 'Race-Norming' Works". Newsweek. 2 June 1991.
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