Employment Testing of Persons with Diasabling Conditions - IPAC

Section 2 - State Testing Acccmnodaticn Program
By Michael Dollard and Robert Schneider
Many of us in the field of personnel assessment are well aware of the
difficulties tests pose for disabled job applicants. All too frequently,
however, the special testing needs of the disabled are overlooked, or
minijDally accommodated. There are a number of reasons why this has been so.
For many years, conventional wisdom held that only standardized tests, given
under uniform conditions, were fair. By definition, accommodation implies
modification of the instrument or alteration of the conditions under which it
is administered. Presumably, either action would introduce a measure of bias
and detract from the validity of the test. From this perception, it is easy
to infer that accommodating the special needs of disabled candidates somehow
conflicts with the primary objective of testing, which is to identify those
best qualified for placement. Certainly, there is little literature available
to refute these views. Few tests are utilized on a wide enough scale to allow
the accumulation of sufficient data on the performance of disabled persons for
meaningful analysis. As a result, the subject of accommodation for the
disabled in testing situations is, as yet, largely unexplored.
There is also the question of economic utility. The identifiably
disabled are typically a very small proportion of the candidates in any
examination program. It has been argued that the resources needed to develop
accommodations for the disabled are better directed toward proving the
overall quality of assessment. On the basis of this argument, the subject of
accommodation is too often approached cautiously, if at all. We dispute the
merits of this position, even from a purely utilitarian point of view. Assume
disabled candidates constitute .5% of the total candidate pool (usually the
figure is closer to 1.5%). Over the course of a year in which 100,000
candidates are examined, 500 disabled persons will be disadvantaged. That is
a prodigious waste of talent. Further, it is much less expensive, in the long
run, to develop mechanisms through which all candidates can compete equitably,
than it is to attempt to defend against a charge of discrimination, which, if
won by the plaintiff, will likely result in monetary penalties far exceeding
what it would have cost to run an accommodation program.
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