Back one day in 1992, Will Danaher, a Chicago firefighter, called the city to inquire about the test scores for the fire department’s lieutenant’s exam.
“And your name?” said the woman on the city’s side of the phone line.
“Danaher,” he answered, “but I was just . . . “
“First name?” she asked, cutting him off.
“Will. Will Danaher . . . but I was just going to . . . “
“You failed,” she said.
“I failed?” said Danaher, incredulous.
“You failed the lieutenant’s exam,” she said. “You got a 69.”
“That’s interesting,” Danaher said. “I never even took the lieutenant’s exam. I was just calling to see if the scores were out yet.”
– – –
In December 1992, Tom Cunningham got a call on the departmental phone line at the firehouse telling him he was finally going to be promoted to engineer. He had taken the engineer’s exam seven years before and he had been waiting for this day. Would he accept the promotion, he was asked.
“Yes.”
“It’ll be a nice Christmas present,” said the boss who called him. Two weeks at the Chicago Fire Academy and he’d be an engineer and get a raise.
Cunningham did his two weeks at the academy, went back to the firehouse and waited for the promotion. It never came. Nor did promotions come for any of the others who had gone to the academy with him for two weeks; who had also been told they too were promoted to engineer.
Firefighter Jim John was one of the others who got the same call at the same time. Like Cunningham he had taken the engineer’s test in 1985, waited six months for the test scores to come back and then found himself waiting for six years to get promoted.
His turn finally came and he got The Call. His wife was ecstatic and threw a promotion party for him.
More Top Picks Best Color Laser Printers
“The order has already been cut when they call you,” says John. “They called 50 of us and we were going to go down to the academy by district and do the refresher course. As soon as you accept the promotion by phone, you officially have become an engineer. At least, that’s what we thought. That’s the way it had always been.”
But after the initial phone call telling him he was promoted, John never heard another thing. He didn’t get called to the academy, and when time passed and nothing happened, John called downtown to the Fire Department.
What happened to his promotion, he asked.
Oh, he was casually told, the money for promotions “wasn’t in the budget after all.”
No apologies. No explanation. No official written statement from the Fire Commissioner’s office explaining why 23 of the 50 men who had been told they were being promoted, never were. The city simply changed its mind. The men to this day have no idea what happened other than the promotions evaporated into thin air and no one will talk about it.
– – –
Bob North studied hard for the 1991 lieutenant’s exam. When he got a letter telling him he’d failed, he couldn’t believe it. There must be some mistake. He called his alderman. He called everyone in the city he could think of complaining to. When a second inquiry was made a week later about his score-he’d first been told his score was a 69 and 70 is passing-the answer was different. They’d lost his exam, they said. Couldn’t find it at all. Three of the five firemen North had been studying with for the test had their exams mysteriously lost. A total of 135 test scores citywide had strangely disappeared.
The city gave no explanation as to what happened. A new test was ordered.
– – –
Jack McGinnis was on the fast track in the Chicago Fire Department. In 1979 he became a firefighter. By 1986 he’d made engineer. On the 1986 lieutenant’s exam he was 18th on the list and was promoted in 1988. When he was sent to the National Fire Academy in Maryland, he was No. 1 in his class on hazardous materials. Becoming a captain was next. When the captain’s test came around in 1991, McGinnis studied for it for a year. Every evening he wasn’t in the firehouse, he studied from 6 until 10 at night. He took the written portion of the test and did well. He got a 96.
Then came the oral part-a highly subjective interview in a room with two Chicago Fire Department chiefs. They told him he flunked. He was given a score of 69. The city also told McGinnis and everyone else who took the test that they decided to change the rules after the test scores came in. The oral score of the exam would be worth as much as the written. That had never been done before. The oral had never been worth as much as the written. A group of firefighters challenged that practice through their union and it has not been done since.
“This was the city playing games with numbers,” McGinnis says, “so they could promote who they wanted to promote, not who did well on the written. The oral part is very subjective, can’t be challenged and they can flunk who they want to flunk, and most importantly, promote who they want to promote. It made taking the test meaningless.”
McGinnis and several other firefighters have taken their grievance to arbitration.
– – –
How do you unscramble an egg?
That’s how one city official, speaking before the city council, described the situation regarding the testing and promotions of Chicago firefighters. For at least 15 years, it has been an ongoing mess-a game with numbers that the city plays, but with constant changing of the rules for the players, adjusting the scores, promoting some over others even when their scores are much lower, using quotas and then not using them, not allowing any firefighter to see his or her own test after it is scored, and taking months if not a year to post test scores.
Last November, the test for engineers was given. Approximately 492 firefighters took it. Although it has been eight months, the scores have not yet been released. And because the Fire Department is short of engineers but cannot promote until the results are in, they are paying $700 a day (time and a half) for each engineer to work overtime.
Last February, the second part (the orals) of the battalion chief’s test was given. The written had been taken in November. Although only 128 made it to the orals, those scores also have not been released or promotions made. Battalion chiefs are being paid approximately $1,000 a day per person in overtime to fill the holes in the empty positions. In all, the overtime to fill these vacant positions has cost city taxpayers $1 million since the first of the year.
“What is taking so long?” asks Lt. Gus Valenta, who, because of the chaos in the testing procedures, started a group six years ago called Committee For Fair Testing, which has grown from 40 to 300 members in the last six years. “These are simple multiple choice questions on the tests. With (modern equipment) you could score all those tests in one weekend if not an afternoon. Why should it be eight months? Are they playing with the scores? Again?”
The Illinois Fire Marshall’s Office gives a multiple-choice exam to firefighters around the state. Each year they handle approximately 11,000 of them. The test is required by law in Chicago in order to be a certified firefighter and join the department. Unlike the city, the Illinois Fire Marshall’s office has had little trouble in returning the test scores promptly.
“The longest we’ve ever taken to get test scores back is eight weeks,” says Dan Smith, an assistant director in the personnel division of the Illinois Fire Marshall’s office. “Four to six weeks on average.”
Unlike the promotion tests for the Chicago Fire Department, the Illinois Fire Marshall’s exam does not reveal the name, race or sex of the person taking the test. The score is a raw score. It is not adjusted.
“The (machine that scores the tests) doesn’t care,” Smith says. “All results are scanned by a machine and it eats up the questions and spits out the score. Very few of our test scores are ever challenged.”
Morale becomes a problem
Not so with the tests the city of Chicago oversees.
Says one veteran chief: “Over years now, with the city playing games with the test scores, adjusting them, race-norming them, promoting out of rank order, losing the scores, giving tests that proved to be illegal later in court, telling people they are promoted and then changing their mind, not letting firemen see their own tests afterwards, developing formulas as to how different racial groups should score and then if it doesn’t happen that way they change the rules, all this . . . has had a devastating impact on morale.”
“It’s not just devastating, it’s a slap in our face. It’s a slap in the face of the law,” says firefighter John.
Charges of intrigue, chaos, incompetence and favoritism have surrounded Fire Department promotional tests since the 1970s. Firefighter Norm Perkins took the lieutenant’s test in 1978. Promotions were made from that list until 1987. Perkins was never promoted. He was passed over by 137 people, all of whom scored lower than he. Forty of those who passed him up, he says, failed the exam. He and a group of other men who were passed up filed suit against the city. The suit has been languishing in court for years.
“This kind of thing over the years has really rubbed firefighters the wrong way,” Perkins says. “Nobody listens to you. The position of the union is to make no waves and the position of the city is to ignore you.”
“It seems to get perpetually worse,” says Fred Gawryk, a CPA, a Chicago firefighter and member of the Firefighters’ Pension Board. “It’s more political than it ever was. Every attempt to give a fair test ends up messed up.”
“Messed up, no kidding,” says Lt. Valenta. “The 1986 captain’s exam was put up upside down. The person who scored highest was listed with the lowest score. The person with the lowest score was listed with having the highest score. They took it down right away saying it must have been a computer mistake, but that’s how things work with the testing. Firemen still joke about that one, but it’s not a joke, it’s our lives.”
What is going on?
Promises unkept
Last June, Mayor Daley held a press conference to announce a batch of reforms regarding the firefighters tests and police exams. He held his press conference at the Chicago Fire Academy and was accompanied by Fire Commissioner Raymond Oroszco. Daley said he’d signed an executive order that would have exams given more frequently-every three years for the Fire Department. An outside consultant, rather than the city, would develop and administer the tests to ensure impartiality, and the scores would be returned in three or four months.
“The untimeliness of the examination has been a morale problem,” admitted Commissioner Oroszco. “That’s why we are here today. We want more timely examinations and quality examinations.”
“We can move past the divisiveness and uncertainty that has surrounded the testing process for so many years,” Daley said.
But the two most recent tests given since that press conference in no way conform to the reforms the mayor announced. More than eight months have passed since the engineer’s exam was taken, and the only information firefighters can obtain is by calling a recorded message on the City of Chicago examination hot line that states “we anticipate the results of the engineer’s test will be sent to the Department of Justice in the next several weeks. Once they have been sent, the Department of Justice has 45 days to review the scores . . .”
That could make the test scores unavailable for at least two more months. As for the battalion chief’s exam, (the written portion also taken eight months ago and the orals in February) the recording states “as of today scores have not yet been turned over from the test developer.”
“We suspect they are playing games with the numbers again,” says firefighter North. “There’s no reason for so few scores to take that long.”
More Top Picks Treadmills
Lt. Valenta agrees. He points out that after the 1986 lieutenant’s exam, his group obtained copies of the exam that had been scored seven different ways, which shows, he says, “that they play with numbers, and the longer they take to return the scores the more they are probably playing with them.”
The city’s explanation
“It has taken a long time, I grant that,” says Cherryl Thomas, who is the mayor’s consultant for fire and police exams. “We do not have the scores yet. What has taken so long? Test developers do a lot of work. Some of it has to be done by hand-they have to write an analysis on each question. The amount of documentation is as thick as a phone book. We don’t change any scores but we will be looking at them and make suggestions to the Justice Department as to what to do with them.”
Arthur Andersen & Co., the consulting firm, was given a $3 million contract by the city to administer these two tests and five other city tests. The company couldn’t explain the present delay either.
“Right now we are standing waiting for the test results,” said Dan Broadhurst of Arthur Andersen. “We are taking a lot of heat on this. I’ve talked to hundreds of firefighters in the last year who’ve called inquiring about the scores, but we just don’t have the scores in yet. We were hired to administer the tests, secure them and communicate the results. (The Detroit-based independent testing firm) H.R. Strategies are the ones who develop the test and score them but they haven’t come in yet. I’ve told the city we’ve got to move this thing along.”
One of the complicating factors in the scoring of the exams is the 1980 federal court consent decree that orders the city to “promote black and Hispanic persons in sufficient numbers to increase substantially the minority composition in each of the promotional ranks of . . . the department with the objective that each such rank become more representative of the racial and ethnic composition of the rank or ranks from which promotions are made.”
Although the federal judge, Frank McGarr, who ordered it is now retired from the bench, the consent decree lives on with no termination date. In order to conform to the consent decree, many minorities (according to the decree women, Asians and American Indians are not considered minorities) get promoted over whites who have scored higher. The Justice Department must approve the list before it is posted, but the departments’ role since 1980 has not made the scoring on tests less controversial over the last 14 years.
Who’s doing what?
It seems to be a mysterious process, for neither the city nor the Justice Department will explain what is done to the score results.
“We have to comply with the consent decree,” said a spokesman for the mayor’s office. “We are trying to get rid of developing a test that the firemen don’t think is fair. We are looking at the scores for the fairest impact. We make proposals with the scores.”
What does that mean?
“It means we have to have the consent of the Justice Department,” said the spokesman.
The Justice Department will shed little light on its role in the scoring process. Spokesman Myron Merlin from the civil rights division says, “All I can say is we review the proposal (test scores from Chicago) to see if it conforms with the consent decree. We either reject or approve the proposal.”
“This is a consent decree with no time limits,” says an attorney who has worked with one group of firefighters who are challenging the whole testing process. “What the city should do now is go to court and move to vacate the decree. Minorities are well represented now. All that is being fostered is a feeling of unfairness and resentment. But that move is politically incorrect and the mayor won’t do it.
“From the city’s perspective, they are tied in knots. If they make one kind of move they will be sued by the black firefighters. If they make another kind of move they will be sued by the white firefighters. So what the city does is nothing but ride the cusp of same game, different game, quotas, race norming, favoritism and playing with numbers.”
“This is a very complicated area of the law,” says Corporation Counsel Susan Sher. “Before we make promotions from these tests the results have to be sent to the Department of Justice for review. We do not have complete control over all of this. What can you do to meet the consent decree but not unduly violate the rights of white officers? It is really not simple.”
One man’s solution
For one West Side Hispanic firefighter, the answer was simple enough when he was told a year ago he was being promoted over people who’d scored higher than he on the lieutenant’s test.
“I said no,” he says, not wanting his name used. “I told them to call me when my number came up in rank order. Don’t jump me over other people because I am Hispanic. I’m as smart as anybody else and they studied like I did. If they scored higher, they deserve it first. I’ll make it on my own. I believe in order to be treated as an equal, you have to act like an equal. Lots of people didn’t agree with me. They thought I was crazy.”
So once again, this summer the city waits for the results of tests that have not come in and have taken too long. The reforms Mayor Daley promised a year ago seem not to have come true. Suspicion and divisiveness permeate this small but crucial city department.
“Morale,” says one clergyman who has counseled a few of the firefighters, “is at its lowest.”
“A lot of the young ones have just given up, and I hate to see it,” says Lt. Valenta, who, after 29 years, is going to quit the department because of the testing procedures. “How do you get the young ones to study and better themselves when they see what happens on these tests that, year after year, for one reason or another, get screwed up? Here we are again with scores that don’t come out when you could score them in a half day with a scanner.
“If they took this long to score college exams, you’d be collecting Social Security by the time you got your senior year grades. Who’d put up with that? Nobody else has to but firemen.”