Employers are facing more uncertainty in the wake of a letter from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warning them that requiring a high school diploma from a job applicant might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The development also has some wondering whether the agency’s advice will result in an educational backlash by creating less of an incentive for some high school students to graduate.
The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The letter was posted on the commission’s website on Dec. 2.
Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “‘screens out’ an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of ‘disability,’” the EEOC explained.
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Political correctness will be our downfall. In decades past, for example, in Ontario and the U.S., there were categories of high school diplomas. How many of us remember the “Intermediate Diploma” which was successful completion of Grade 10, a “Junior Matriculation” which was Grade 12 or a “Senior Matric”which was Grade 13.
The difference was our society was not so technologically advanced. People (usually men in those days) could get jobs as ditch diggers, elevator operators or stock clerks with a Grade 10 diploma. Now, they can’t. They need an ordinary OSSD (Ontario Secondary School Diploma) to become a heavy equipment operator. To take care of stock, they need a computer technician college diploma. And so on.
Of course, there was also the “Commercial” diploma which included typing, shorthand, etc — usually for girls who were not up to either of the matriculation routes.
Then, in the 70s and 80s those labels were changed to a “Basic” (or even a modified basic diploma) Grade 12 diploma, a “General” diploma or the “OAC” graduation diploma. The Basic were for those with learning and/or intellectual disabilities and employers knew that and made decisions accordingly. My son has one of those. He works in a nursing home gift shop and loves it because the elderly there don’t judge him and love him because he is never in a hurry and listens to their stories. Meaning, there are still jobs out there for folks like him.
A General diploma was for those who went on to community college or into a trade apprenticeship and OAC was the equivalent to Grade 13 and for those who usually went on to university.
Then, because of political correctness, those labels were removed as soon as McGuinty came into power and everyone was to get the same OSSD — although in fairness, the “common curriculum” to Grade 10, came in during the Harris years.
Problem is, contrary to the progressive view, we are not all equal in terms of talents, interests and and intellectual potential. Yet, horrors if any of us admit that.
Remember the “Bell Curve?” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution). Most people are average with the brightest at the top of the peak. That is reality. All the removal of the expectation for a high school diploma will do is dumb down our businesses who will never be able to compete with countries in Asia where there is no such political correctness.
Yet, having taught university, I know that the Bell Curve has been misused for years. Now, professors are being forced to mark higher than they used to because students want Bs and As because employers are demanding those marks. If they don’t, students simply don’t sign up for their courses. Market principles at work.
Anyway, heaven only knows where this is going to end up but I suspect it will be like renting property now. Discrimination goes on, but quietly. People are put on “waiting lists” and then ignored.
Will it get to the point where, like your marital status or age, you are not supposed to put your education level on your resume? If it does, then will “experience” be the next target — as in its unfair if someone has this or that experience because someone else didn’t have an opportunity to get any?
Would I want the services of a police officer, fire fighter, surgeon, etc under those circumstances? No, because my life my depend on their expertise!
The comments under the article are very interesting and worth reading.
Jack — Both my comments went into moderation so I signed in and approved them. Whatever problems you are having does not seem to be related to your server. If they had been,I wouldn’t have been able to get in. So, I hope that fact helps you narrow down what is going on. There is a notice at the top of the screen that says: To correct this issue, move the .htaccess file from wp-content/plugins/wp-dbmanager to [SNIP!-ED]
That’s an unrelated issue. I can solve that.
Cy — I checked under “Discussion” and the full moderation box wasn’t checked off. So, its puzzling.
“Will it get to the point where, like your marital status or age, you are not supposed to put your education level on your resume? If it does, then will “experience” be the next target — as in its unfair if someone has this or that experience because someone else didn’t have an opportunity to get any? ”
Yes, I think we are heading towards that point, Sandy. If the vast majority of us who are not progressives don’t grow backbones to replace our wishbones and demand an end to this rubbish western society is doomed to insignificance. If we continue to give the progressives more and more rope they will end up hanging us all. Here is a small sample proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the inmates are running the asylum.
http://hereisthecity.com/2011/10/07/11-cases-of-political-correctness-gone-mad/
BTDT — Take a look at this page on the EEOC website. http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/index.cfm
Millions and millions of dollars against businesses in lawsuits on just what we are talking about. Unbelievable! And, they wonder why their economy is still sputtering.
Thirty-five years of those kind of signed into law by an agency signed into law by none other than Democrat Lyndon Johnson.
http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/history/35th/history/index.html
Not that you guys don’t have a point, but you do realize why things got to this, right? What usually happened in the USA after labeling? Are you familiar with Charles Murray’s use of the Bell Curve?
Cy — I had to deal with the Bell Curve throughout ALL the years I was an academic. I taught in the four year concurrent B.A./B.Ed program. All of those students had to maintain a B average for three years in order to remain in the program. My course was a second or third year curriculum course. The point being my students’ marks were mostly B or above.
Yet, two weeks (without fail) after my final marks went in to the Registrar’s Office, I got a formal letter of complaint saying my marks were too high and not following the Bell Curve. And, that was up to 2001! In response, I would send a memo back saying that my students were expected to maintain a B average and, if they didn’t get that average, I allowed them to do a make up assignment. As such, all worked at the A or B levels. Year after year. Interestingly, I never got a further response to my own replies. It was as if they simply had to inform me and then put my annual reply on file.
Plus, I spent my career researching and writing about labelling. But, an agency like the EEOC has gone from one extreme to the other and is destroying the very fabric of a free and competitive economy. I operated my own private practice and was a known special needs advocate. But, this is simply crazy. My job was to prepare people with disabilies for the real economy, not to reduce it to the lowest common denominator.
I will be putting up a post shortly on this and the extent of the EEOC law suits.
Sandy, just a question about Bell Curves: Statistically these work with large sample size but with any specific class of 30 students one has too small a sample for Bell Curves to be valid ?
It seems to me that the administrators where trying to fit reality ( people ) to the Bell Curve rather than seeing where a group of people ended up on the Bell Curve.
With small groups many factors can take that group many standard deviations away from the centre of the Bell Curve: A very good teacher or a very bad one, a higher than average number of high I.Qs. or low I.Qs. taking a specific class far from the average of all students in the system.
So if a group doesn’t neatly fit where they are expected on a Bell Curve you don’t change the criteria to make them fit! It’s like trying to pound a square peg into a round hole because not fitting the Bell Curve expectation is some sort of bureaucratic ” HERESY “.
Jean –Yes, you can use 30 students. A bell curve is just a measurement. It is not about criteria. For example,
roughly 15 or 20 would be Bs and Cs, while 5+ would be lower and/or five+ would be higher.
In other words, the bell curve has become a way to look at standard deviation within any group with the man in the middle.
The problem is, like you suggest, not all groups are standard as was the case with my curriculum class. It is also why it is rarely, if ever, used at the graduate level because everyone had to have an A to get accepted.
So, as manuy universities are currently very worried about rising marks overall, some are cracking down in this way. At the end of the day, it is about standards. Twenty years ago, a C was average. Now it is a B. It is also why the elementary system won’t use letter grades — a D or C would both anger parents who think their kids should have high marks, regardless of how they perform, and it might hurt the students’ feelings.
I just added an Endnote to my post over at COTM about how demoralizing this attitude is to people with disabilities. When they can’t measure up, because of the abilities they were born with, they are demoralized by the very people who are supposed to care about them.
Final point: I have no opinion, one way or the other on the Bell Curve. It has been abused by all sides of the debate.
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I just put up my post just under this article. http://www.jacksnewswatch.com/2012/01/03/crux-is-equal-employment-commission-contributing-to-u-s-downfall/
One thing I always wondered about was that the needs of the job and the education level demanded to apply for the job are and where often arbitrary: Does a low level manual labour job need a High School diploma ? For many many jobs having a College degree has little to do with the skills needed to do the job.
The escalation of needing more and more ” education ” ( Not actual knowledge mind you, I mean a piece of paper/diploma ) kept otherwise competent for a job people from getting the job.
The above is not an argument against education or the acquisition of real skills or knowledge for it’s own sake as a way to form a ” complete ” person who can think and be a better person or citizen for it.
Now, the Politically Correct/Human Rights issue brought forth in the article is a completely wrongheaded approach to opening jobs up to people without the educational ” paperwork ” but are actually competent to do a job: It is again the mindset of forcing equality or the mediocrity that outcomes must be equal rather than access to opportunity must be equally available, but actual intelligence, initiative and hard work will mean that some people will succeed and others will be ” losers ” !
I mostly Agree with Sandy, but just bringing in a little ” nuance ” to the way society accepts people as being able and competent in doing specific jobs.
I certainly don’t want my Doctor or the person designing/building infrastructures to not have a high school diploma !
Jean — I just saw your comment at 11:44. Go on over to CotM and read my Endnote. I think it deals with your questions. However, one thing, we have few manual labour jobs in Canada and the U.S. toda, apart from flagman on a road crew. And, that is part of the problem.
As far as course outlines and what is taught in a college or university course. That is totally at the discretion of the instructor from chosing texbooks to be used to activities and content. So, some programs are more job ready than others. However, it would be impossible to know what skills or knowledge were needed in today’s job market. As a result, students are supposed to learn generalizeable skills such as to think and problem solve and then be able to adjust to any job or a job in their chosen field.
I overheard a conversation recently about the MLIS, Master of Library Science. Not all MLIS’ are the same. Some are more technolically oriented, others in administration and others in archival matters and so on. So, employers have to know what they want and applicants have to sell themselves to fit those expectations — or learn them on the job.