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.

‘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 Source: 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