Opinion ID: 771005
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Important Elements of Work Behavior

Text: 54 Next, we consider whether basic skills in reading, writing, and mathematics are important element[s] of work behavior, Craig, 626 F.2d at 662, for the public school jobs for which the test is required. The district court found that the tested skills were important to the jobs at issue. See AMAE II, 937 F. Supp. at 1419. Plaintiffs challenge that finding on three grounds. First, they argue that the 1985 Practitioners' Review failed to identify any particular work behaviors or job duties and thus could not be used to assess whether the CBEST measured important elements of work behavior. Second, they argue that Lundquist's 1995 study failed to distinguish important skills from skills that are less important. Third, they argue that Defendants failed to demonstrate that the CBEST is job-related for the particular positions for which it is required. We address each of those arguments in turn. 55 Plaintiffs first argue that the 1985 Practitioners' Review, conducted by Dr. Richard Watkins, was inadequate because it failed to identify specific job duties to which the CBEST skills could be correlated. We conclude that the district court did not clearly err in finding that the 1985 study adequately identified the element[s] of work behavior, Craig, 626 F.2d at 662, that the CBEST is designed to measure. 56 The district court found that the Review comprised the pooled judgments of knowledgeable persons, such as incumbents in the jobs, about the relevance of the skills tested on the CBEST to the jobs for which it is required, an appropriate form of a job analysis under the professional standards of the time. AMAE II, 937 F. Supp. at 1419. Specifically, the Practitioners' Review consulted 234 teachers, administrators, and other public school employees, 36 percent of whom were members of minority groups. See id. at 1413. The participants took part in nine review panels, in which they judged the relevance of both the skills assessed by the CBEST and the test items themselves. Id. They were asked to rate how relevant each of the CBEST skills would be to the work of four groups: (1) elementary school teachers; (2) secondary school teachers; (3) librarians, counselors, and attendance officers; and (4) school administrators. See id. The possible ratings ranged from not relevant to very relevant. Id. 57 Thus, the Practitioners' Review was designed to learn from teachers, administrators, and other school employees the categories of skills that they considered relevant to their own jobs. The skills measured by the study tracked the categories of skills measured by the CBEST, and the skills were described in some detail on the rating forms used by the panel members. For example, the broad skill category Mathematical concepts and relationships was further described as follows: 58 Questions in this category test the understanding of basic concepts, such as the meaning of certain terms (area, for example), order among numbers, relation ships shown by graphs, elementary probability, and the like. Questions in this category may be from arithmetic, algebra, or elementary geometry. 59 The study's participants were guided by detailed instructions relating to each skill category and were told to rank the importance of each skill for both teaching and nonteaching jobs. The study therefore satisfies the requirement from Craig that the employer determine whether a specific trait or characteristic is an important element of work behavior.  Craig, 626 F.2d at 662. The district court did not clearly err in concluding that the 1985 Practitioners' Review was an appropriate form of a job analysis under the professional standards of the time. AMAE II, 937 F. Supp. at 1419. 60 We next consider Plaintiff's second challenge under the important elements prong of Craig. Plaintiffs do not challenge the 1995 Lundquist study's methodology for identifying job-related skills. They do, however, challenge that study's method for determining which skills are important to particular jobs. 61 Dr. Lundquist polled experts and interviewed and observed educators in order to develop a list of activities and skills used by educators. See AMAE II, 937 F. Supp. at 1414. She then polled 1,330 teachers and administrators, asking them to rate the importance of those activities and skills on a four-point scale from 0 (not applicable) to 3 (critical). Activities and skills were retained only if at least 80 percent of the survey respondents rated the activity or skill as applicable to the job and the mean importance rating was 1.5 or higher. Id. at 1414 (emphasis in original). Applying those standards led to elimination of a number of the activities and skills from Dr. Lundquist's list. After conducting additional studies, which are described in detail in the district court's opinion, see id. at 1415-17, Dr. Lundquist then formulated new specifications for all three sections of the test. In response to those specifications, Defendants revised the CBEST before they administered the August 1995 test. 62 Plaintiffs focus on the fact that Dr. Lundquist retained activities and skills on her list if they received a mean importance rating of 1.5 on a scale that designated 2 as important and 1 as minor. By using a mean rating of 1.5, Plaintiffs argue, Dr. Lundquist retained skills and activities that were rated as less than important by the study's partici-pants. Therefore, their argument proceeds, the study violated the requirement from Craig that only important work skills be measured. 63 The district court rejected Plaintiffs' argument, finding that Dr. Lundquist's decisions reflect manifestly reasonable professional judgments . . . . With respect to the 1.5 mean, as Dr. Lundquist testified at trial, a 1.5 rounds up to 2.0. It must be remembered that the mean rating of 1.5 was coupled with an 80 percent endorsement criterion, which is quite stringent. AMAE II, 937 F. Supp. at 1418 n. 35. 64 We agree that it is theoretically possible to imagine a circumstance that illustrates Plaintiffs' concerns on this point. For example, suppose that 80 percent of the study's participants agreed that a particular skill was relevant, but 75 percent of them rated that skill's importance as minor. If the remaining 25 percent rated the skill as critical, then the skill would be retained despite the fact that a majority of the study's participants rated its importance as minor. Although that scenario is possible, such a skewed distribution of responses is unlikely. Plaintiffs present only a theoretical possibility that such highly relevant but unimportant skills remained on Dr. Lundquist's list. Further, as the district court noted, Dr. Lundquist conducted additional importance reviews of the mathematics section of the test. 65 Validation studies are by their nature difficult, expensive, time consuming and rarely, if ever, free of error.  Cleghorn v. Herrington, 813 F.2d 992, 996 (9th Cir. 1987). Plaintiffs' argument demonstrates, at most, that Dr. Lundquist's study may not be totally free of error. But the argument does not persuade us that the district court clearly erred in relying on Dr. Lundquist's study. 66 Finally, Plaintiffs argue that Defendants failed to conduct job-specific studies to determine that the CBEST is job related for the position[s] in question. 42 U.S.C. S 2000e2(k)(1)(A)(i). The CBEST is not intended to measure all the skills that are relevant to all the jobs for which it is required. (Indeed, it does not purport to measure all the skills of any of the jobs for which it is required.) Rather, the CBEST is intended to establish only a minimum level of competence in three areas of basic educational skills. The question is whether the validation studies in this case have satisfied the requirement that those skills be job related for all the positions in question. The district court found that the validation studies adequately analyzed the CBEST in terms of both the teaching and nonteaching jobs for which the test is required. See AMAE II, 937 F. Supp. at 1418-19. The district court did not clearly err in so finding. 67 Both the 1985 and the 1995 validation studies containedadequate consideration of the specific positions for which the CBEST is required. The 1985 Practitioners' Review defined the positions that it analyzed as (1) elementary school teachers, (2) secondary school teachers, (3) librarians, counselors, and attendance officers, and (4) school administrators. All participants in the study were asked to judge the relevance of the CBEST skills by category for those jobs. Because the study's participants were asked to determine the relevance of the basic skills measured by the CBEST to the disparate groups of positions for which the test is required, we cannot say that the district court clearly erred in finding the job analysis in the Practitioners' Review to be sufficiently specific and particularized. 68 The 1995 Lundquist study, as noted, identified job activities through observation, interviews, and reviews of specialized literature. See id. at 1414. Dr. Lundquist then pared her list of job skills and activities through surveys of educators and arrived at a list of common skill requirements that were relevant for both teachers and administrators. See id. at 141415. Her study reports: 69 Basic skill ratings were examined for administrators to determine if the same skill sets applied to both teacher and administrator jobs. Results showed all but one skill item (a math item) retained for teachers also applied to the administrator group. Thus, the basic skill requirements identified for teachers were found to be job-related for administrators as well, and the same test specifications may be used to test basic skills for teachers and administrators. 70 Dr. Lundquist's study classified jobs for which the CBEST is required as either teacher or administrator and determined that the CBEST was valid for both groups of positions. Accordingly, the 1995 study considered the validity of the CBEST across the range of jobs for which the test is required. The district court accepted the study's conclusions and found that the CBEST had been validated adequately with respect to teaching and non-teaching jobs. Id. at 1418. On this record, that finding is not clearly erroneous. 71 In sum, we hold that the district court did not clearly err in finding that the skills measured by the CBEST are important element[s] of work behavior with regard to the jobs for which the test is required. Craig, 626 F.2d at 662.