Frequently Asked Questions About Licensing Exams

Frequently Asked Questions About Licensing Exams

Guidelines for readministration

CLEAR Exam Review (Winter 1992)
Eric Werner, M.A.

Question: I am the administrator of a board that licenses primary health care providers. Besides requiring the passing of a national written examination, our board administers a standardized and carefully developed performance test twice each year. Many candidates take our test repeatedly one candidate took the performance test thirteen times. Several board members question the appropriateness of allowing unlimited retakes and are thinking about imposing remediation requirements on candidates who fail a particular number of times. These candidates would not be allowed to take our performance test again until they satisfied these requirements. What is your opinion on this issue?

Answer: This question recently arose in my state, and I will list some points that summarize the advice I gave the board that asked it.

There is no consensus opinion among testing specialists on the appropriateness of retake conditions for licensing examinations. Most probably would reason, as I do, that whether they should be imposed will depend on the particulars of a given testing situation.
It is imperative that licensing standards not unjustifiably restrict entry into regulated professions. Therefore, if a board imposes retake conditions, they should represent the best solution to a real and significant consumer protection problem and the public-protection significance of the exam program.
Unqualified candidates can pass a test during unlimited test retake opportunities by chance alone and by memorizing test content. Content memorization can be a problem even for a performance test, especially if it involves only a sample of job-related tasks and if this sample changes little or not at all from one test administration to another.
Unless the validity and reliability of an examination are well established, imposing retake conditions that cost candidates and the board time and money would not be a good idea.
Because exam results may not reveal precisely the occupational readiness of candidates (consider the effects of severe test anxiety), the threshold for imposing retake conditions should be somewhat high. As a guideline, I suggest that a board thinking about retake conditions would be wise to permit candidates no fewer than four attempts before imposing them.
Before a board chooses to use retake conditions, it should look carefully at the administrative, technical, and educational questions this action will raise. Issues include the kind and amount of resources that will be necessary to administer the remediation program, whether a test is designed to give fine-grain results that are useful in directing candidate improvement (many licensing tests are not), and the extent to which a board believes that its role includes converting less well-prepared candidates into better prepared candidates.
Whenever it can, a board should be flexible in recognizing alternative, low-cost approaches to remediation.
The board should carefully review the state's legal environment in relation to this issue before acting. I know of no instance in which the courts have disallowed retake conditions when these conditions preserved candidate due process rights.