CBT Concerns State Board

CBT Concerns State Board
Officials Object to Fee Increase Amidst Unresolved Glitches

By Simon Eskow

Continued from the Home Page

The letter arose, at least in part, from a discussion at the January meeting of the New York state accountancy board. Members at the meeting expressed concern that the cost of the exam would rise from the current $475 to almost $600, while technical problems continued unabated, in a sense shifting the cost of exam improvement to candidates and adding an economic hurdle to becoming a CPA.

The board passed a resolution recommending that the State Education Department consider the price increase “to be unwarranted” and that it call upon the AICPA to “rescind the increase” as it is a barrier to the profession. It also recommended that the National Association for State Boards of Accountancy and other boards consider the development of a contingent test if the uniform exam is determined to be not in the best interest of future candidates.

Arlene Thomas, AICPA Vice President for Professional Standards, one of the recipients of Dustin’s letter, said that the test’s technical glitches, all of which should be corrected by the end of 2005, affected only a very small number of test takers. She added that the fee increase was in accordance with the contract between the AICPA, NASBA and test service provider Prometric, which is allowed to charge $22.50 an hour if the number of testing sessions ranges from 150,000 to 199,999. That fee goes down to $20 an hour if there are 200,000 to 249,999 seatings, and $17 an hour for 250,000 and up. Prometric currently charges $17 an hour, though original estimates of test sessions seem to have fallen below expectations.

“The reality is this has been an incredibly successful launch,” Thomas said in an interview. “The goal of CBT is aligned with the goals of matching testing with the skills required for the protection of the public. We accomplished this goal of a test that did these things well: research, analytic and communication skills.”

The cost of taking the test, although much higher than the $250 paper-and-pencil exam, is not considered a barrier, according to focus groups and other research, Thomas said.

“A lot of students have spent a lot of money to get an education,” she said. “$500 to sit for an exam is a fraction of the cost of education put out so far. From our focus groups, test takers believe they will make up for the cost through income.”

Thomas said she would address the SED’s concerns, but not in a formal letter response.

Testing Problems

The SED reported three general areas where they found testing deficiencies.

Dustin’s letter cites a faulty examination design that uses different variations of an electronic cut-and-paste function, the problem that Thomas said would be corrected by the end of the year. Dustin stated that the AICPA had to rescore 15,000 simulation responses during the second testing window because of this problem.

Testing also lacked quality control over simulations, Dustin said, pointing to a problem discovered in October: vital information was missing from a simulation that would enable test takers to respond to questions. At least 15 candidates were affected by this problem, Dustin stated.

Dustin also relayed reported problems where simulations have caused candidates’ computers to lock up or to show error messages and where responses could not be recovered, forcing the candidates to retake the exams. These problems persisted through November 2004. Dustin said that “one could conclude that implementation of the simulation aspects of the exam was premature, lacking appropriate evaluation and testing prior to launch.”

With persistent technical problems, Dustin stated, the planned increase in fees could be seen as a way of covering the cost of development and maintenance of the simulations in the exam.

“It is inappropriate to allocate research and development costs using unproven exam technology to the candidates,” Dustin wrote. “The test vendor should more appropriately absorb these costs.”

The AICPA, for the time being, is absorbing the cost of the fee increases through July, Thomas said, at a cost of $2 million.

The Society’s Take

The New York State Society of CPAs, in its own response, praised the SED for taking up the deficiencies issues, but asked that the state also look into other issues that the Society found problematic. In a letter to Accountancy Board Chairman J. Dwight Hadley, NYSSCPA President John Kearney asked that the SED also look into how the state reports examination results.

“We are pleased that the (board) has raised concerns about the proposed increases in fees for the uniform computer-based CPA examination,” Kearney stated in his letter.

However, Kearney said, New York is the only state in the country that reports examination results as a pass/fail decision, based on a passing score of 75, while all other states report numeric scores.

“The actual numeric score is critical information for the candidate to decide whether to retest on a section, and to determine to schedule multiple sections of the exam in the next two-month testing window,” Kearney said.

Kearney asked that the state also expedite the test reporting process, as some candidates have expressed concern over how much time it takes to receive their results. Delays in reporting scores make it difficult for a candidate to reschedule exam sections and, without specific test scores, to know which portions of the exam a candidate should prepare to take, he said.