Running head: MYSTERIES AT ASWB

Abuses and Mysteries at the Association of Social Work Boards

Ray Woodcock
San Antonio, Texas

Note the variant version at https://sweduc.wordpress.com/2014/07/12/aswb-abuses/

Correspondence concerning this paper may be addressed to Ray Woodcock, MSW, JD. Email:
ray_woodcock@hotmail.com

January 31, 2015 (revision)

This paper was invited and accepted by the Editor

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Abstract

Under contract with the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), Pearson VUE reportedly
performs much of the work of developing and administering the social work licensing exams
required by most states. ASWB charges substantial fees for such exams and, after paying
Pearson, has been able to bank considerable sums. One of ASWBs key contributions to the
arrangement is its supply of draft exam questions which, after statistical pretesting by Pearson,
may ultimately appear on licensing exams. Prior research indicates that students may find it
relatively easy to guess the answers to such questions. Independent researchers have been unable
to verify whether such questions accurately distinguish qualified from unqualified practitioners.
In addition, ASWB refuses to disclose the rates at which various schools graduates pass
licensing exams. Generally, ASWB engages in an unusual degree of information suppression.
Such suppression appears inconsistent with ethical obligations but consistent with revenue
maximization.

MYSTERIES AT ASWB

Abuses and Mysteries at the Association of Social Work Boards

As of January 2015, the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) administered the
examinations that social work degree holders were required to pass in order to become licensed
to practice social work in most states in the United States and in certain Canadian provinces
Currently there are hundreds of thousands of social workers working with millions of clients in
the U.S., often at taxpayer expense (Woodcock, 2014a). Although ASWB claims that its testing
program accurately identifies social work graduates qualified for that work, that claim did not
appear well supported by available evidence.
Money
ASWBs social work exams are not cheap, costing roughly $250 per person per exam. As
a monopoly, ASWB has considerable latitude to charge excessive fees. When asked why the
exams had become so expensive, ASWBs then-Executive Director Donna DeAngelis blamed a
recent price hike on increases in examination development, security, and administration costs
(Marson, 2010, p. 24). That was an interesting way to phrase the fact that, according to ASWBs
(2011, p. 11) IRS Form 990 filing, its net assets would increase by $1 million in 2011.
That was a lot of money, but apparently not enough. It seems this allegedly not-for-profit
organization wished to return to the $1.5 million annual increase in its net assets that it had
achieved the previous year. The price increase did the trick, and then some. Net assets rose more
than $1.6 million in 2012, leaving ASWB (2012, p. 11) with more than $10 million in,
essentially, cash. Note that ASWB is a small organization with a narrow purpose. The Form 990
(ASWB, 2012, Schedule D, p. 3) indicates that an unspecified amount of that $10 million was
invested in, of all things, financial derivatives. ASWBs net assets, furnished overwhelmingly by

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exam fees, rose 62% in the four years between yearend 2008 and yearend 2012 (compare
ASWB, 2009, p. 11 with ASWB, 2012, p. 11).
This article does not attempt a thorough review of ASWBs Form 990 filings and other
financial documentation. Readers who peruse the sources cited above, and subsequent updates,
may find a variety of additional insights supplementing the foregoing brief introduction.
Validity
In an interesting study, Albright and Thyer (2010) gave first-year MSW students an
ASWB Clinical practice test. That practice test was apparently offered by ASWB as a fair
indicator of the kinds of questions that test-takers would encounter in the Clinical exam,
consisting of questions that had actually been used on prior ASWB exams. In their study,
Albright and Thyer removed the questions from the examination, so that the students could see
only the four multiple-choice answers. Students had to guess which might be the right answer to
a question that was not available to them. Randomly guessing would have resulted in a correctguess rate of 25% (i.e., one out of four). But these students did not get 25% correct. They did
much better than that: they averaged 52% correct responses. They were able to guess which
answer was the right one, more than half of the time, just from the way the answers were
phrased. In other words, the test did not accurately measure test-takers knowledge. On this
basis, Albright and Thyer (p. 229) suggested that the ASWB Clinical exam cannot justifiably be
claimed to be a valid assessment of competence to practice social work.
That was embarrassing for ASWB because, at about the same time, DeAngelis was coauthoring an article (Marson, DeAngelis, & Mittal, 2010, pp. 98-99) in which she claimed this:
The central focus of this article has been to illustrate reliability and validity
processes, absolutely essential when the successful completion of such an

MYSTERIES AT ASWB
evaluation instrument determines whether or not someone can work in a
profession. These very high stakes require careful, responsible, and ethical
construction of such instruments. ASWB has consistently shown over the years
that it executes its responsibility regarding test construction and administration
according to established psychometric theory and practice, and with adherence to
social work ethics.
One might be curious about the validity of such assurances, not to mention the ethics, as
all three of those authors had conflicts of interest. DeAngelis, as already noted, was ASWBs
executive director; Marson was senior editor at Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics,
published by ASWB; and Mittal was employed by ACT Inc., which at that point was deeply
involved in ASWB test construction.
This was hardly the first time that ASWB had been warned of deficiencies in its exam
development and testing processes. For example, Collins, Coleman, and Miller (2002, p. 209,
citations omitted) had said this:
Concern has been raised about the validity and reliability of licensing exams.
Although the Association of Social Work Boards reports that the exams are valid
and reliable, the psychometric properties of these exams are not widely available.
Criticism of licensing exams is disturbing. For example, several authors have
challenged their content and discriminative validity. Others also argue that written
tests for social work licensing fall short in measuring knowledge unique to the
profession. For example, one study suggests that passing licensing exams is
correlated more with the candidates personal therapy experience rather than
fieldwork, work experience, graduate or undergraduate education, or clinical

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training. Many also claim that the exams fail to predict practice competence.
Moreover, [one study] found that social work experience, education, and number
of credit hours in social work have no significant correlation to examination
scores. A further disturbing issue is whether exams discriminate on the basis of
race and ethnicity.
Concerns about the ASWB exams turned to mutiny in the late 1990s when California
rejected ASWBs Clinical exam in favor of a home-grown version, due to worries that the
ASWB exam was based on sampling unsuited for Californias demographics and that the exam
at that point had a pass rate of 89% (Rhine, 2010, p. 109). A review by California officials in
2008 yielded the conclusions that the ASWB Clinical exam was vague and/or weak on important
aspects of practice (Montez, 2010, p. 113). Californias recent decision to resume using the
ASWB exam appears to have been driven, not by faith in its superiority, but by concerns related
to the state budget and participation in certain federal programs (see Rhine, 2010, p. 108).
High-Stakes Testing at ASWB
As emphasized in the foregoing remarks by Marson et al. (2010), ASWBs social work
exams are high-stakes in a double-edged sense: they are all-or-nothing for the test-taker, and they
also embody enormous claims, by ASWB, regarding its expertise in deciding who qualifies to
join the next generation of social workers. The use of high-stakes testing within the social work
profession is problematic in itself. As detailed by Woodcock (2014b), such testing has drawn
criticism for its risks of mismeasurement, cheating, social injustice, and stigmatization. It has
also seemed odd that MSWs would be screened by a high-stakes licensing test after completing
MSW programs that, in many cases, do not require the high-stakes GRE for admission. Given
ASWBs assertions that its exams sought to test only a fraction of the many topics covered in

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social work degree programs, Woodcock suggested that the stakes might be appropriately
lowered by testing applicants before they devote years to such programs. Such testing might
demonstrate that many are already prepared to enter licensed practice. For those passing a
licensure exam at the outset, there might be no need to invest years, and great expense, in
university programs covering additional subjects that, according to ASWB, are not essential for
such practice.
In addition, there were grounds for concern with the process by which ASWB developed
its licensing exam questions. Based on an extensive analysis of that process, Woodcock (2014c)
concluded that ASWBs occasional surveys of social workers were unlikely to provide accurate
impressions of what social work practice is; that the results of those surveys did not appear to
have much impact on exam questions; that the output of ASWBs cumbersome questiongeneration process appeared approximately equal to the output of a single social work PhD
working part-time; and that Pearson VUE, on contract with ASWB, appeared to be providing the
bulk of the infrastructure and expertise needed for development of ASWB exams, at a fraction of
the price per exam that ASWB charged its examinees.
Concealment of Testing Data
In the research cited above, Albright and Thyer (2010, p. 233) concluded, The
professional stakes are too high for anything less than the scientific transparency provided by
both internal and independently conducted and published psychometric evaluations of ASWB
examinations. They called upon ASWB to disclose the data that independent examiners would
need, in order to verify that ASWB exams really measured what they were supposed to measure.
Among other things, Albright and Thyer may have wanted researchers to be able to look at the
ASWB data reporting what happened during trial uses of specific questions. It appeared that the

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average test-taker would have tended to guess right when answers were worded one way, but
might not do so with other wordings. One would want to know whether ASWB tended to select
questions and answers on which examinees achieved a relatively high success rate.
Of course, ASWB did not need Albright and Thyer to provide basic instruction in the
proper construction and testing of standardized exams. ASWB had been at it for a long time. As
noted above, ASWB had its own journal; moreover, it employed a well-paid Director of
Examinations (ASWB, 2010a, p. 7). In case of doubt, ASWB could also have consulted people at
Pearson VUE, as well as any number of statistically trained social work professors. So the
problem was not that ASWB may have made a technical error on an esoteric detail. It was that
ASWB was charging thousands of people millions of dollars, each year, to subject them to an
exam that the majority might be able to pass before they had even finished the first year of their
MSW programs. That problem raised issues at the heart of ASWBs business and as noted by
Collins et al. (2002) and others (above), that problem had been ignored for a long time.
An Explanation of Test Data Concealment
It would have been easy enough to dispel such concerns by releasing relevant exam data.
But in 2014, as in 2002, ASWB was unwilling to do that. Needless to say, confidence in
ASWBs pricey exams was hardly enhanced by a persistent refusal to let researchers verify that
exam questions were being properly formulated and tested. The refusal to release exam data
raised the question of whether ASWB was providing a genuine service of statistical testing and
analysis, as distinct from a profitable hoax. Given the latitude to decide how many correct
answers are needed to pass, experts in testing would be able to devise an exam yielding a
predetermined pass rate (of, say, 80%) even if the questions presented to MSWs had nothing to
do with professional practice. In other words, there was potential embarrassment in ASWBs

MYSTERIES AT ASWB

claim that it provided a legitimate testing service when that claim was not backed up by public
data. And yet ASWB was not embarrassed in fact: nobody forced the issue. For many years, the
profession of social work, the well-being of clients nationwide, and those millions of dollars,
have all depended upon a general willingness to assume that ASWB knows what it is doing or
in some cases, perhaps, upon tacit if not complicit awareness that ASWB is not necessarily doing
what it should be doing.
Why would ASWB not simply give researchers access to its test data, so as to put the
matter to rest? That question became more interesting with the discovery (above) that ASWB
paid large sums annually to the testing experts at Pearson (2013), which describes itself as the
worlds largest commercial testing company. Presumably Pearsons statisticians were working
hard to deliver a sophisticated product conforming to ASWBs specifications. But what were
those specifications what kind of exam was ASWB telling Pearson to produce?
An explanation for ASWBs secrecy arose in Woodcocks (2014c) analysis of ASWBs
question-development process. Woodcock argued that, consistent with sweeping claims about
the breadth of social work practice (e.g., NASW, 2008), ASWB had to assert that it was testing a
vast spectrum of topics indicating, for example, that persons taking ASWBs Masters exam
would be examined on 191 areas of knowledge, skill, and ability (see ASWB, 2014b). Given that
the exam consisted of only 150 scored questions, and that many of those 191 areas constituted
entire fields of study within themselves (e.g., pharmacology; human genetics), ASWB
appeared to be obliquely acknowledging that the general practice of social work did not seem to
draw upon a reasonably bounded body of knowledge lending it testable unity.
In short, Woodcock (2014c) suggested, ASWB was postulating an impossible exam.
Even if it had been theoretically feasible to develop a four-hour exam that could test those many

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areas in any meaningful sense, the ASWB people who actually prepared exam questions were
visibly lacking in the extreme breadth of knowledge that would have been needed to write
questions covering those areas. And if those people had been able to develop such an exam,
nobody would have passed it. MSW programs do not even offer coursework in many of the areas
supposedly being tested. Hence, thousands of MSW program graduates would have failed, and
their state licensing boards would have deemed them incompetent to practice. That would have
drawn public attention to the quality of education in social work programs. ASWB evidently
decided to avoid any such scandal. Woodcock argued, in other words, that it was not possible
and by its own admission (above) ASWB did not try to facilitate a rational progression from
(a) a focused program of study in a social work program through (b) a licensing exam targeted
on the subjects studied in such a program to (c) a professional practice of social work centered
on what had thus been studied and tested.
In Woodcocks (2014c) argument, then, it appeared that ASWB found itself presented
with an opportunity and a simple if bizarre problem. In order to reap a fortune in testing fees,
ASWB had to come up with an exam development process that would not be patently absurd.
Concealment and obfuscation would be helpful tools to that end. There would be a genuine need
for Pearsons statistical analysis: the process would have to function in a steady and predictable
manner, yielding a predetermined pass rate not too high, lest the exam appear a joke; not too
low, lest potential future applicants to schools of social work lose hope and go elsewhere.
This hypothesis suggested that the findings of Albright and Thyer (2010) were due to
deliberate effort, not ineptitude, at ASWB and Pearson. It seemed that ASWB wanted a test that
approximately 80% of MSW graduates could pass, and with Pearsons help ASWB achieved that
objective. It was sufficient, for this purpose, to confront exam-takers with questions about rather

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arbitrarily selected aspects of social work practice, as long as answers were worded so that
people would tend to guess the preferred answers at the desired rate. Consistent with the
foregoing remarks by Collins et al. (2002), Woodcock (2014d) illustrated that ASWBs preferred
answers could be arbitrary as well that, within those questions, a well-educated social work
student might detect issues to which the question-writers appeared oblivious.
Such a scenario suggested that ASWBs selections of exam questions and design of
answers were steered primarily by a determination to maintain a profitable faade. Given years
of refusal to facilitate independent verification of testing data, it appeared that ASWB lacked
confidence that its testing could distinguish competent from incompetent practitioners. As noted
below, the refusal to cooperate with researchers may be seen in itself as unethical. That refusal
positioned ASWB as a barrier to the improvement of social work practice and client service.
Concealment of Ordinary Information
The preceding sections have discussed ASWBs withholding of test statistical data from
professional researchers. Some might be tempted to view that as a relatively arcane issue,
notwithstanding its implications for social work practice. Such a view might have superficial
plausibility, were it not for a more obtrusive deficit in ASWBs face to the public.
That deficit may be summarized as follows. A reputable nonprofit organization,
possessing substantial amounts of money, a gold mine of data on social work licensing
examinations, and a desire to serve the public, would be pouring out reams of information
intended to inform the profession and to improve the licensing of practitioners. There would
definitely be a place for advanced researchers, but that sort of expertise would not be absolutely
necessary: anybody who had that data and who knew how to use a spreadsheet could provide
very helpful guidance on a plethora of issues.

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Casual visitors would know immediately if they were encountering a website like that.
Among other things, there would be a visible commitment to make sure that members of the
public, social work clients, and social work practitioners were not being inappropriately harmed
by inadvertent (never mind deliberate) manipulation or withholding of important information.
Unfortunately, as of this writing, there appeared to be no such passion or commitment in
ASWBs (2014a) website. It would have been impressive and reassuring to find, for example,
that ASWB was indicating how many people took its graduate-level exams across a number of
recent years; how many passed in each year; which states and schools they were from; what their
undergraduate majors and GRE scores had been; whether people from different regions, sexes,
ethnicities, or income levels had scored differently; what kinds of questions seemed to be best
and worst suited for relevant purposes; how ASWBs own exams had changed from year to year;
what had prompted such changes; and so forth. There would be data tables to download, reports
to read, forums and discussions. It would be a public service.
Nothing could be farther from what the user encountered on ASWBs website as of July
2014. There was virtually no information of that sort. What was provided appeared to constitute
the bare minimum. If ASWB was not actually trying to hide something, it certainly seemed to be
doing everything it could to convey that impression. The withholding of information was rather
extreme. For instance, ASWBs annual reports did not even state the numbers of people who
took its different exams (e.g., Masters, Clinical): the 2012 annual report provided only
percentages, and the 2010 annual report did not even do that. As of this writing, ASWBs
website did not report a combined total pass rate for any year other than 2013. Older links to
ASWBs reports of pass rates in previous years including links found in old issues of ASWBs

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own Association News, such as the March/April 2010 issue (ASWB, 2010b), referring to 2009
pass rates now produced an error message: Sorry, there is no page or article at this location.
It might have been possible to look up previous years pass rates in old copies of
ASWBs annual reports; unfortunately, all annual reports other than the most recent years had
also been stripped from ASWBs website. The error message quoted above appeared, again, in
response to an attempt to reach the web address where the 2010 annual report had previously
been located (ASWB, 2010c). Searches (both via Google and using the ASWB websites own
search box) confirmed that previous years annual reports were gone.
This was unusual. A quick test demonstrated that it was still possible to pull up prior
years annual reports at the websites of other major social work organizations (e.g., NASW,
CSWE) by either of the methods just mentioned. Removal of annual reports, when Form 990
filings would continue to be available, raised a question of whether ASWB had made a deliberate
effort to remove historical information about itself from the practical reach of students, members
of the public, or otherwise novice or desultory researchers.
Yet another example of providing no more than the bare minimum amount of
information: consider the results of a search of ASWBs website, seeking statements that would
distinguish the purposes of its several exams. That search yielded no clear distinction of content
between, for example, the Masters and the Advanced Generalist exams. Remarkably, ASWBs
(2013a) About the Exams webpage said virtually nothing about the exams. Its Exam Content
Outlines page (ASWB, 2013b) did lead to an Advanced Generalist Content Outline but there, it
launched immediately into another long list of topics covered, with no substantive explanation of
the exams purpose or of concepts that could have united such disparate topics.

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ASWB did not explain its decision to withhold practical, useful information from
examinees and the public. It seemed there could be several reasons to minimize disclosures.
Doing so might mitigate legal exposure for ASWB and its key executives. It might exacerbate
test-takers uncertainties, stimulating the purchase of expensive ASWB exam prep materials that,
according to DeAngelis, could help to ease test anxiety (Marson, 2014, p. 25). Open
engagement with the public might encourage unwanted questions about ASWBs work. For
example, at some point people might begin to challenge the notion that a so-called Advanced
Generalist exam could have a specific purpose. It might appear that ASWB had dreamt up the
Advanced Generalist exam merely to inaugurate a new income stream.
ASWBs withholding of useful, available information did not appear consistent with an
orientation toward helpfulness and public service that one might expect of a key organization in
this helping profession. From the most generally useful public information to the most refined
statistical issues, ASWB appeared to behave in ways that would be beneficial to its own insiders
but detrimental to the social work profession.
Concealment of Schools Pass Rates
One aspect of the foregoing discussion deserves additional attention. Among the kinds of
information that ASWB withholds, few are of greater interest than the exam pass rates achieved
by graduates of specific schools of social work. It may be, for example, that more competitive
universities attract students who are better at standardized exams, or that less expensive schools
disproportionately attract disadvantaged students whose perspectives are underrepresented in
ASWB exam questions. Exam-takers sharing the worldviews of ASWB question-writers might
enjoy particular advantages, for purposes of guessing which answers those writers might prefer.

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In this regard, Thyer (2011) offered a contrast between social work and law. In the legal
profession, he pointed out, the bar exam pass rates achieved by graduates of various schools
are openly compared against one another. Schools with poor performance records are at risk of
closure. In social work, by contrast, Thyer observed that ASWB provides information on a
specific schools ASWB exam pass rate only to officers at that school, and only at a steep price
(see ASWB, 2013c). Hence, broad comparisons across multiple schools will typically remain
unavailable until all schools purchase and share pass rates obtained from ASWB.
Fortunately, Thyer (2011) found an exception. Under the sunshine laws of his state of
Florida, it was possible to request LCSW pass rates from all Florida MSW programs for the
previous several years. That request resulted in some dramatic insights. In his data from 2007,
for example, pass rates varied from 42% at Barry University to 78% at the University of South
Florida (USF). That contrast would obviously steer students toward USF. Then again, rates at
USF dropped from that high of 78% in 2007 to 67% in 2008. If that decline continued, there
could be a question of whether USF had made a change for the worse in some aspect of its MSW
program after 2007. Thyer also observed that Florida programs as a whole did not compare well
against the average national pass rate. These sorts of facts and comparisons could be valuable in
identifying and rectifying problems but only if the data are made widely available.
It goes without saying that data can be misused and misconstrued. For instance, it could
be that Barry University tended to attract students who would not do as well on a standardized
exam. Barry might then be unfairly stigmatized for taking a chance on students who would not
even have gotten into USF. To quote CSWE (2013, p. 1), ASWB exams . . . should not be used
as the sole outcome measure for an educational program.

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At the same time, to quote Thyer (2011, p. 300), [T]hese issues do not obscure the
simple fact that licensure is an exceedingly important influence in the professional practice of
our field. One might even characterize it as a driving influence. The persistently low scores
achieved by graduates of the Barry University social work program, in Thyers data, do not seem
appropriate for suppression by ASWB, when graduates of other programs scored persistently
higher. If Barry University has something to explain, it should explain it, or at least contribute to
discussion on relevant considerations not leave potential applicants in the dark.
ASWBs website does not deign to discuss such matters. It simply continues to assert that
its reports on pass rates will be made available, not to the public, but only to the individual
school of social work (ASWB, 2013d).
Ethical Issues
This article has identified a number of regards in which ASWB appears to promote and
profit from unethical behavior. First, there are several large-scale and continuing violations of
the NASW (2008) Code of Ethics:

The Code requires social workers to advance the professions knowledge and improve its
integrity through appropriate study and research, active discussion, and responsible
criticism (5.01(b)).

The Code requires social workers to contribute to the knowledge base of social work
and share with their colleagues their knowledge and to contribute to the professions
literature (5.01(d)).

The Code requires social workers to facilitate evaluation and research to contribute to
the development of knowledge (5.02(b)).

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The Code requires that Social workers engaged in evaluation or research should be alert
to and avoid conflicts of interest (5.02(o)).
In addition, ASWBs behavior in these regards appears to violate widely understood

principles of research ethics. Those principles, summarized by Resnik (2011), include the
following:

Strive for honesty in all scientific communications. Honestly report data, results, methods
and procedures, and publication status.

Disclose personal or financial interests that may affect research.

Act with sincerity.

Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.

Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to
make their own decisions.

Respect your colleagues and treat them fairly.

Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research,
public education, and advocacy.

(See also e.g., American Psychological Association, 2010; Scientists for Global Responsibility,
n.d.)
Of course, ethical concerns are not limited to ASWB. The NASW Code makes clear that
those who facilitate or condone unethical behavior are themselves culpable. Among other things,
the Code says, social workers elevate service to others above self-interest; they promote ethical
practices on the part of the organizations with which they are affiliated; and they take adequate
measures to prevent, expose, and correct unethical behavior by other social workers.

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Conclusion

At this writing, the situation appeared to be as follows: ASWB managed to establish itself
as the monopolist of social work professional testing; it used that position to charge exorbitant
prices of people who, in many cases, can ill afford to pay them; and for many years it ignored
reasonable calls for change and improvement. Improvement seemed to be especially needed in
ASWBs withholding of valuable information and data, at the expense of clients, exam-takers,
and other stakeholders. That blatantly unethical and yet broadly tolerated withholding of
information illustrated the sharp contrast between the corruption of todays social work
profession and the alternative of genuine social work (see Woodcock, 2011).

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