How do you interpret the SOA's letter?

[Swiper]

How do you interpret the letter sent by the SOA, requesting student's feedback on the course 8 mishap? For reference (or for those of you who didn't receive it), here is the letter:


Dear Course 8 Candidates,

Thank you for your responses to my initial email message regarding the printing errors on the November 2005 Course 8 administration. I recognize that you spent a considerable amount of time preparing for this exam and that, for many candidates, the examination experience did not meet your – or our – expectations. This follow up provides additional information on how the SOA is responding to the problems that occurred.

We are committed to working with the exam committees to make adjustments to grading as needed. Many of you have already responded with details of how your experience differed from what was described in my first email. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

If you have not sent your comments yet and would like to do so, please send a message to ombudsperson@soa.org by December 5, 2005, so that it can be considered before grades are set. Information that is helpful to us related to the printing errors includes descriptions of conditions at your examination center, supervisor conduct and accommodations made for the printing errors, and the extent to which these factors affected your performance on the exam.

We also recognize that in the transition you may have been planning to work on your Professional Development course during 2006. You are near the end of your basic education during a time of transition for our exam system. Due to the problems with the November 2005 Course 8 exam administration, we have modified the Professional Development (PD) rules to eliminate the requirement (in the absence of conversion credits) that Course 8 be passed prior to starting PD. For all candidates who took Course 8 in 2005, we will waive the requirement that Course 8 be passed prior to starting PD. As long as you have the required conversion credits or have passed Courses 1-7, you may start PD as soon as you meet all other requirements. Additional details on this policy change will be posted on the SOA website by December 2.

Finally, we apologize for any inconvenience the November 2005 exam administration problems caused. We hope the PD requirement policy change will help ensure that your progress to Fellowship is not delayed any further.

Regards,

Cheryl A. Krueger, FSA
Managing Director, Education & Examination
Society of Actuaries

[wat?]

Poll?

[Swiper]

Originally Posted by wat?

Poll?

Yes, sorry I didn't get the options posted fast enough.

[Green Arrow]

My take was this:

Grades will be adjusted at the Test Center level and my paper will be considered for adjustment BASED ON THE PROCTOR'S REPORT even if I did not send a letter.

I wrote to the SOA because I did not trust that the proctor's write-up would cover all of my concerns about how the situation was handled at that test site.

[night cat]

Me too.
I didn't write to the SOA because I don't think there is any necessary adjustment to my Test Center. However, I would think the adjustment is BASED ON THE PROCTOR'S REPORT and at Test Ceter Level.

[3rookie]

QUOTE: "and the extent to which these factors affected your performance on the exam."

I emailed what happened at my test center, basically an objective recall of events. How the hell do I know how a 15 minute "freeze-out" affected my performance? How can I judge if I would have remembered the answer to 6)b had we not wasted that time, during which I had no idea when the proctor would return with the correct study note for some other course 8? [semi-rant off]

Because I did not guess at how these factors affected me, I do not expect any kind of adjustment, even though it should be assumed that wasting 15+ minutes would have a detrimental affect.

Everyone in the room taking the same course 8 as me had the exact same experience, so why not the exact same adjustment? It sucked for everybody.

[smarty pants]

Looks like some people at the SOA need to take Course 7 before it goes away. At least they didn't include a pie graph.

[Swiper]

Originally Posted by 3rookie

QUOTE: How can I judge if I would have remembered the answer to 6)b had we not wasted that time, during which I had no idea when the proctor would return with the correct study note for some other course 8?

Exactly my point. If you can't even judge that, how in the world will the exam committee be able to make that judgement based solely on people's written comments.

[smarty pants]

With a combination of a coin, 2 dice and a ping pong ball bingo machine.

But seriously, they are going to not even look at certain papers, I mean, I'd highly doubt any papers not in central grading will get adjusted. Is that right or wrong, I don't know. By doing that they'd assume that the effects weren't that dramatic, not enough to go from a 3 to a 6. The whole afternoon session (1/3 of the exam).

Well now the SOA has set themselves up for massive emails and letters in the future since that is the only way to make sure your paper is graded fairly in the case of THEIR screw-ups. I just find it ridiculous that we are being told that we have to show some accountability to make sure our personal situation is documented from the SOA error. I'd think that there would be some responsibility on the SOA's part to make sure that everyone's papers are graded on the same level playing field. I just thought that was something inherent when such a society administers exams. I am still bitter about a past handling of an email to the ombudsperson (probably not the same one as today) and I wrote a long explanation as to why I thought the question was defective. I got a one sentence email back saying that they agreed with me, but didn't answer any of my questions as to whether adjustments were made, the question was thrown out, etc. I TOOK the initiative and I had a very valid argument, but nothing was done. I realize that new people are making improvements to the system, and I do appreciate that, but it does not change our dealings with the system over the years. There's a reason we feel this way. You can't take an abused child and put him in another home and automatically earn his trust that nobody will ever beat him again. (please don't take that example as a parallel to the SOA beating anyone, I know how sensitive some of you are. Dig for the point.)

[Steve White]

Originally Posted by smarty pants

I am still bitter about a past handling of an email to the ombudsperson (probably not the same one as today) and I wrote a long explanation as to why I thought the question was defective. I got a one sentence email back saying that they agreed with me, but didn't answer any of my questions as to whether adjustments were made, the question was thrown out, etc. I TOOK the initiative and I had a very valid argument, but nothing was done.

This is an absolutely incredible leap of logic. Hasn't the SOA said, in the Basic Education catalogs, that it has established this procedure for dealing with the occasional defective questions:
1. Candidates are told how they report potentially defective question: write to the ombudsperson.
2. Ombudsperson passes the issue to the exam committee, which investigates.
3. If the question is deemed defective, scores are adjusted (in various ways, depending on the specific circumstances; examples are given in the catalog.)

Have you given us any reason to think the process didn't work that way in this instance? Certainly the mechanism for receiving the complaint was in place. Certainly it went to the committee, who investigated and agreed the question was defective. How can you know that "nothing was done" about it?

I'm an advocate of greater transparency, too, but that doesn't mean that the various people on the exam committees are lying about what is being done now.