From: Bob Brock on Sun, Jan 21 2007 6:10 am

wrote in message
Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote in


Well, I can see why those types of questions are no longer being used. It's
more about who is giving the tests than it is about who is taking it.

Every tried grading essay questions?

My wife has worked at that (Illinois, with a Masters in
Education) for several years, mostly in regards to US History.
It's a difficult task given the wide span of students'
ability to write and express themselves. Ask any teacher or
college instructor and get - more or less - the same answer.
:-)

Since 1934 and the Communications Act, the FCC has never been
chartered to be an academic institution or organization and,
as far as I've been able to find out, FCC field office
officials have never been required to hold any degrees or
certification in education as part of their jobs. Essay
ANSWERS generally require a goodly part of time in just
trying to understand what the test-taker wrote for any
answer. Much, much more time than pulling out an answer
template to lay over a multiple-choice answer sheet. [such
answer templates are in wide use in most all government
agency testing, not just in schools and colleges]

The one bit of good advice I got in 1956 for my First 'Phone
test in Chicago was: "Be clear in your writing, concise and
legible." Even for the few schematics that had to be drawn.
No sweat, even with the government-issue #3 lead pencils we
had to use. I printed my answers to be sure they had a
minimum of handwriting-interpretation tasks. :-) I passed.

The law's requirements for VEs doesn't require ANY of them
to possess academic certificates or college degrees nor
experience in test-giving and test-grading. Privatization of
ALL radio operator license testing (commercial as well as
amateur) pretty much dictates the easier-to-grade multiple-
choice question-answer format. Certainly so for the all-
volunteer amateur radio test coordinators.