Stop the social work “entry to practice” exam in Ontario
Submission to The Social Lens: A Social Work Action Blog by Chris Chapman, York University; Ameil Joseph, Jennifer Ma and Chris Sinding, McMaster University; Sarah Todd, Carleton University.
The Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW) (the regulatory body for social workers and social service workers in Ontario) passed a motion in September of 2021 to approve “entry-to-practice” examinations for social work and social service work applicants to the college. The OCSWSSW has also declared that the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) is responsible for developing and implementing the exams. While many have raised concerns about this motion and the exam itself, the implementation process continues to advance with plans to launch these exams in Ontario in 2027.
Recent findings out of both the United States and Canada (British Columbia and Alberta) showed that historically oppressed and marginalized groups have lower success rates in entrance to practice exams. These exams therefore function as a concrete systemic barrier to marginalized communities seeking greater representation among the social work profession that disproportionately serves them.
The overall ASWB findings from 2018-2021 showed an approximately 80% first-time pass rate for White graduates and around a 40% first-time pass rate for Black graduates. Indigenous graduates passed at around a 60% rate their first try and both Asian and Latinx graduates fared only slightly better.
In the Canadian context, a snapshot of the finding shows that in both British Columbia and Alberta, across BSW, Master’s and clinical exams, first-time pass rates for White graduates were above 90%. The exam generated consistently lower pass rates for:
- Indigenous graduates: in BC, 74.3% passed the Bachelor’s exam and 78.6% passed the Master’s exam; in Alberta, 54.5% passed the Bachelor’s exam
- Asian graduates: in BC, 80.6% passed the Bachelor’s exam and 77.9% passed the Master’s exam; in Alberta, 46.7% passed the Bachelor’s exam and 27.4% passed the Master’s exam.
Similarly, across all exam types, in both provinces, first-time pass rates for graduates whose primary language is English were consistently higher (average 86%) than graduates whose primary language is not English (average 62%).
In the US, over these three years, the exam has served to ensure that White social work graduates have twice the ease of entering the profession as Black graduates and an easier time entering the profession than Indigenous and other racialized groups. This is systemic discrimination and oppression. The same study also analyzed the “eventual pass rate” – meaning graduates who are able to enter the social work profession. 90.7% of White graduates eventually pass, compared to 79.7% of Asian graduates, 76.6% of Latinx graduates, 73.5% of Indigenous graduates, and 57% of Black graduates. Therefore, 43% of Black social work graduates over these three years were prevented from entering professional practice – not because of how they were with clients; not because of how they performed in their more holistic course work and practica; and certainly not because of how their own lived experience gives them the kinds of knowledge and experience that can never be taught in a classroom or evaluated in an exam – but only because of their score on a standardized multiple-choice exam. The social work profession urgently needs to rely on, and further develop, approaches to assessment that do the very opposite of what the entrance exam has been conclusively shown to do.
It is important to note that standardized testing is rooted in white supremacy. Eugenicists created these tests and brought them to the mainstream to demonstrate the superiority of “the Nordic race group” (Brigham, 1923) and to advocate for the segregation of White people and non-White people and migrants in the education system to prevent its decline. Since their inception over a century ago, standardized tests have been employed as instruments of racism and systemic discrimination, entrenching privilege and class as merit. While they were considered scientific, they remain deeply biased and reproduce racial hierarchies. Since intelligence and ethnicity were thought to be related, the results of standardized tests could be used to exclude undesirable groups of people.
In fact, the extant research shows that Black, Indigenous and racialized students experience bias from standardized tests administered from childhood through to post-secondary education (e.g., Au, 2016; Lee, 2006; McConkie, 1998; National Research Council, 2011; Ravitch, 2013; Sackett, Schmitt, Ellingson, & Kabin, 2001; Solórzano, Ceja, & Yosso, 2000; Teranishi & Briscoe, 2006). In the context of the social work exam, this instrument reproduces white supremacy by delineating what is considered social work knowledge while replicating racial and socioeconomic inequalities. Moreover, standardized tests function as a tool of white supremacy as racist outcomes appear to be objective and natural, attributed to the failure of individual students, groups or cultures and not to the existing structural inequalities that reproduce the status quo.
As standardized tests structurally enforce the dominant norms of whiteness, they effectively silence the knowledge and experiences of Black, Indigenous and racialized people. Specific to the social work exam, the tool itself shapes the nature of the profession and people who can practice. It will also shape social work education, turning attention away from valuable consciousness raising and critical self-reflection, which are key to working toward a profession that does less harm to racialized, Indigenous, poor, disabled and otherwise oppressed clients. The exam is sorely misaligned with the Canadian Association of Social Work Education Standards, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the Calls for Justice from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. All these bodies have had a key role in redefining the social work profession’s obligations as reaching beyond creating institutional functionaries. Instead, contemporary social work recognizes professional competence as including the ability to operationalize a critical understanding of how systemic relations of power, which disproportionately and negatively impact marginalized communities, and to challenge and re-imagine mainstream practices, understandings and systems.
Social work as a field has enough to contend with in respect to historical and contemporary colonial complicities with inequitable systems in child welfare, mental health, housing and beyond. Omitting and ejecting particular communities from social work practice serves to ensure that ways of knowing, intervening and resisting oppression via the lived experience of Black, Indigenous and other racialized groups is also ejected. This cannot be permitted to proceed.
Since the release of these data, the Council of Social Work Education in the US has announced that they are removing the licensing exam pass rates from the Education Policy and Accreditation Standards due to these alarming disparities. Several actions and publications have also been initiated in the US to stop the ASWB entry-to-practice exams in light of the data released:
NASW Metro DC Chapter Statement
Letter to the DC Board of Social Work
This exam has been shown conclusively to systemically discriminate against Indigenous, Black and racialized graduates. For Ontario to even consider implementing it is extremely troubling. Rather than reforming the exam, it should be removed from the registration process altogether.
THE SOCIAL LENS: A SOCIAL WORK ACTION BLOG - The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the original author(s) and do not express the views of the UBC School of Social Work and/or the other contributors to the blog. The blog aims to uphold the School's values and mission.
