We’ve been hearing A LOT from some very angry members of NCRA regarding the change in the exam retention policy that NCRA is implementing at the end of the year.  As a matter of fact, we believe that anger over this issue is one of the hottest buttons since WUNCRA came into existence.

As a background, NCRA members have been able to take tests in “legs,” and those legs remained active until the final leg was passed – no matter how long it took.

Suddenly, out of the blue, NCRA changed the policy, requiring members who had been “banking” legs of certification tests to take the outstanding legs by December 31^st, 2021.

Some of the outcries that we’ve been hearing against this new policy are:

1. When the passing legs were banked, those tests were taken under the strictest testing standards.  So why discount the veracity of those tests now?
2. Those tests were paid for with hard-earned money, often requiring a lot of traveling when the tests were given at brick-and-mortar locations.
3. Realtime Coach and its association with Proctor U has been ONE, BIG FLOP. So even members that have tried to comply with NCRA’s new mandate haven’t been able to because of the ineptness of the testing scheme.
4. Proctors don’t show up at scheduled testing times – what does that do psychologically to a person taking a skills test?
5. There is not a human to talk to when dealing with Realtime Coach’s and Proctor U’s business FLOPS.
6. Being timed out (automatic failure) from uploading notes within the three-minute window while waiting for a Proctor U employee to come to the chat box.  Then when a proctor finally arrives, and if they can be understood because English is a second language, they have no clue about what they are even proctoring!
7. Proctors chime in in the midst of dictation of the skills test!!!
8. Why does the Proctor U owl logo show up on computer taskbars weeks after a test was taken? CREEPY!  Are there videos out there on the dark web of NCRA members walking in front of their computers in their underwear – or worse – we wonder?
9. We have not heard one single word from NCRA regarding these issues with Realtime Coach and Proctor U!
10. During the Treasurer’s Report at NCRA’s business meeting, there was a lot of self-congratulations about the amount of money that NCRA’s three-year testing deadline brought into NCRA’s coffers just in this last year.  So, is that it? We now measure the success of any initiative not by how well it serves members, but by how much money it squeezes from members?
11. When a policy is changed, people who have banked tests usually are grandfathered, and the policy only applies going forward.  (When states implemented certifications, they didn’t require every stenographer who had already been working in the state to sit for tests – they were grandfathered in, making them certified stenographers in those states.  We cannot find a state requiring certifications that has not had this as a policy.)

The above are just a few of the concerns cited off the tops of our heads since we have been inundated with emails here at WUNCRA.

This policy needs to be back-pedaled and re-evaluated, NCRA!  Why was it even implemented?  What prompted this dubious, money-over-members policy?

WE WANT ANSWERS!

WAKE UP, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense

P.S. Please send this to every NCRA member that you know, so they can understand the outrageousness of this dubious, money-over-members policy of NCRA, too.