Meeting with NABP: Are you ready to talk to NABP?

[AJRAYES]

Then it's a hopeless case Knok, and I'm sorry to tell you that.
I believe when they see the drop down of pharmacists number for 2008, they will take the change into consideration.
I don't think they will do or think of doing anything in the meantime.

[knok]

I wonder if these letters have been reached the executive committee. I sent out these letters again last week to all executive committee members. Last year, we did not send them. I am afraid that this reply was just a normal process from FPGEE. That's why we need to talk to NABP.

Yesterday, I received a weird message from NJ Consumer Affairs that says, "Thank you for submitting your complaint." I did not sent the complaint to NJ Consumer Affairs last week. I sent out 8 months ago.

We all are educated. If you have good reasons to discuss, educated people should listen and will be willing to listen further. Good people should have good mind too. All executive committee members of NABP are highly educated. They should listen. They know the problem about the shortage. Nobody has experience of taking TOEFL iBT. That's the main point. What they heard was messages from salesman of ETS saying,"Our product is good."

[knok]

Just an update. We sent out a certified letter requesting NABP to meet us in the middle of this month for no more than a couple of hours. We are waiting for a response from NABP. I received a confirmation notice from post office yesterday that the letter has been reached NABP on April 7, 2008.

[yashak]

Hi knok,

I would like to thank you for your hard work and dedication to help foreign pharmacy graduates for their unjust treament by fellow US pharmacists. I am a pharmacist from Africa and have been in US for almost 7 years. I work in a biotech company in CA as a research associate and I don't only communicate effectively but also fluently with my US and non US colleagues. I am paid better than entry level pharmacist but I really want to practice my profession pharmacy as pharmacy is my first degree. However, as all we know, the culprit for us not to practice our profession is the devil, inconsistent and non- validated speaking requirment set by FPGEC. I just took the iBT TOFEL last March after passed my FPGEE just last December with great score. I scored very well on those three parts but terrible like 23 on speaking. Anyway, my main reason to write this to you is first to encourage you for the awesome service you are providing us and inform you that I am very happy to be part of the group to meet the NABP exceutive committee or any representative anywhere. I can provide you my contact address anytime.

Best regards

[knok]

Thanks, yashak for your message. I'll contact you as soon as possible.

We received an answer from NABP. The committe is not available to meet us at this time. Please stay tuned. We just want to communicate, one way or another. Please suggest.

People, if you feel the same and want things to be changed to the better, please vote and get involved. Thanks.

[bigmoonstar]

knok, have you thought about going public? I mean why don't we send the same petition to the media? specially for those who are following up the public-health issues!!!

[testtube07]

I'm confident that NABP understands well that TOEFL iBT is a total mess.. As a regulatory body, NABP was supposed to have taken appropriate action long time ago. Let's get together and meet them. Maybe this time NABP will act appropriately after realizing that we know our rights more than what they think.

Check the link below for another ugly experience from TOEFL iBT test taker. In my opinion, TOEFL iBT should be banned altogether.. This is more than stealing in broad daylight.... This is totally inexcusable.

http://www.urch.com/forums/just-fini...ilippines.html (BEWARE IBT test center : I can Language Center Inc. Pasig Philippines)

I understand that NABP staff peruse testmagic-pharmacy threads occasionally... Do you still believe that TOEFL iBT is a valid test? I wonder!!!!!

[knok]

Could anyone please copy and paste all complaints about TOEFL iBT from TOEFL forums in MS Word, including links, sources www..., so that we put them in documentation.

Documentation is stronger than just saying. In this country, if you speak without documents and evidence, nobody will listen to you.

Thanks everybody who sent the surveys. All your complaints will be documented without your names on them.

Bigmoonstar,

Do what you think it is appropriate? We have freedom of speech to speak the truth.

If you want to go public, the length of letter should be about 2-3 pages.

I'll post the letter that I sent to executive committee here. I sent it 2 days after asking the board to meet because I realized later that the letters we sent last year might be buried somewhere in NABP office and nobody read them. The letter from NABP above did not even mentioned what we asked for solutions. Is it weird?

Please see the next post.

[knok]

Dear fellow pharmacists,

I sent this letter to every NABP executive committee. I hope that they read it and consider our concerns to make the changes. I know that human beings are afraid of changes. What can be the trigger of the changes?

Fellow pharmacists, please ask yourself. I believe that all of you are not afraid of changes because if you are, you won't step out of lands of your countries to seek adventure.

Below is the cover letter. It was enclosed all documents in above posts, TOEFL iBT complaint, Petition to NABP, and Score descriptor.
------------------------------------------------------

April 3, 2008

.....
NABP Executive Committee
...

Subject: Test used to certify pharmacists


Dear Ms./Mr.

We are writing to share with you some serious concerns we have with the practices of the organization operating these tests located in New Jersey, and with the format, administration, and scoring system of the Internet-Based Test of English as a Second Language (TOEFL iBT).

Educational Testing Services (ETS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, is responsible for the administration of the TOEFL iBT. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) requires all foreign pharmacists seeking licensure in the United States to take the TOEFL iBT and pass each of the four sections reported on one official score report as a result of one testing session. Official score reports with a less than minimum score in any section will not be considered. The minimal acceptable score for the TOEFL iBT is 24 for the writing, 26 for the speaking, 18 for the listening, and 21 for the reading.

However, the format of this speaking section in the TOEFL iBT, as well as the results a test-taker receives, follows no logical path. If the true purpose of this type of exam were to test English proficiency, then the test should focus on speaking ability and not the ability to answer difficult questions or strange questions in time limit and other such scenarios completely unrelated to the pharmacy profession.

Foreign doctors, nurses, and teachers are given the choice to take either the TOEFL iBT or other more appropriate tests. Foreign pharmacists, however, do not have this choice, meaning the test-takers are at the mercy of one company. ETS has a monopoly on the test, so it is particularly important that the test administration and the scoring process be handled fairly.

ETS has demonstrated that its scoring process is neither logical nor fair. The test results we received only notify me of what our base scores were, never specify us on sentences or phrases that we made mistakes. The evaluation sheet provides only a vague and overly general evaluation, so that candidates who receive the same score ranges will receive the same evaluation. Copied and pasted evaluations or computer generated evaluations have been used instead of customized evaluations. They sometimes receive an evaluation pointing out that there is inadequate topic development. How can you expect people to provide perfect answers when they were given 15 seconds to think and organize their answers and must compress them to 45 or 60 seconds?

How can they expect to improve their performance when they were not given any specific idea of where they faltered? This alone makes us question the company’s integrity and true goals. By failing test-takers, ETS can guarantee their future profits through application fees from those having to take subsequent tests.

Every time we take the TOEFL iBT we must pay a one hundred fifty dollar testing fee. With the TOEFL iBT being offered only a few times a month, and the results taking over three weeks to receive, we are forced to schedule several more sessions before we even know the results of the last test. The hardship our families and we have endured due to the expenses for this test is enormous. We have to register several times ahead because the seats will be full four months in advance.

The only source of appeal for the test scoring is through ETS itself. ETS requires an additional fee of sixty dollars to rescore each test and they handle the rescoring themselves. This is asking a company to judge its own performance.

All we are asking for is a fair chance at achieving our U.S. pharmacy licensure. We are not seeking to be allowed to practice our profession without verification that we can communicate effectively, but we do ask that the only company authorized to administer the test should do so fairly. ETS has shown that they are not doing so, and we believe another alternative to the TOEFL iBT is necessary. The current requirements are causing us, much grief, and are only serving to prevent us from alleviating the great shortage of pharmacists country-wide.

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is an extremely comprehensive assessment of a persons speaking ability and is an option for foreign nurses seeking U.S. licensure. This test is available world-wide and is used by several countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, to assess the speaking ability of foreigners applying for work visas and residency. Offering the IELTS as an alternative to taking the TOEFL iBT would allow for fair practices and eliminate the self-serving monopoly that ETS currently holds.

We are requesting you to investigate the practices of Educational Testing Services, as we believe their operating standards, and the monopoly they hold, are unfair and based solely on turning a profit, not providing the service they were entrusted to by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy.

Hundreds of foreign pharmacists have agreed on complaints concerning the testing practices of ETS. We would like to share our experiences with you in the hope that you will understand that we feel that ETS is not providing what they claim. ETS has gone to great lengths and published many reports to give the appearance that TOEFL iBT is given fairly and scored fairly. This has not been our experience as test-takers and we would like to relate to you our personal experiences and tell you about areas of the TOEFL iBT that we find problematic.

From the point of view of many test-takers, the TOEFL iBT - Speaking is deeply flawed as an evaluation of our spoken English. We feel that the management of the exam by ETS is equally flawed. Our group is seeking positive solutions to the concerns we have listed. It is our hope to be contributing members of society and practice our profession of pharmacy in the USA. We have expressed our frustration many times with the TOEFL iBT process and would respectfully request that the TOEFL iBT be replaced with the much more widely accepted tests.

Furthermore, TOEFL iBT is not an appropriate format for professionals at all. The content of the exam relates to subjects in schools, which has nothing to do with pharmacy careers. The TOEFL iBT is more appropriate for academic purposes, not professional purposes. In addition, in the Speaking section, ETS does not offer a real interview. Therefore, we request that the State Boards of Pharmacy and NABP issue its own communication skills test as foreign physicians do, or allow other spoken tests as an alternative.

In addition to what we mentioned above, we heard several complaints from spouses. For example, one of them said, “I have sat around not doing anything, except complain about the situation, for too long now. ETS will do nothing; we all know that, so it does no good to write them directly, no good at all. ETS is a corrupt organization, no better than street level thieves, and they operate in plain view of the public. They have a good thing going and they know it. We have spent well over two thousand dollars on tests, transportation, and rescores and all they have to do is keep failing my wife knowing that there is almost nothing we can do.”

There are not enough pharmacists in this country. Businesses are in dire need of pharmacists and you need to realize that no one is coming to this country to take work away from “Americans” per se. The need is there and all of foreign pharmacists coming here and working here is a boost to the economy and workforce. How can we improve the situation? How can we get rid of the monopoly? How can those foreign pharmacists who are qualified to work as pharmacists serve the need of Americans? How can we reduce the shortages of pharmacists?

There are a lot of qualified foreign pharmacists who are ready to work but, they cannot pass the TOEFL iBT - Speaking and cannot get a pharmacy license, they cannot work. The only way to overcome this problem is to get rid of the monopoly and allow other spoken tests as an alternative.

Thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We are looking forward to your consideration to use alternate English tests for pharmacy licensure.

Sincerely,

[yashak]

Hi Knok,

I don't see any problem of going public. However, we should know beforehand what can we achieve by going public? What would be the next step if going public doesn't achieve what we expect?

If we all agree though, I would like to raise the following points and happy to discuss other alternatives. First, we need to exhaust all the options with NABP. We have to try to get a written response about their opinion to our concern. As Knok informed us, she got a cofirmation that the letter she has sent already been accepted by the NABP. If they fail to respond, we(representative of the group) can go to the office in person and ask about the status of the letter sent to NABP from our group. If they have no response to our quest, that is a good reason for us to go to the next step.

Our next step should be identifying key advocates of pharmacy shortage and overworked US pharmacists concern and approaching them about the injustice perpetrated by the NABP against foreign pharmacy graduates by setting up a requirement that can't be met by majority of the candidates who are sitting for FPGEE and preventing them from contributing to the health care needs of the country.

Based on the outcome of this campaign, we can plan our next step. In the meantime, we can organize a chapter organization in each state for foreign pharmacists and plan to have a national organization that can have a legal represntation to deal with NABP or any other entity.

Best regards,

Yashak
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