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NPTE Quarterly Faculty Newsletter Volume 12; No. 4

Fourth Quarter 2015

The mission of the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy is to protect the public by providing service and leadership that promote safe and competent physical therapy practice.

The NPTE Quarterly Faculty Newsletter is published by the Federation (FSBPT) as one mechanism to communicate with educators in PT and PTA programs. This effort to provide ongoing communication includes current information and updates on the NPTE as well as information on other regulatory issues that might impact or be of interest to program educators.

Please share this newsletter with other PT or PTA educators.

Subscription to the newsletter is free. For subscription information or comments, please contact communications@fsbpt.org.

Table of Contents

Benchmarking Report available

At the suggestion of the School Reports Task Force, FSBPT recently developed a new school report, the Benchmarking Report. This report allows schools to select between 5 and 10 schools to serve as a basis for comparison, and displays your school’s pass rates and performance by content area as compared to these schools. Schools can purchase different Benchmark Reports for different purposes (e.g., current status versus aspirational status). The report costs $125 and you can find a link to it in the Educators Area under School Reports.

Confidence intervals also revised
In addition to the new report, we have improved the school roster interface and revised our confidence interval calculation for previously purchased reports. If you bought a Content Area Report in 2014, check it again to see the revised confidence intervals.

New textbook survey results out soon

FSBPT has completed data collection for the 2015 Textbook Survey. For those of you who provided us with the helpful information, thank you very much! We expect the new survey results to be available in January 2016 in the Textbook Survey Data Area.

Mark Your Calendars: 2016 NPTE Workshop for Educators scheduled

Next year’s NPTE Workshop for Educators is scheduled for October 14-16, 2016 in Alexandria, Virginia.

Why do educators attend? Because they learn:

  • How to write better multiple-choice questions for their exams that follow the same format as the NPTE
  • How to statistically analyze test questions to determine if they are good questions
  • How the NPTE is developed from content outline through scoring
  • How to prepare students for the test administration experience
  • How to interpret and effectively use school pass rate reports

And it’s a great opportunity to ask questions of FSBPT staff!

For more information, go to NPTE Workshop for Educators.

This Quarter’s Question: How will programs be involved in the new NPTE registration process?

Under the new exam registration process, which should be rolled out in 2017, you (programs) will initially provide us with your students’ names, email addresses, and expected graduation dates. You will not need to provide any other identifying information at that time. We will ask students to finish their candidate profile themselves.

The other key involvement for you will occur when a class is close to graduation. Prior to a student being able to register for the NPTE, you will need to validate whether they are on track to complete the program on time. The rest of the registration process will not change for the student.

Note that any procedures that occur between you and the state board for licensure purposes will still take place.

We believe this will result in more accurate pass rate reports with less work on your part!

How? You will be the source of information about the students in your program. And by verifying and correcting student information earlier, you will no longer need to correct erroneous information within a short window of time after testing.

As we get closer to implementing these enhancements, we will host webinars to explain the changes in more detail.

What Students Need to Know: What abbreviations will I need to know when I take the NPTE?

When developing and approving test questions for the NPTE, we generally try to avoid using abbreviations. However, in some cases the abbreviation may add clarity to a test question, as the abbreviation may be the most generally accepted way of communicating a concept within a clinical environment.

For a complete list of the abbreviations that a candidate may see on the NPTE, check the following page:

http://www.fsbpt.org/FreeResources/NPTECandidateHandbook/Abbreviations.aspx.