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A High-Stakes Test for Airport Screeners Raises Questions

Ohanian Question: Who publishes the test prep materials?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — Most of the questions on an examination to become an airport screener were rehearsed with the trainees before the test, according to the inspector general of the Transportation Security Administration, who called the practice "extremely disturbing."

Some questions were "simplistic," and "a number of the questions were phrased so as to provide an obvious clue to the correct answer," the inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin, found. He made the comments in an Aug. 29 letter to Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, released by the senator on Wednesday.

A spokesman for the agency, Brian Turmail, said the inspector general's observations were "a microscopic look at one element in an incredibly rigorous training regimen."

Mr. Ervin's letter included some of the questions, including this one:

How do threats get on board an aircraft?

a. In carry-on bags.

b. In checked-in bags.

c. In another person's bag.

d. All of the above.

Another question asked why it was important to screen bags for "improvised explosive devices," commonly referred to by security experts as I.E.D.'s.

The choices were:

a. The I.E.D. batteries could leak and damage other passenger bags.

b. The wires in the I.E.D. could cause a short to the aircraft wires.

c. I.E.D.'s can cause loss of lives, property and aircraft.

d. The ticking timer could worry other passengers.

Mr. Schumer, in a telephone interview on Wednesday, said, "When you read the test, you'd think it was written by Jay Leno's scriptwriters rather than by a testing agency."

Mr. Schumer said his staff had spoken to some screeners, who said that the on-the-job field test was more important. But those screeners described the hands-on field test in ways that made it sound erratic, Mr. Schumer said. "Some people said it depends on the instructor, the day, the week and the place," he said.

The issue arose in January in a report in Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, about trainees at LaGuardia being given the questions in advance. An investigation found that in the system used to train about 30,000 screeners, a 25-question exam included 22 questions used on earlier quizzes. The letter was in response to a question by Mr. Schumer about that report. The agency told Mr. Schumer that the trainers had done nothing wrong, and that 22 of the 25 questions on the exam were in daily lesson quizzes.

The screeners were trained to operate Explosive Detection Systems, called E.D.S. The inspector general complained that of the examinations provided to him by the agency, "not a single question called upon a student to demonstrate a sufficient mastery of the class content to achieve the purpose of the training."

Mr. Turmail, of the agency, said that the test was just one part of a long process. "There are no screeners working today who haven't demonstrated, in a real-world environment, in a hands-on setting, their ability to use this equipment to identify and keep bombs from getting on planes," he said.




— Matthew L. Wald
Official Says Airport Trainees Knew Questions Before Tests
New York Times
2003-10-09
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/09/national/09SECU.html?th

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