Thanks to Mike Nolan the Delegates considered and passed a motion effecting Club TD certification. How is Club TD Certification affected?
The system will work like this: New Club TDs can sign up without an exam just like they do now. After three years if they do not meet the experience requirements or rating requirements they will need to take a Club TD exam. They will be required to take the exam every three years if they want to remain only a Club TD. If their Club TD expires and they want to renew it, they take an exam. Any Club TD that meets the requirements for Local TD is encouraged to take the Local TD exam.
As TDCC chair I sent the material to “make it so” late on Friday night August 26, 2005. I don’t know how long it will take the USCF office to implement this stuff but it should be quick. If anyone wants to test how well the new system works by asking Larry Pond ( lpond@uschess.org ) for a Club TD exam to renew their certification later this week, let me know how it turns out.
Gee Tim - Are you sure this has not always been the way it worked (although without the test)?? I know a few folks who have been club directors for much longer than 3 years!
Did anyone consider making them take a Local Director exam if the requirments have been met and doing something like making them Local if they score 80%, but only need a say 70% to continue on at the Club Level.
This is good news as will give the true Club director a way to be certified without bending the rules. It should be good for all directors in that there will be a larger pool of directors that may be able to be backup or assitant directors.
Yes, I am sure this is not the way it has been, officially. Unofficially the office records and lack of staff would end up letting a few Club TDs “get by” with a renewal.
We would love to make a Club TD take the Local exam if they have the qulifications; however, there is not enough USCF staff to check that kind of thing for every Club TD that asks for a renewal. Perhaps they will get tired of taking an exam every three years and ask for themselves.
Some of this can be automated over time. However, our records for assistant TDs is not very complete, so it may not be obvious from our records that a Club TD has the experience to take the local exam.
We have around 2500 former Club TDs who are still current USCF members. Most of them don’t have either the established regular rating or experience requirements to take the Local exam, so they were kind of in limbo. Now they have a way to regain Club certification.
Directors in the rural areas of the nation, or the states with very small populations have a hard time coming up with the fifty entries just to take the test. It is not the question of having the number of tournaments, it is the question to get the entries up to fifty. If the director only gets around five to ten entries every tournament, it can take between five and ten tournaments just to get over fifty entries. What is the official policy of what is an active director, and not an active director? Having events with less than ten entries can burn-out any director over time. The director can burn-out faster, if having events just to get the entries.
The policy to raise the certification level from club too local, was a bad policy. As some parts of the state or the whole state (without a major title or prize money) can only support Category D events. If the tournament can only support less than ten entries, the area can only support one or a few tournaments in a given year. The organizer can have as many tournaments they want, the organizer would be spending capital on a market that does not support tournaments.
Directors in an established tournament market can have the problem just to break-in. Just before leaving Washtenaw County, with the major city of Ann Arbor with a population around 120,000, the county still has a number of certified directors. During the time I was there, we had three senior directors and three local directors, less then fifteen miles from each other. Just for the directors at that certification to have the number of events needed, so all of us would get the waived requirement for not needing to take the test for re-certification – it would be twenty-seven events within five years.
Just for the club directors in the area, they were only able to pick up one or two tournaments a year just at the schools scholastic events. Since there was one of the directors that filled the niche of tournaments in the city. It did force the rest of the directors like myself to travel just to meet the requirements. If the club director wanted to break out from the local scholastic tournaments, the director could face the fact the market is full of active directors.
This is great news! I haven’t been a club TD for about 10 years, at least, and now I can get back into the groove.
I would like to know how the exam for the club TD and the one for local TD are going to differ. I do like the idea of having the exam given to club TDs also be used for the local level. Then based on the grade a club TD might find himself to be a local TD, which would be a nice bonus. On the other hand, those who wanted to stay a club TD wouldn’t be able to drop back a level if they had achieved local status.
Is the exam going to be open-book? And will there be enough staff to grade them?
Except for the program under which local and senior exams are given closed-book at national events, all TD exams are open book.
Tim Just indicated in Phoenix that initially the Club exam and the Local exam will likely be the same test, but with a lower passing score for those seeking renewal of their Club certification. Whether that remains the case is up to TDCC.
There was some discussion at the TDCC workshop in Phoenix of making it possible to take the Club and/or Local exams online. That will require writing quite a few more questions for each exam.
I think it would be interesting to run the Club exam on the Keller Plan. (For those who aren’t familiar with the Keller Plan, it is often used for college courses like Introduction to Psychology. Students take exams using an automated testing process and are permitted to take each unit exam until they pass it. )
The goal of a Keller Plan is to be less concerned about grades while making sure the students know the material. That seems like a reasonable approach for the Club TD exam, and possibly the Local exam as well.
If I remember my teaching methology course, most Keller plans have a test bank that has about 50 times the number of questions on any one unit exam. I think there are 40 question on the Local exam, so TDCC would have to come up with something like 1800 more questions to be able to implement a Keller Plan. That’s a HUGE undertaking!
26e Satisfactory performance for three years as a club TD, …(page 248).
If the club director did serve out the first three-year term, would not the expired club director have the right to take the local test? It looks as it was there all along in the 5th edition. The only other reason to stop the director from taking the test, would be if the director does not have an established regular rating.
If the club director takes the local test, as there is no official designed test for club. It begs the question if the club director gets 80% or higher on the test. As the passing score for the tests has been 80% or better. If the club director did serve out the three-year term, or is going to serve out the three-year term. Than gets 80% or better on the local test, why would the club director only get a second three-year term when the requirements were meet on page 248?
Did Tim Just have a typo in the requirements for local director? Did the USCF remove the rule 26e? Is my copy of the rule book only has this rule 26e?
Give it a try and let me know what happens. At first there will be some unintended results of the motion that passed and its enforcement; however, we will evaluate those results and adjust. So, go for it!
26e Satisfactory performance for three years as a club TD, …(page 248).
It looks to be very clear, three-years as a club director. The question becomes what is satisfactory performance? Is it just satisfactory performance just being a director for three-years?
During the 1990’s, there were some club directors that advanced. If the meaning has changed, should not the wording change also.
My interpretation of the motion passed by the Delegates in Phoenix is to change the Local TD requirements by removing the poorly defined ‘satisfactory performance’ clause.
Club TDs now have a way to remain at that level and the motion specifically indicates that TDs with the necessary requirements to take the Local TD exam are encouraged to do so.
That also puts the Local TD requirements on the same basis as Senior and ANTD: having the experience is now a prerequisite for taking the exam open-book but no TD is required to [try to] advance to a higher level just because he or she meets those prerequisites.
The motion also does not preclude TDCC from continuing to offer the Local exam closed-book to someone who does not meet the prerequisites for taking it open-book.
First let us look at ALL of rule 26, not just the one part of one sentence that you are using:
Did you notice the grammer here?; i.e., there is a connecting “, or” at the end of 26a., 26b., 26c., and 26d; however, there is a connecting “, but” (which you did not quote) at the end of 26e. That means that 26e. and 26f. go together. It means that if a Club TD had been certified for 3 years BUT had not met the requirements they could choose to take a closed book exam on site at a National event. Anyhow, that is what it means to all the authors, proofreaders, grammer specialist, delegates, and publishers that have read 26e. (26c. in the 4th edition) and 26f. (26d. in the 4th edition) together (“, but”!?).
If looking at it in logic, the disjunctive syllogism of the major premise. Since the premise has six units, (a, b, c, d, e, f) only one is true and the others are false. Having the word ‘but’ can make the meaning of the sentence into a fallacy. If only looking at rule 26e and rule 26f, it is a disjunctive syllogism. Example, either 26e is true and 26f is false or 26f is true and 26e is false. If you want to say it is a conditional syllogism, if 26e is true and 26f is also true, the wording of but can conditional syllogism and disjunctive syllogism. The problem is the long sentence, as it is a disjunctive syllogism with six major premises in the sentence; or, it could have a disjunctive syllogism with four major premises with a conditional syllogism.
It would be more clear, if rule 26e and rule 26f were in the same rule. The word but can leads to confusion. Example, (since I have seen a picture of you) Tim Just has a beard but he has glasses. As beard is true and glasses are true. The other example, John comes to work at 9 am but he does not show up till 10 am. Either 9 am is true or 10 am is false, or 9 am is false or 10 am is true.
Since the experience requirements are a categorical logic, as the director only needs to have rule 26a, 26b, 26c, 26d, 26e or 26f to be true. If it is true for one or more for the person, than the director can take the local test. It has been years since I have taken logic, its’ just feels as if there is a fallacy in the text. It is that simple word, ‘but’ that does not feel right.
The trouble is the rule is written in English and not mathematical symbols. It describes several ways to meet the experience requirements if you wish to take the open book test; but if you don’t meet those requirements, then you can ‘opt out’ and take the closed book test.
Do you really have trouble reading a rule like this? It actually is much easier to comprehend than the gibberish in front of your first period (which has no predicate)
Gosh, Doug, I must not be as smart as you because I understood the meaning of Rule 26, which happens to include the portion of 26e that you quoted out of context and out of its logical stream. In fact, if you’re going to note the logic of the sentence, why didn’t you show the whole rule instead of a part of it? That doesn’t make any logical sense!
I know a few folks who have been club directors for much longer than 3 years!