My first anniversary as ASWB’s CEO is an opportunity for deep reflection. While I am looking back on a year unprecedented in ASWB’s history — and the social work profession’s history — I  am also focused on the future of social work regulation.

We are, together, on a justice journey, leading opportunities to advance equity in professional regulation. We, as regulators, want to have fair and just paths to licensure—that is something that benefits everyone. This effort calls for us to trust one another, to rely on one another, to elicit the aid of our allies, and to think differently and innovatively about how we make progress.

The webinar offered a behind-the-scenes look at how the ASWB exams are developed and the steps ASWB takes to guard against bias and maintain reliability and validity. Harless shared information about ASWB’s initiatives to bring more voices into the creation of exams for the future of social work and to enhance the testing experience to reduce barriers.

The Association of Social Work Boards acknowledges and calls out systemic and institutional racism, specifically anti-Blackism, as being core to the racial disparities evidenced by the recently released licensing exam pass rate data. While other pass rate disparities exist, the most jarring and disappointing gap is in the rates reported for Black candidates. ASWB stands […]