1) What is the history of the Tennessee operator certification process? 2) What s the status of operator certification tests in TN at present?

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1 1) What is the history of the Tennessee operator certification process? a) The Water Environmental Health Act was enacted in 1971 and with it came the mandate to examine applicants for certification. An exam to determine competency was developed by the Tennessee Operator Certification Program (which will be referred to as The Program ). The Program includes the Operator Certification Board and the TDEC staff assigned responsibility to work with the Board, housed at the Fleming Training Center. The Tennessee Operator Certification Exam (the TN exam) evolved through the years. In 1995 the TN exam was redeveloped: i) Based on input from stakeholders. ii) In a format based on Need-To-Know criteria, created by Subject Matter Experts and categorized into topics by Subject Areas and Understanding Categories. iii) With questions written and referenced by volunteer support from industry related groups such as American Water Works Association, TN Association of Utility Districts, TN Water and Wastewater Association, TN Water Quality Management Association and Water Environment Federation. b) After 1995 the TN exam was updated through the years using a similar process until In 2011, the Program abandoned the long-standing TN exam updating process and began to use the services of the Association of Boards of Certification (ABC) to assist with the Operator Certification Exam. The process selected was not to use the full ABC exam, but rather a customized exam to utilize questions from ABC in conjunction with math and regulation questions from the former TN exam. Recently, the TN math questions have been replaced by ABC math questions and that process continues today. 2) What s the status of operator certification tests in TN at present? a) As mentioned previously, the current exams utilize questions from ABC in conjunction with regulation questions from the former TN exam. b) What are the current pass rates and how do they compare with previous years? i) The following tables show the highest level of each classification and show the pass rate for each year beginning 2009.

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3 c) What has been the result of these lower pass rates? i) A reduced number of available operators. It has been known for many years that the number of operators available for the water and wastewater industry has been declining. Producing fewer operators each year further increases this deficiency. This is particularly difficult for smaller systems since they become a training ground for operators until they become experienced and larger systems hire them away. ii) Firing of personnel who have been unsuccessful in passing the exam. Some systems have a policy that forces dismissal of exam candidates that are unable to pass an exam within a specific number of efforts. 3) What s proposed for the future? c) ABC has developed a new standardized exam and is encouraging its participants, including Tennessee, to utilize it. Paul Bishop, President and Chief Executive Office of ABC, wrote the following letter and distributed it interested persons, including employees of the State of Tennessee and shared some of the contents of this letter when he spoke at the July 20, 2017 Operator Certification Board Meeting.

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6 d) In the weeks prior to the Board meeting, TAUD and other interested organizations and individuals were given the opportunity to submit questions for Mr. Bishop to address during his visit with the Board. The following sets of questions/comments were submitted by TAUD. The first two pages were sent only to the individual Board members for consideration and the last two pages were provided to ABC and Board members.

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10 e) After Mr. Bishop spoke the Board opened the meeting to questions from the attendees and for discussion. Some Board members appeared ready to accept the new ABC standardized exam for the next exam cycle while others appeared to have reservations. A motion was made to continue to use the existing exam through November of 2017 and the motion carried. A motion was made to use the new standardized exam in May of 2018 and that motion did not receive a second, so it failed. So, as we stand now, the existing exam will be used in November of 2017 and continue to be used until further decisions are made by the Board. f) What options are available for the future of the operator exam process? i) Contracting with ABC and offering the standardized ABC exam (1) Depending on the level of involvement that ABC has with the exam process, contracting with ABC to offer the standardized exam will likely increase the cost of the exam which will be passed along to the applicant or the system.

11 (2) Will create a greater mismatch between the difficulty of the question and the minimum operator qualifications. (See section 3, c, 3 of this document) That will likely result in an additional drop in pass rates. (3) Will result in 100 questions on an exam instead of up to 150 on Grade 4 exams. (4) Will diminish the control of the exam by the Board and increase control by ABC ii) The TN Operator Certification Program could re-create their own exam (1) In 1995 the Program did exactly this but they did not do it alone. They enlisted the help of industry partners listed in Section 1, a, iii of this document. It would be a challenge but worthy goal to accomplish this again. That process would create an exam that would be developed by TN operators for testing of TN operators. It would be developed, controlled, administered, graded and certificates issued by the Board and its staff. Questions would be developed under Board guidance and any modifications could be made at the discretion of the Board in a simple process. (2) After development of the exam process, it must be maintained. Again the same parties involved in recreating the exam would be called on to maintain the exams. iii) Maintain the status quo (1) The current exam process is not the use of the full ABC exam, but rather a customized exam to utilize questions from ABC in conjunction with Regulation questions from the former TN exam. This process can continue but recall how pass rate has been reduced on most of the higher level classifications 4) How can you impact the future direction of this process? a) Contact the decision makers for these processes. i) Operator Certification Board Members Name Phone Alan Cranford, Chairman acranford@murfreesborotn.gov (615) Darryl Green, Vice Chairman jaxman50@yahoo.com (731) Gregg Morgan gregg.morgan@nekud.com (865) Jenny Dodd jennifer.dodd@tn.gov (615) Dr. Larry Moore lwmoore@memphis.edu (901) ii) TN Department of Environment and Conservation Staff (1) Patrick Dwyer, Director of the Fleming Training Center, Patrick.Dwyer@tn.gov (2) Chuck Head, Senior Advisor, Bureau of Environment, Chuck.Head@tn.gov 5) If you have questions, please contact Brent Ogles at BrentOgles@taud.org or phone at