Is College Court-Reporting Program Up To Speed?

For 20 years, court-reporting officials at Edmonds Community College swore by a liberal-arts emphasis in offering degrees.

But today, potential scribes are questioning whether the school is keeping up with the pace of justice and technology.

A newly required state certification examination, complaints by former students and technological advances in the field have put Edmonds on the defensive, prompting officials to redefine the program in light of an increasing demand for speed and accuracy.

``We see there's a need to refocus,'' said Bill McMeekin, the school's dean of instructional services.

Concerns began to surface last spring about the Edmonds program, one of four in the region.

The concerns arose as, nationally, recently passed legislation heightening the use of closed captioning for the hearing-impaired will mean a demand for highly skilled free-lance reporters. And the last five years have seen the introduction of computer-aided transcription, a process in which the coded letter combinations used by court reporters are translated almost immediately for the judge and attorneys.

At Edmonds, the students who have criticized the curriculum are a fraction of the program's 55 students. Most of them have since dropped or transferred, saying they believe the program was not adequately preparing them to pass the state exam required for certification. The exam requires aspiring reporters to take dictation

at speeds as fast as 200 words per minute with a 95 percent accuracy margin.

The students complained of little or no testing and materials of poor quality. Regular testing is viewed by other programs as an essential measure of progress. Some test as much as three times a week.

``I have never been tested and this is my fifth week,'' Duanette Collins, a second-year student, said before quitting Edmonds' program in mid-October. ``A lot of the students have been going to school for a year and a half and are only up to 50 or 80 words per minute.''

Marion Honsberger, who heads Edmonds' program and is its only full-time instructor, said some students - such as displaced homemakers with children - can't commit the time it takes to reach a higher dictation speed. And although court-reporting programs typically are structured as two-year degrees, those in the field agree that it is the exceptional student who accomplishes the feat.

Honsberger said she tests ``high-speed people'' as often as twice a day and other students sometimes once a week. Most of the complaining students left the program after their first year, during which Honsberger does not require testing.

The program is not accredited by the National Shorthand Reporters Association, a costly credential process which Edmonds has viewed as too expensive to justify.

Green River Community College in Auburn, L.H. Bates Vocational Technical Institute in Tacoma and the private Court Reporting Institute in Seattle also offer degrees in court reporting.

Most students at Edmonds believe they're getting a well-rounded program, said second-year student Victoria Bosche. She said she has not yet been tested but maintained the program offers other ways of measuring progress that weren't acceptable to those who complained.

``Our program happens to be a little different, and the rest of the people like it the way it is,'' she said. ``You just can't satisfy everyone all the time.''

Edmonds responded to complaints last spring by purchasing new audio materials though the program's budget did not allow for it, Honsberger said. And more changes will inevitably occur as speed and accuracy become an increasing concern for students, program officials said.

``We'll do a more careful job of documenting,'' Honsberger said.

But rather than pour more money into the program - currently budgeted at $61,000 annually - the division will begin by combining already existing courses into a new program sequence for students interested in alternative careers in medical or general data entry, according to Peggy Stephenson, Edmonds' business division director.

Although a state court-reporting exam has been conducted every six months for some time, it wasn't until April that results were used to award certification. Before that, passing scores were required only for courtroom reporters and not for free-lancers.

Because of that, neither Gary Hamilton, a former student of Honsberger's who has administered the test as a member of the statutory examination committee, nor Edmonds itself has kept track of which of the school's students took or passed the exam. The last such test was given Oct. 27.

Both Stephenson and Honsberger say, however, that a better indicator of the program's success is job placement. ``It isn't a matter of, just pass that little test and you're a court reporter,'' Honsberger said. ``There's a lot more to it than that.''

The last available data on job placement compiled by Edmonds show that of 39 students who began the program in 1986, four obtained either a degree or a certificate in 1988. But administrators noted students often leave if they reach a fast enough transcription speed to become employable.

A telephone survey of the 25 students who had compiled 25 credits or more found that 79 percent of the 17 responding got jobs, with 55 percent of those getting jobs related to the court-reporting field.

``The industry will absolutely shoot itself in the foot if it goes for speed only,'' Honsberger said.

``Students say, `Just make me write faster.' Well . . . you can't do that. Unless you know legal terminology and where the deposition fits and so on, you can't do the job,'' said Karen Larsen, a past president of the Washington Shorthand Reporters Association.