---
title: "Social work"
chunk: 9/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_work"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:58:45.966175+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== North America ===
In the United States, social work undergraduate and master's programs are accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. A CSWE-accredited degree is required for one to become a state-licensed social worker. The CSWE even accredits online master's in social work programs in traditional and advanced standing options. In 1898, the New York Charity Organization Society, which was the Columbia University School of Social Work's earliest entity, began offering formal "social philanthropy" courses, marking both the beginning date for social work education in the United States, as well as the launching of professional social work. However, a CSWE-accredited program doesn't necessarily have to meet ASWB licensing knowledge requirements, and many of them do not meet them.
The Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) is a regulatory organization that provides licensing examination services to social work regulatory boards in the United States and Canada. Due to the limited scope of the organization's objectives, it is not a social work organization that is accountable to the broader social work community or to the ones certified by ASWB exams. ASWB generates an annual profit of $6,000,000 from license examination administration and $800,000 from publishing study materials. As such, it is an organization that is focused on revenue maximization, and by principle, it is only responsible and answerable to its board members. The objective of a social work license is to ensure the public's safety and quality of service. It is intended to ensure that social workers understand and can follow NASW's Code of Ethics in their occupational practices, ascertain social workers' knowledge in service provision, and protect the use of the Social Work title from misuse and unethical practices. However, a study found out that having a social work license is not related to improved service quality for consumers. They substituted paraprofessionals with qualified licensed social workers and found out that there was no improvement in overall facility quality, quality of life, or the provision of social services. The paraprofessionals with training were able to perform similarly to licensed social workers, just like any trained human resource in a workforce would perform a job for which they are trained. Social work graduates gain this knowledge and training through academic and financial investment in earning an accredited social work degree, degree equalization process, and from receiving professional supervision during and post-graduation.
For decades, the social work community has called on ASWB for transparency regarding the data on the validity and racial sensitivity of the exams. However, ASWB suppressed this information, leading many critics to assess that if the exams were free from flaws and bias, such data would have been released a long time ago. In 2022, ASWB released the pass rate data, and a Change.org petition called "#StopASWB" highlighted with academic citations that the Association of Social Work Boards' exams are biased with feedback from white social workers. The petition also pointed out that the exams unfairly penalize social workers who practice in other languages, require privileged resources for success, and utilize oppressive standards in formatting the exams, which are inconsistent with social work values. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) expressed opposition to the social work licensing exams conducted by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB). This came after analyzing ASWB data, which revealed considerable discrepancies in pass rates for aspiring social workers of diverse racial backgrounds, older individuals, and those who speak English as a second language (ESL). Pass rates of exams indicate that white test takers are more than twice as likely to pass on their first attempt compared to BIPOC test takers indicating high construct irrelevant variance among other issues. This finding raises questions about the reliability and credibility of social work licensure process through ASWB exams.
NASW's firm stance on the matter serves as a significant reckoning moment regarding the systemic racism in the social work profession, particularly within its regulatory system. It also highlights ASWB's silence about the licensure apparatus that perpetuates racial disparities, leading its association members to institutional betrayal. After the release of ASWB data showing race and age-related discrepancies in pass rates, the national accreditation body, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), removed the ASWB licensure exam pass rates as an option for social work education programs to meet accreditation requirements. Members from various communities in social work have expressed that discussions about addressing this systemic oppression should be guided by a formal acknowledgment of wrongdoing and a spirit of reconciliation and healing. The state of Illinois passed a landmark bill, HB2365 SA1, marking a significant step in reducing its regulatory body's dependency on ASWB. With this bill, Illinois has addressed the uneven power that ASWB held and its unfettered pursuit of profit, which affected the qualification of educated social workers for practice entry. Now, educated social workers can obtain licensing by completing 3000 hours of professional supervision, eliminating the previous requirement of ASWB exam results for licensure, which often led to issues of unemployment and related emotional, behavioral, and physical health consequences.
Since the early 1990s, researchers have critiqued ASWB exams for their lack of content and criterion validity that undermines the test validity all together. In a study conducted in 2023, it was discovered that there are questions in ASWB exams that have rationales based on theories that are not evidence-based, and that have significant item validity issues. The researchers used generative AI application, ChatGPT to test ASWB rationales and found that the rationales provided by ChatGPT were of higher quality. They revealed that ChatGPT exhibited an excellent ability to recognize social work-related text patterns for scenario-based decision-making and offered high-quality rationales while taking into account the safety and ethics in social work practice, even without specific training for such a task. They suggested that it may be necessary and timely to move away from oppressive assessment formats used to evaluate social workers' competence and reconsider licensing exams with serious validity issues that disproportionately exclude individuals based on their race, age, and language. A proposed assessment format is one based on mastery learning, which would lead to competency-based licensing.
Due to the accumulated evidence of significant validity flaws in ASWB's tests, its conflict of interest, and other issues, many researchers have urged state legislators and regulators to discontinue the use of ASWB exams for licensure or temporarily suspend them until a novel, anti-oppressive, and validated alternative is established. In the interim, they suggest relying on traditional supervision methods to ensure the safe and ethical practice of social work. They elucidate that supervision not only guides licensure seekers but also allows well-equipped supervisors to assess individuals' capabilities to practice safely and ethically more accurately in contexts, which is a more valid approach to assessing such competence.