OSA Newsline - June 25, 2001 The item analysis has now been completed and is already out in the mail. Members should receive it early this week. If you really can't wait, extra copies will be available at the Union office until 6:00 pm Monday through Wednesday. The analysis will be up on this website as the 2001 ASA Exam edition of News From OSA. Click on the News From OSA Icon to the left. The evidence is very clear that the ASA exam was, again, a tough exam. There were 18 questions that had answers chosen by better than nine out of ten candidates but there were also 19 questions where no one answer was chosen by a majoirty of the test takers. For those 19 questions, therefore, more than half the candidates picked a wrong answer. The scores will not be high from this exam. OSA will be asking DCAS to add points in order to pass enough candidates to fill the available positions. OSA Newsline - June 18, 2001 The full item analysis of the recent ASA exam will not be completed until later this week, but the results of the first 100 papers sent in are clear on a few questions. Ninety or more of these 100 candidates chose the following answers for the Saturday exam: A (as in Apple) was chosen for questions 42, 45 and 89 B (as in Boy) was chosen for questions 6, 24, 25, 41 and 51 C (as in Charlie) was the top pick for questions 47, 49, 67 and 73 D (as in Dog) was favored for questions 5, 14, 23 and 48 The full analysis will be going out in the mail this week. Credit to George Morgan for careful tabulation. OSA Newsline - June 11, 2001 The big news this week is the exam. The 2001 exam for promotion to Associate Staff Analyst took place last Friday and Saturday. The weather was good and the administration of the exam was better than average. Members exiting the exam were often exhausted. They had just spent up to five hours totally focused on over fifty pages of text. The resource booklet was apparently matched in size by the question booklet. One single question took up a full page. The weather was on our side both days and this year there was no football game scheduled at Canarsie. There were delays. Manhattan started about 45 minutes late, but there were few major complaints. Those of our members who took the last exam said that this time was far less unpleasant than the last one. Good luck to all those tested. Don't forget to come to the membership meeting this Thursday, June 14th at 6pm at the OSA office, 220 East 23rd Street Suite 709. OSA Newsline - June 4, 2001 A mailing is due out this week and will be posted on the News From OSA page of this site shortly. It was actually delayed by over two weeks awaiting news on the PICA drug card - but that card is now approved, a vendor selected, and the process is going forward. Most members will be interested in the part about contract negotiations , although there is no news in the letter which has not already been on this newsline page. By the way, the equipment we use for the phone hotline version of the newsline is dying. We have been using Radio Shack answering machines for over a dozen years now and the last of the machines are slowly expiring. Anyone who has knowledge of variable length one to three minute outgoing message phone machines on the market, call Rob Spencer or George Morgan at the union office. If we can't find a half dozen appropriate off the shelf items we will have to go more professional. Professional is nice, but it costs more.