| Date of Action |
Assembly Actions -
Lowercase Senate Actions - UPPERCASE |
|---|---|
| Jan 03, 2024 |
referred to higher education |
| Mar 24, 2023 |
referred to higher education |
Senate Bill S5975
2023-2024 Legislative Session
Sponsored By
(D, WF) 55th Senate District
Archive: Last Bill Status - In Senate Committee Higher Education Committee
Actions
co-Sponsors
(D) 14th Senate District
(D) 34th Senate District
(D, WF) 31st Senate District
(D) 16th Senate District
2023-S5975 (ACTIVE) - Details
- See Assembly Version of this Bill:
- A5291
- Current Committee:
- Senate Higher Education
- Law Section:
- Education Law
- Laws Affected:
- Rpld §7704 sub 1 ¶(d), Ed L
- Versions Introduced in 2025-2026 Legislative Session:
-
S988, A701
2023-S5975 (ACTIVE) - Sponsor Memo
BILL NUMBER: S5975
SPONSOR: BROUK
TITLE OF BILL:
An act to repeal paragraph (d) of subdivision 1 of section 7704 of the
education law requiring applicants to pass an examination in order to
qualify as a licensed master social worker
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
Repeals the requirement that applicants must pass an examination in
order to qualify as a licensed master social worker
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section one of this bill repeals paragraph (d) of subdivision 1 of
section 7704 of the education law requiring applicants to pass an exam-
ination in order to qualify as a licensed master social worker.
Section two sets the effective date.
2023-S5975 (ACTIVE) - Bill Text download pdf
S T A T E O F N E W Y O R K
________________________________________________________________________
5975
2023-2024 Regular Sessions
I N S E N A T E
March 24, 2023
___________
Introduced by Sen. BROUK -- read twice and ordered printed, and when
printed to be committed to the Committee on Higher Education
AN ACT to repeal paragraph (d) of subdivision 1 of section 7704 of the
education law requiring applicants to pass an examination in order to
qualify as a licensed master social worker
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEM-
BLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
Section 1. Paragraph (d) of subdivision 1 of section 7704 of the
education law is REPEALED.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in ITALICS (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD09236-01-3
Comments
Open Legislation is a forum for New York State legislation. All comments are subject to review and community moderation is encouraged.
Comments deemed off-topic, commercial, campaign-related, self-promotional; or that contain profanity, hate or toxic speech; or that link to sites outside of the nysenate.gov domain are not permitted, and will not be published. Attempts to intimidate and silence contributors or deliberately deceive the public, including excessive or extraneous posting/posts, or coordinated activity, are prohibited and may result in the temporary or permanent banning of the user. Comment moderation is generally performed Monday through Friday. By contributing or voting you agree to the Terms of Participation and verify you are over 13.
Create an account. An account allows you to sign petitions with a single click, officially support or oppose key legislation, and follow issues, committees, and bills that matter to you. When you create an account, you agree to this platform's terms of participation.
Repeal this bill. The license exa, is not the same as a standardized test like the SAT, GRE, MCAT. The exam assesses the very specific knowledge of a person to provide a wide variety of services to individuals, families, patients, schools, hospitals, many types of facilities. Grad schools do not test for the same things. Grad schools term papers do not assess one’s knowledge. Term papers asses one ability to research a topic and write a report. A term paper does not diagnose. It does not
Assess for suicide. It does not provide crisis response intervention. It does not provide empathy. It does not reframe anger and build solutions,. Removing the exam removes the authenticity of the license. Social workers FOUGHT decades to have the exam and licensing because we are routinely marginalized, devalued by other professions. We are told we aren’t qualified . We are minimized, rejected, insulted, The exam legitimizes the license, remove the exam and you will set the social work profession back decades.
I am sorry to say this but you have no idea what you are talking about. An LMSW is practically a provisional license when compared to an LCSW because of the limitations in practice. An exam to attain an LMSW is a joke as it is just asking you to recall what you had learned from the graduate program you had just graduated. A program that is already accredited by multiple social work bodies. A multiple-choice exam proves nothing in the way of suicide assessment, crisis response, or any of the other skills that you stated.
Maybe you were confused as to what this bill was implying. It will not affect the process of getting clinical licensure which still requires supervised hours under a licensed clinician and your beloved exams.
The LMSW exam provides nothing but barriers and should be abolished.
The LMSW lets you do both the micro and macro duties of a social worker but only under supervision. LCSW allows you to do so unsupervised.
The proposal doesn’t really doesn’t say HOW it is biased. All it is saying is that minorities are passing it at a lower rate, which is not good for the communities they are trying to serve. However, who is to say that minorities aren’t passing due to the school system’s failure to adequately prepare people of color setting out into the world of higher education. As we know, schools in the United States are still severely segregated by socioeconomic status. Or even the universities that we are happily shelling out thousands of dollars to. Hey if the exam is biased as a Latino I’d like to know how. So far no one has been able to give me a clear answer. However, I still think what I said deserves consideration. Is the broken school system to blame? And if it turns out to be so, how are they going to solve it.