At 17:30 04 February 2005, wrote:


The idea that the FAA sets minimum standards, and of
course all
instructors will train to higher standards, sounds
great in theory.
However in the real world, a large portion of the instructors
teach
only what will actually be tested on the practical
test. By debriefing
their students after flight tests, they have learned
exactly what a
particular examiner will expect. This then allows
them to train their
students
for a flight test with that specific examiner, rather
than bothering to
train for a thorough test in accordance with the PTS.

A bit chopped out

................. Unfortunately for this pilot, his
training was
done at an operaton known for shopping around for easy
examiners.

M Eiler



This notion of teaching to the test has come up in
political discussions about education. Even our current
US president was drawn into this about 4 years ago
and suggested that 'teaching to the test -- is teaching.'

Consider that the classroom teacher would teach multiplication
by teaching only those examples on the statewide test
for proficiency. No student would learn the entire
table -- just a few of the 5's and 10's and two or
three of the 6's and 7's -- maybe none of the 8's and
none of the 4's.