LEAD 6113 Module 4 Ethical Policy Analysis Example

One Score, Three Tries, No Diploma: An Ethical Analysis of a Nursing Program's Exit Examination Benchmark for Graduation

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD6113: Ethical Leadership and Social Justice

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 2, 2026

Introduction

Module 3 found that the composite Georgia BSN program's two-failure rule removes first-generation, Black and heavily employed students at higher rates. A second policy deserves the same scrutiny. Since 2019 the program has required seniors to reach a set benchmark score on a commercial standardized exit examination before they may graduate. Students who fall short take a remediation course and retest, and those who miss the benchmark on a third attempt must complete an additional semester. This paper analyzes the policy's purpose, the validity of the way it uses the test, who bears its costs and how students experience it, then judges it through the four ethical paradigms used throughout this course.

The Policy's Purpose

Faculty adopted the policy in 2019, a year after only 79% of the program's graduates passed the licensure examination on their first try, short of what the state board expects. Its stated purpose is to identify students at risk of failing the licensure examination and to give them more preparation before they sit for it. The purpose is legitimate: graduates who fail the licensure examination lose income and confidence, and the program risks its approval. The ethical question is not whether the goal is worthy but whether this means of pursuing it is fair and sound.

Test-Use Validity

A test can be well built and still be used in ways its evidence does not support. Spurlock (2006) examined progression policies that rely on a single score from a predictive exit examination to decide whether students may graduate, questioned the test-use validity of such policies and argued that best practice in assessment requires a more comprehensive evaluation of students' abilities rather than reliance on one predictor for an important educational decision. The point applies directly. Our policy turns one test score into the decisive factor in graduation for any student who misses the benchmark three times, regardless of course grades, clinical evaluations or other evidence of readiness.

Program data sharpen the concern. Of the 31 students held for an extra semester under the policy over five years, 27 passed the licensure examination on their first attempt after the extra term, which shows they were capable of passing, but the program cannot know how many would have passed without the delay. Meanwhile, the policy's benchmark was set by the vendor, not validated against our own graduates' licensure results.

Who Bears the Costs

An extra semester costs a student about $4,800 in tuition and fees, delays a nurse's starting salary by roughly four months and often costs a job offer timed to graduation. Of the 31 students held back, 19 were first-generation students, the same group that Module 3 found dismissed at higher rates by the two-failure rule. Students also pay for remediation materials and, in some cases, private review courses. The policy's benefits, a protected pass rate, accrue to the program, while its costs fall almost entirely on individual students, and disproportionately on those with the least money to absorb them.

How Students Experience It

McClenny (2018) interviewed 18 graduating seniors in one program about completing multiple high-stakes tests for progression and grouped their experiences into five categories: tests as a value, as a stressor, as a high expectation, as a source of inconsistencies and as something affecting the transfer of learning. The study concluded that programs using such tests for progression must support students' preparation and build clear structures of teaching and learning around them. Our students' comments on course evaluations echo the stressor and inconsistency categories: several described studying for the exit examination instead of their final clinical course, and others noted that the benchmark changed when the vendor updated the test.

The Case Faculty Make for the Policy

Faculty who support the policy make two arguments worth taking seriously. The first is that the pass rate recovered after the policy began, from 79% to 91% within three years. That is true, but the same years brought a revised curriculum and a new testing coordinator, and the program never compared its results with similar programs that did not adopt a benchmark, so the policy's share of the improvement is unknown. The second argument is that students study harder when graduation depends on the test, which the higher average scores since 2019 seem to confirm. Yet higher scores on the exit examination show only that students prepared for that examination, not that the policy improved their nursing, and the seniors McClenny (2018) interviewed described exactly this shift of attention from learning to the test. Both arguments show the policy may have helped the program's numbers; neither shows it was the least costly or most accurate way to help them.

Through the Four Paradigms

Shapiro and Stefkovich (2021) offer the four lenses used in Module 1. The ethic of justice asks whether the policy is applied consistently and whether it respects students' rights; it is applied consistently, but its reliance on a single vendor benchmark not validated locally raises a question of due process for a decision this consequential. The ethic of critique asks who benefits and who is burdened; the analysis above shows benefits to the program and burdens on students, concentrated among first-generation students. The ethic of care asks what students need to succeed; the remediation course is a form of care, but a policy that withholds a diploma after strong coursework can feel to students like the opposite. The ethic of the profession asks what serves the public and the student's best interest; protecting the public requires competent graduates, but there is no evidence that the extra semester makes these graduates safer, only that it delays them.

Alternatives

Three alternatives would keep the policy's legitimate purpose while reducing its ethical costs. First, use the exit examination as one indicator among several in a readiness review, alongside course grades and clinical evaluations, consistent with the comprehensive evaluation Spurlock (2006) recommended. Second, move the examination earlier, to the start of the final semester, so that it guides remediation while there is still time rather than serving as a gate at the end. Third, validate any benchmark against the program's own graduates' licensure results before using it for high-stakes decisions.

Judgment

The exit examination policy pursues a legitimate goal by a means that its own evidence does not support, at a cost that falls on students rather than the institution and disproportionately on students with the fewest resources. On balance it is ethically weak as written. I will recommend to the faculty that the benchmark be replaced with a multi-indicator readiness review and that the examination move earlier in the final semester, and I will ask the institutional research office to compare licensure outcomes for students who met and missed the benchmark, so the faculty decide with local evidence rather than vendor claims.

Conclusion

Policy analysis asks a leader to separate a policy's goal from its mechanism and to follow its costs to the people who bear them. Done here, it shows a policy that is well intended and poorly grounded. Module 5 will gather this analysis, the equity findings and the earlier cases into an ethical leadership platform for the program.

References

McClenny, T. L. (2018). Student experiences of high-stakes testing for progression in one undergraduate nursing program. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 15(1), Article 20170001. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijnes-2017-0001

Shapiro, J. P., & Stefkovich, J. A. (2021). Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas (5th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003022862

Spurlock, D., Jr. (2006). Do no harm: Progression policies and high-stakes testing in nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(8), 297-302. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20060801-04