U.S. Customs and Border Protection said recently that it plans to implement seven new recommendations on modernizing the development and administration of the Customs Broker License Exam (CBLE).
The US CBLE consists of 80 multiple-choice questions and a score of 75 percent is required to pass. Exam topics typically include entry, classification, trade agreements, valuation, broker compliance, power of attorney, marking, drawback, bonds, foreign-trade zones, warehouse entries, intellectual property rights, fines, penalties, and forfeitures, and other subjects pertinent to a broker’s duties.
According to information from CBP’s Customs Commercial Operations Advisory Committee, 1,132 individuals registered to take the May 1, 2024, CBLE, including 953 who took the exam at on-site test centers and 179 who took it remotely. The pass rate for this exam was 13 percent.
Due to a number of concerns about the CBLE, in November 2023 CBP kicked off consultation focus sessions with COAC’s Broker Modernization Working Group on how to provide consistent and reliable exam content across administrations and ensure an efficient exam process from creation through delivery. That working group met four times in recent months to continue those discussions, with particular focus on exam frequency, structure, administration, and content. Those sessions resulted in the following recommendations for CBP action, which COAC formally adopted at its June 2024 meeting and which CBP said it will work to implement.
- utilize industry experts, including industrial-organizational psychologists and trade industry specialists, to provide input for the development of CBLE questions
- provide a statistically valid and reliable exam that maintains a consistent level of difficulty across administrations and accurately assesses the requisite knowledge necessary for individuals to become licensed customs brokers
- offer and administer the CBLE more frequently, at a minimum every quarter
- investigate the practicality of providing flexible on-demand scheduling and test taking
- provide a modern and functional exam platform for all CBLE candidates (remote and in-person) that allows the test-taking experience to be consistently reliable and absent from technological failures
- reduce reliance on paper-based reference materials and instead transition incrementally to fully functional electronic references for both remote and in-person exams
- eliminate the need for the current appeals process by improving the quality of the exam before administration.
This is an excerpt from the Sandler, Travis and Rosenberg P.A. article.