California Court Reporters Board Strips School Names from CSR Results — A Troubling Move for the Industry

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The California Court Reporters Board (CRB) has quietly enacted a policy change with major implications for the court reporting industry and education community: it has removed the names of schools from official pass lists of the California Certified Shorthand Reporter (CSR) exam.

This administrative decision may seem minor on the surface, but it has sparked significant concern among the few remaining court reporting schools in the state—many of whom are already struggling under regulatory burdens. The omission of school names from CSR reports severs a critical connection between student outcomes and the institutions that trained them, undermining transparency, accountability, and the future of court reporting education in California.

A Move Without Warning

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the CRB’s decision is that it came without any advance notice or communication to the schools affected. Programs that have worked for years to prepare students for the CSR exam were not informed of the change, nor given an opportunity to provide feedback. The decision was simply implemented, leaving educators to discover the shift on their own.

Historically, these pass lists served multiple purposes. Not only did they confirm who passed the rigorous licensing exam, they also publicly recognized the institutions that trained those candidates. This transparency has long been a benchmark of credibility and performance for schools. Now, that institutional recognition has been erased.

Why the School Name Matters

For schools, public identification in CSR pass lists is more than just a matter of pride—it’s a vital part of their operations. School-specific pass rates are essential for:

  • Marketing and student recruitment: Prospective students use this information to evaluate which schools have successful track records.
  • Program credibility and reputation: Employers and court systems often look at graduate outcomes to assess the quality of training programs.
  • Accreditation efforts: Accrediting agencies and state education regulators use outcome data—including licensure pass rates—to determine program effectiveness and viability.

One court-reporting school in California even used its track record of student performance on the CSR exam to achieve full accreditation. That would be virtually impossible under the new CRB policy, which anonymizes data and leaves schools without public proof of success.

The Disappearance of Court Reporting Schools in California

The change in reporting comes at a particularly precarious time for the court reporting industry. While the overall number of vocational and trade schools in California has remained relatively stable or even grown in some sectors, the number of court reporting programs has sharply declined over the last two decades.

At one time, California was home to more than a dozen court reporting schools. Today, there are only 7 or 8 still operating in the state. That contraction is not due to a lack of student interest or industry demand—the need for court reporters remains high, and many positions go unfilled. Instead, schools have closed or relocated because of increasingly hostile business conditions created by the state’s regulatory environment.

A Difficult Place to Operate

Court reporting programs—most of which are private vocational institutions—have faced repeated audits, high compliance costs, and the unpredictable demands of the California Department of Education. Accreditors have pulled out of the state entirely in some cases, unable to navigate the regulatory red tape. Without accreditation, many schools lose eligibility for financial aid programs, insurance recognition, and other support systems, forcing them to shut down.

Unlike traditional public or nonprofit educational institutions, private court-reporting programs operate on tight budgets and depend heavily on transparency to remain competitive. Public performance data, like CSR exam outcomes, helps them validate their existence in a niche but vital field. Removing that information from public view could deliver the final blow to some of the state’s last-standing programs.

A Self-Defeating Policy

The timing of this change couldn’t be worse. California—and the country more broadly—is in the midst of a court reporter shortage. Retirements are outpacing new entries to the field, and the pipeline of qualified graduates is drying up. According to industry associations, the demand for court reporters is not expected to slow down any time soon, especially in civil and criminal courts where live stenographers remain essential.

In this context, the CRB’s policy of withholding school data is not just bureaucratically shortsighted—it’s potentially damaging to the long-term viability of the profession. With fewer schools and fewer students, the industry needs every possible incentive to attract new talent. Highlighting where students succeed could help encourage future enrollment. Instead, the state is opting to obscure that information, making it harder to promote and defend these critical educational programs.

A Lack of Transparency Hurts Everyone

Transparency in education helps all stakeholders: students can make better-informed decisions, schools can market their success, employers can trust the competency of graduates, and state agencies can monitor the effectiveness of licensing pipelines.

Without this visibility, it becomes harder to assess whether educational programs are effective. It also reduces accountability for both the schools and the board itself. If pass rates dip, no one can trace whether it’s due to declining instruction quality or increased difficulty in the exam. If rates improve, schools can’t showcase their success to new students or accreditors.

It’s also worth noting that the CRB, as a state agency, has an obligation to support and sustain the court reporting pipeline—not stifle it through administrative opacity.

The Way Forward

If California is serious about addressing the court reporter shortage and maintaining a robust pipeline of well-trained professionals, it must reverse this policy. The CRB should:

  • Reinstate school names in CSR result reports, at least on a quarterly or annual summary basis.
  • Engage with court reporting programs before implementing policy changes that affect them.
  • Support transparency by providing historical data so schools and the public can monitor progress over time.

Moreover, broader state leadership—especially within the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Legislature—should investigate how regulatory decisions are influencing school closures in high-need fields like court reporting.

The removal of school names from CSR exam results may have seemed like an administrative formality to the CRB, but it has real consequences for the few remaining court-reporting programs in California. At a time when the industry is fighting to survive and rebuild, this decision undercuts the very institutions working to train the next generation of professionals.

If not reversed, this policy risks accelerating the decline of court-reporting education in California—at the exact moment the profession needs it most. Transparency and partnership, not secrecy and silence, are what the industry deserves.

Disclaimer

The content of this post is intended for informational and discussion purposes only. All opinions expressed herein are those of the author and are based on publicly available information, industry standards, and good-faith concerns about nonprofit governance and professional ethics. No part of this article is intended to defame, accuse, or misrepresent any individual or organization. Readers are encouraged to verify facts independently and to engage constructively in dialogue about leadership, transparency, and accountability in the court reporting profession.

  • The content on this blog represents the personal opinions, observations, and commentary of the author. It is intended for editorial and journalistic purposes and is protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
  • Nothing here constitutes legal advice. Readers are encouraged to review the facts and form independent conclusions.

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Published by stenoimperium

We exist to facilitate the fortifying of the Stenography profession and ensure its survival for the next hundred years! As court reporters, we've handed the relationship role with our customers, or attorneys, over to the agencies and their sales reps.  This has done a lot of damage to our industry.  It has taken away our ability to have those relationships, the ability to be humanized and valued.  We've become a replaceable commodity. Merely saying we are the “Gold Standard” tells them that we’re the best, but there are alternatives.  Who we are though, is much, much more powerful than that!  We are the Responsible Charge.  “Responsible Charge” means responsibility for the direction, control, supervision, and possession of stenographic & transcription work, as the case may be, to assure that the work product has been critically examined and evaluated for compliance with appropriate professional standards by a licensee in the profession, and by sealing and signing the documents, the professional stenographer accepts responsibility for the stenographic or transcription work, respectively, represented by the documents and that applicable stenographic and professional standards have been met.  This designation exists in other professions, such as engineering, land surveying, public water works, landscape architects, land surveyors, fire preventionists, geologists, architects, and more.  In the case of professional engineers, the engineering association adopted a Responsible Charge position statement that says, “A professional engineer is only considered to be in responsible charge of an engineering work if the professional engineer makes independent professional decisions regarding the engineering work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional engineer’s physical presence at the location where the engineering work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the engineering work.” If we were to adopt a Responsible Charge position statement for our industry, we could start with a draft that looks something like this: "A professional court reporter, or stenographer, is only considered to be in responsible charge of court reporting work if the professional court reporter makes independent professional decisions regarding the court reporting work without requiring instruction or approval from another authority and maintains control over those decisions by the professional court reporter’s physical presence at the location where the court reporting work is performed or by electronic communication with the individual executing the court reporting work.” Shared purpose The cornerstone of a strategic narrative is a shared purpose. This shared purpose is the outcome that you and your customer are working toward together. It’s more than a value proposition of what you deliver to them. Or a mission of what you do for the world. It’s the journey that you are on with them. By having a shared purpose, the relationship shifts from consumer to co-creator. In court reporting, our mission is “to bring justice to every litigant in the U.S.”  That purpose is shared by all involved in the litigation process – judges, attorneys, everyone.  Who we are is the Responsible Charge.  How we do that is by Protecting the Record.

4 thoughts on “California Court Reporters Board Strips School Names from CSR Results — A Troubling Move for the Industry”

  2. Absolutely! Lack of disclosure generates suspicion. If there are shady directives taking place, beware, the truth always comes to the surface. This definitely needs reversed with true data disclosed in the name of Education.

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  3. Pingback: A Dangerous Shift in California – Why Changes to CSR Exam Requirements Could Gut the Stenographic Pipeline – STENOIMPERIUM

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