"The Silence Is Broken": CFC Delivers Strong Rebuke to CCE Over NBCE Part IV Centralization
Jul 28, 2025
A post by McCoy Press
Chiropractic Freedom Coalition
We share these posts to help spread awareness!
A Voice of Reason at the Table-Finally
At the Council on Chiropractic Education’s (CCE) July 11, 2025 meeting in Minneapolis, a long-overdue voice entered the room. Dr. Mike Guinosso, representing the Chiropractic Freedom Coalition (CFC), delivered oral testimony that echoed the formal statement the Coalition had submitted weeks earlier.
CLICK HERE to review the written testimony
The message? Crystal clear: the centralization of NBCE Part IV is a legal, financial, and ethical disaster, and CCE’s complicity through Policy 56 cannot go unchecked.
“We are concerned about the ongoing and unaddressed implications of the NBCE’s decision to centralize administration of the Part IV examination exclusively at its Greeley, Colorado headquarters.” —CFC Written Statement to the CCE
The Core Argument: Accreditation Tied to Monopoly Testing
CFC’s testimony laid bare the core contradiction at the heart of the profession’s licensure and accreditation pipeline: NBCE Part IV is wholly unnecessary, and yet it is functionally mandatory—not just for licensure, but for institutional accreditation. That’s because CCE Policy 56 requires programs to report NBCE exam pass rates as their key performance outcome.
Yes, the policy claims schools can submit licensure data instead. But CFC reminded the Council what everyone already knows:
“Reliable, timely licensure data is not made publicly available by most state boards, rendering the exam data requirement de facto mandatory.”
In other words: Policy 56 creates a false choice that reinforces NBCE’s monopoly and blocks innovation in how clinical competency is assessed.
Procedural Breakdown at the State Level
CFC also highlighted a stunning gap in regulatory process: state boards never approved the centralized Part IV format.
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No public comment.
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No hearings.
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No formal rulemaking.
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No Attorney General reviews.
Yet students are being forced to comply with a testing regime that no state officially codified. This makes every licensing board—and CCE, by extension—vulnerable to legal challenge for enforcing a requirement they never lawfully adopted.
“The centralized format is being enforced without the procedural safeguards and oversight required by law.”
A Profession in Crisis—And in Denial
The testimony also placed the CCE in the hot seat: by continuing to accept NBCE Part IV pass rates as its primary accreditation metric, the Council may be violating its own obligations under U.S. Department of Education recognition criteria.
Accreditation is supposed to ensure quality, fairness, and access. But under Policy 56, it’s become a tool for perpetuating a single-exam, single-location licensing chokehold that disproportionately burdens students from underserved areas.
“Conditioning accreditation on a high-stakes exam offered exclusively by a single private entity at one location risks reinforcing monopolistic dynamics.”
The Asks: Reasonable, Urgent, and Long Ignored
CFC’s written and oral comments urged the CCE to take four clear steps:
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Revise Policy 56 to allow real alternatives to NBCE testing data.
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Acknowledge the need for multiple pathways to assess clinical competency.
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Conduct a legal and policy review of NBCE’s centralization and its compatibility with state law.
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Engage the public—students, faculty, institutions, and boards—in transparent discussion on high-stakes policies.
What Comes Next?
The silence is broken—but the system is still rigged.
Unless CCE begins to act on these concerns, it will continue to serve not as an accreditor but as an enabler of monopoly licensing schemes that punish students, limit access, and destabilize the profession’s future.
The Chiropractic Freedom Coalition’s testimony was a warning shot—and a reminder that students, educators, and reformers are no longer willing to accept the cost of quiet compliance.
“We encourage the Council to act swiftly to protect the integrity of chiropractic education and the rights of students and institutions alike.” —Chiropractic Freedom Coalition