Student evaluation, assessment, and testing

The candidate delivers a critique that names an error, its probable cause, and the correction, and that the person receiving it could act on tomorrow. They also receive one: the plan they wrote in lesson 3 is critiqued here, revised, and re-taught.

This lesson and lesson 3 together satisfy US-3.2's requirement that at least one plan is critiqued, revised, and re-taught. Neither satisfies it alone.

standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md is the text for elements 1, 5, and 10. It is the school's single standard, defined once and applied everywhere including US-12.1 and US-12.2. Do not teach a second one here.

Element 6's "types of questions to avoid" is worth real time. Most candidates ask leading questions without noticing, and a leading question tells you nothing about what the student knows.

What a retest certifies, and what it does not. Element 7

Added 2026-08-14. This costs no extra time. It is the content of element 7 rather than an addition to it, and it is the sharpest question in this lesson.

The case, from sources/NTSB-WPR11FA316.md, which is the only permitted source for any fact stated about this accident. A private pilot applicant was found unsatisfactory on his practical test twice. First attempt at 57.4 hours. Second attempt at 69.0 hours, where one of the unsatisfactory areas was "Performance Maneuver, Steep Turns." He was retested on the deficient areas on March 17, 2011, his performance was satisfactory, and the certificate was issued in full compliance with every applicable FAA requirement.

Four months later, at 152 hours, he stalled and spun out of a steep left turn at low altitude during a departure, and he and his three passengers were killed.

Ask the candidate the question, and do not answer it for them. The retest was conducted correctly and the examiner did nothing wrong. So what did that satisfactory retest actually certify, and what did it not?

Where you want them to arrive, though getting there themselves is the point:

• A practical test certifies performance on a day, to a standard, in front of one evaluator. It does not certify that a weakness has stopped being a weakness.
• The retest tests the deficient areas again. It does not test whether the underlying cause was addressed, and nothing requires it to. That is not a loophole; it is what a test is.
• The gap between "meets the standard today" and "is safe alone in six months" is the instructor's problem, not the examiner's, and it is closed by training rather than by testing. This is the clearest argument in phase 1 for why a CFI's job does not end at the recommendation.
• The candidate will one day sign a retest recommendation. That is the moment this lesson is for.

Handle it with care and say why you are being careful. Four people died, two of them children, and the pilot cannot answer for himself. The point is not that he was a bad pilot or that his instructor failed him, and the record supports neither. The point is that a correctly conducted test certified exactly what it was designed to certify and no more, which is a fact about tests rather than about him. If the candidate reaches for blame, redirect once: ask what they would have done differently as his instructor after the second unsatisfactory attempt, and whether the regulation would have required any of it.

Do not put this in the study guide. It lands when the instructor raises it and the candidate has to think, and it deflates if it is read in advance as a prepared anecdote.

Instructor: FAA-H-8083-9B ch 6. FAA-S-ACS-25 at FI.I.D. standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md. The candidate's lesson 3 plan and its recording.

Candidate: their lesson 3 plan, their preparation deliverable.

Room: Meet running, separate devices, headsets.

1. Teach elements 1 to 8, using the critique standard as the text rather than paraphrasing it.
2. Element 9, and run it in this order. Ask the candidate to self-critique their lesson 3 plan first. Then deliver your critique against the standard. Then give them ten minutes to revise. Then have them re-teach the revised block.
3. Deliver that critique to the standard, visibly. Name the error, the probable cause, and the correction, out loud, in that structure. You are demonstrating the skill you are assessing.
4. Simulated Student role, element 10. Fly or describe a short performance with two errors: one obvious, one causal and underneath it. See whether the candidate finds the second.
5. Do not let a critique that only lists faults pass as a critique.

1. Arrive with the deliverable.
2. Self-critique their lesson 3 plan before hearing the instructor's critique.
3. Revise the plan and re-teach a block from it.
4. Deliver a critique of a performance, naming error, probable cause, and correction.
5. Write three effective oral assessment questions on a subject they have taught, and say why each is effective.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate delivers a critique of a performance that names the error, its probable cause, and the correction, and the correction is specific enough to attempt on the next flight.
2. The candidate finds the causal error underneath the obvious one, or, having missed it, names it when asked what caused the error they did find.
3. The candidate revises their lesson 3 plan in response to critique and re-teaches a block from the revised version, with the change visible in the delivery.
4. The candidate asks three oral assessment questions that are not leading, not yes-or-no, and not answerable by guessing, and says what each would reveal.
5. The candidate names two of the eight characteristics of an effective assessment that their own critique demonstrated, and one it did not.
6. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Not applicable. Ground lesson.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-H-8083-9B, chapter 6, Assessment.
• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation I, Task D.
• standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md, all of it. This is the school's standard and you will be held to it for the rest of the program.
• Your own lesson 3 plan, re-read with a critical eye.

Deliverable: A written self-critique of your own lesson 3 plan and the block you taught from it. Name at least two things wrong with it, their probable causes, and what you would change. Bring it. You will deliver it before hearing your instructor's critique.

Available and used: the 2026-07-29 power-off stalls lesson. Use it for element 7, assessment of piloting ability, and for element 5. A Taught Ground Lesson on power-off stalls generates two assessable things at once: whether the candidate can fly the maneuver and whether they can teach it. Ask the candidate which of the two that lesson actually assessed, and how they would assess the other.

Needed and not yet available: a real Instructor Debrief with its resulting Reference Critique, so the candidate can see a real critique of a real flight before delivering one. Owner: Erick. This is also the input US-12.1 needs. Until supplied, the instructor's own critique in element 9 is the worked example, delivered visibly to the standard.

None in this lesson. This is the lesson that teaches the standard the US-12.1 Clip critiques are judged against, and those slots live on the phase 3 maneuver lessons.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled. It has none.

Your own critique in element 9 is being watched more closely than anything else you do in phase 1. The candidate will copy how you do it. Do it to the standard.

Do not skip the revision. The temptation when running late is to critique the lesson 3 plan and assign the revision as homework. That breaks the US-3.2 acceptance criterion, which requires the plan to be critiqued, revised, and re-taught. Cut element 2 or 3 instead.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-3.3, US-3.2, US-2.3
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior
• ✓Common errors listed, including the memorize-the-list failure mode
• ✓Intervention threshold: not applicable, ground lesson, reason given
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots: none, and the lesson says so
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no POH performance numbers, no pricing
• Real Instructor Debrief and Reference Critique as a worked example. Open. Owner: Erick