This letter is written in defense of Dra. Leticia M. Asuzano, retired president of the Center for Educational Measurement.
 
It comes to me as a shock to hear that formal complaints have been filed against Dra. Leticia Asuzano, former president of the Center for Educational Measurement. I would like share my personal knowledge about her during her reign as President of CEM.
 
  1. It was her who brought CEM from the brink of bankruptcy to a total of P150M Pesos in Cash when she retired from CEM. She took over the reigns from Doc. Abraham Felipe who was then President of CEM. It is to my knowlege Doc. Abaraham Felipe that is pursuing this complaint against her. I know that the two had different views on how to run CEM. But Dra. Asuzano has "brought home the bacon" by living P150M pesos in the confers of CEM. I know that it is now Dr. Felipe that is running and calling the shots at CEM. I have sat in several meetings in the past where we reported directly to him. I say in the past because I have resigned from CEM, but that is another story. I also know that Dra. Asuzano is strong willed and has gone against many CEM board resolutions but have proven to be beneficial to CEM, the company she was supposed to protect. It was her who protected the funds of CEM by not investing any more funds with FAPE when FAPE started making investments not to the best interest of the FAPE fund. Time again proved her right when it as discovered that FAPE had lost most of its funds. Today, CEM's P150M pesos is still intact, mostly in Time Deposits.
  2. I know that it was during Abraham Felipe term that a certain Ike, an employee of FAPE, run off with around P15M pesos of their money. It was also under the presidency of Adriano Arcelo that the funds of FAPE were diminished. I know also for a fact that FAPE and CEM have the same board of directors. Are not this people more eligible for complaints that they have squandared money compared to Dra. Asuzano who has brought CEM from bankruptcy to a P150M in cash not including it assets. Is not the board of FAPE liable too? Or are they so greedy that they would like to play around with P150M left by Dra. Asuzano and that they would like to make Dra. Asuzano look like the bad guy and make themselves look good. With Fape's board sitting as Cem's board, and Dr. Felipe sitting as Chiarman of the Board and having a President that bows to him is not a good way to run a non-stock non-profit organization. This makes Dr. Felipe practically the owner of this company, without even putting up a single centavo to own it.
  3. I know that one of the things that Dra. Asuzano and Dr. Felipe did not agree in is the concept of marketing test. In marketing, it is usually more practical to give comissions rather than a flat salary.  Again this is a matter of policy and the "proof of the pie is in its pudding". Dra. Asuzano choose to give comissions rather that a flat salary. This has been the reason why the company has grown from pactically 0 to about P200M in total assets in 25 years. This is a growth rate of about P8M per year on an asset based initially at also practically nil. I would say that with the little assets CEM had, it was able to grow at an ROI of over fifty percent (50%). To my knowlege, very few companies could better this performance. MacDonald's and Jollibee only make about twelve percent (12%) ROI . Rather than filing a complaint, if the CEM board were in its right mind, or not being led by Dr. Abraham Felipe, they should be giving Dra. Asuzano a letter of commendation for her achievement.
  4. Now that Dr. Abraham Felipe has taken over the reigns of CEM, he now has the opportunity to prove his point. He can easily declare that there will be a major policy shift that from now on, comissions will be disallowed and all Test Marketers will be given a flat salary. In fact, in one of the meetings I attended, he had declared so. There is nothing wrong with this as this falls under one of the responsibilities of a president. By doing so, he has to show that such a policy is indeed better by showing that his Test Volume has increased and Net profit has increased. I see that he is wasting his time at looking at the past, so short sightledly, that he has not shown any appreciation of what has been left to him. He now has an even easier task as he has P150M is cold cash to run his operations. Whereas, Dra. Asuzano had to start with virtually nothing.
  5. I know for a fact that it was Dra. Asuzano who, aside from what I mentioned above, help boster CEMs assets:
  6. I know that upon retirement of Dra. Asuzano, a company reorganization was undertaken. This was done by an outside consultant. This outside consultant did not immerse himself first with what CEM was all about and starting stating to me that my unit (EDP) was not needed and that our work could be easily outsourced. If he had research about CEM first, before making such an allegation, he would have found out that one the reasons why CEM was on the brink of disaster is that all EDP matters, i.e, encoding, scoring and printing was outsourced. It was only thru Dra. Asuzano's better judgement that things started to be done in-house, and that has been proven as a good decision throughout the years. This is a basic rule in consulting, always immerse yourself in the company you are consulting. Ask questions first before making general statements. This statement may be good for another company, but definitely not for this. The result of this reorganization did not look good to me. First, it stripped me of two (2) departments that I was head of, EDP and Printing. Then my staff would be redistributed to another department which was Test Administration. I vehemently protested this as this would bring down the system of check and balances that Dra. Asuzano had so astutely setup. EDP was in charge only of encoding, scoring and printing of results. It did not have the capability of Testing. Put this capability in the hands of one unit head and then that unit can do Testing,Encoding,Scoring and Printing. You loose your check and balance. During one of my protests, the President, Lenore Decenteceo, got so bold as to offer me OPTIONAL RETIREMENT. This was what I was waiting for so I readily accepted. She even got bolder by asking me if anyone in my unit would like to avail of OPTIONAL Retirement. I answered that I could not speak for my people that she would have to talk to them directly. When I left that meeting, I was so happy because I knew I was against a brick wall in trying to convince this people to change their mind. They wanted me to head an Information Technology (IT) department without any of my old people under me. I reminded them that the mission, vision of CEM is not in IT but in education testing. I told them that I could do all the things that they planned to do with my existing people. One of the things they ask me to do was to setup a website for CEM which I did in less that a week. I still host the website till now. They ask me to set it up at CEM and I told them I could easily do in one (1) day. In fact I already had initial talks with PLDT to setup a DSL line for CEM at the San Antonio Village property. Another thing they asked me was to setup a database of all files of CEM. I had already talked to my people about this and could have easily done so in less than six (6) months.
  7. In the light of this, I suggest that rather looking at these charges against Dra. Asuzano, which I think is a waste of time, and could be a smoke screen to what has happened to FAPE and could happen to CEM, an inquiry be made now as to the present situation that is going on with CEM, it employees, and it funds.