Originally Posted by
wmuflyboy
Should he have broke out a calculator or something??
Yes - before even meeting with the examiner.
Prior to the checkride, get a copy of the local weather and use the winds to find your [student's] groundspeed. Using that groundspeed, calculate pivotal altitude and write that on the same paper that will be used for writing down the WX report in the plane.
Using the same pivotal altitude regardless of surface winds is indicative of a serious training deficiency.