Failure rate on bar exam brings change to state test

Responding to a high failure rate on the Oklahoma bar exam last year, the state has thrown out a scoring model some believe may have failed prospective lawyers whose performance on the test should have allowed them to pass.

After seeing the lowest statewide pass rate in more than a decade, some believe the 3-year-old scoring model dropped applicants’ results to a failing score when their performance was good enough to pass.

One Oklahoma law school dean told the Tulsa World that many students would have passed if it weren’t for the changed scoring model, which she believes elevated the multiple choice portion of the exam to hold more weight in the overall score than the essay portion.

Responding to last year’s drop in state exam scores, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled March 7 to vacate a scoring model that scaled scores on the essay portion — graded by Oklahoma lawyers — based on results from the multiple-choice section, which is standard across multiple states.

Effective June 1, the scaling system implemented in 2013 will no longer be used to score the state exam, though the Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners maintains scaling shouldn’t affect pass rates.

In an opinion dissenting from the court’s 5-4 decision, Justice Steve W. Taylor wrote: “The fact that there was a greater failure rate on the most recent bar examination is not a reason to change the examination’s grading or scaling.”

Compared to the year before the grading change, Oklahoma’s 2015 bar exam passage rate dropped 12 points to 68 percent — the lowest it’s been in more than a decade, according to National Conference of Bar Examiners statistics.

What’s to blame for dropping scores?

Oklahoma Supreme Court Chief Justice John F. Reif says the court’s decision came after meeting with examiners and educators and learning that several individuals who took the bar exam in July 2015 may have passed if it weren’t for the scaling system.

“Once the scaling and adjustment took place, they no longer had a passing grade,” Reif said in a phone interview March 29. “And it didn’t have anything to do with what they had demonstrated in the way of knowledge on the essay portion. It happened to be the scaling of that score brought it below the passing grade.”

The Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners unanimously supports the scaling system, which is supposed to maintain consistency as the essay questions are state-specific and couldn’t be standardized, board member Donna Smith told the Tulsa World.

Scaling was meant to “take out the bumps in the road” when the difficulty of essay questions or skill level of test-takers vary, Smith said.

“If you have 10 really good papers and then a paper that’s more average, generally that average paper will get a lower score if it’s graded among really good papers, and vice- versa,” Smith said.

When asked about the drop in bar exam scores last year, Smith pointed out disparities between the state’s three law schools − University of Oklahoma, University of Tulsa and Oklahoma City University.

Smith said that while the change in 2013 didn’t appear to greatly affect OU or TU, “OCU on the other hand had a poor performance in 2015.”

Data provided by the board shows that the bar exam pass rates at each school fluctuated between 2012 and 2015. OU had consistently higher pass rates, but OCU and TU saw declines after the 2013 change. OCU’s pass rate in 2015 was 21 points, or 39 percent, lower than in 2012. TU’s pass rate was down 12 points, or 17 percent.

Smith referenced the national conversation regarding implications that the decline in bar exam pass rates has resulted from law schools lowering admission standards to boost enrollment as they receive fewer qualified applicants.

Before admission, law schools review applicants’ LSAT scores and GPAs as indicators of their likelihood of passing the bar after graduation.

Since 2010, each law school in Oklahoma has seen either a decline or stagnancy in the LSAT scores of entering classes placing at the 25th percentile — besides a slight increase at OCU in 2015 and at TU in 2012, according to the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

OCU maintained lower scores than the other two schools each year during that time period until last year, when it was surpassed by TU.

While acknowledging that she doesn’t know if there’s a direct correlation, Smith said the data indicates “that there at least appears to be some connection between how law schools are admitting students, the standards that they are using, and the pass rates.”

In response to concerns that law schools have lowered their standards, OCU School of Law Dean Valerie Couch said the school’s entering credentials have been stable for more than 10 years.

Rather than lowering the standards to boost enrollment, Couch said the school has shrunk the entering class size to maintain credentials.

OCU’s law school used to have entering classes as large as 240 to 250, and last year it was 160, Couch said.

TU College of Law Dean Lyn Entzeroth said TU has also kept its standards “high and consistent.”

“The objective that we have, and that all law schools should have, is that we let in students that we believe can pass the bar,” Entzeroth said. “We did not lower our standards and let in students that we didn’t think could pass the bar.”

After seeing OCU graduates’ bar exam results, which Couch called “totally out of line with what our history has been,” she said the school looked carefully for factors that could have contributed to the drop.

Bar applicants working full time and not devoting adequate time to studying, as well as relying on online resources rather than those provided by the school,

AT A GLANCE may have resulted in lower scores, Couch said.

Does the change ‘dumb down’ the test?

Addressing criticism that Oklahoma’s change to the exam would effectively “dumb down the test,” Reif said: “Nothing could be further from the truth. We didn’t change anything about the testing procedure itself.”

Smith agrees, emphasizing the Oklahoma Board of Bar Examiners’ view that scaling doesn’t affect the pass rate.

Couch believes the change rather shifts more weight to the essay portion, which she said better exhibits knowledge of skills needed to be a lawyer.

Vacating the scaling system also restores more authority to the Oklahoma lawyers grading the essay portion, Entzeroth said.

“I don’t think we should be giving that authority to a national group of bar examiners,” Entzeroth said. “I think that that’s something that we should decide − that we should control. And I think that’s what (the Oklahoma Supreme Court) made sure was happening.”

Entzeroth emphasized that the bar remains high for hopeful lawyers.

“We are certainly maintaining high standards for our students, and I am looking forward to seeing students do well in the future,” Entzeroth said.

For law students, it is “obviously concerning” to see fewer people passing the bar — considering the financial risk of failing the exam after paying for law school, says second-year TU law student Komron Takmil.

But it ultimately “falls on the students” to adequately prepare, said Takmil, president-elect of TU’s Student Bar Association.

“Because

it’s a huge investment, and to make it worthwhile, you have to pass,” Takmil said.