More on the MPRE Minimum Passing Score, How Do States Pick a Number?, and California Takers Just Dodged a '100' Bullet

Posted by Alan Childress

We had this guest-post last week, discussing the MPRE passing score and where certain scores fall on a distribution or curve.  After, guest-poster and statboy Dr. John McSweeny wrote these follow-up thoughts (including some specific pass rates for certain MPRE scores):

I would have loved to be the fly on the wall when the discussions took place at various state bars about what cut points to use, especially given that there appears to be no validity data.  That is, we don't really know what score, if any, predicts a career of ethical practice. 

The discussions must have boiled down to how many students they were willing to pass (or flunk).  A score of 85 passes roughly 75% of the takers, a score of 80 passes a little more than 85%, and a score of 75 passes about 90% of all takers. 

What about those states that use odd figures like 79 or 86?  Were these numbers the result of compromises made by a committee? Of course, there is no logical or mathematical reason for preferring a nice, round number like 85 instead of 86.  They just seem more aesthetic if they are divisible by the number of fingers on one of our hands!

I don't know the answer to the how-they-chose question, though I welcome comments and links to any source that explains the policies or politics behind these.  I note, however, that California long had a relatively easy passing score of 79, then its Committee of Bar Examiners published this 2004 proposal that would have made the passing score 100.  By John's numbers, assuming the national mean is close to the median (and I would hope it is), that would have meant that California would have switched from passing more than 86% to flunking over half!  It is pretty hard to justify such a major change of policy, and a passing score so much higher than everyone else's. 

And can we really say that those at the top of a bell curve are really distinguishable and worthy of minute parsing which would result in huge impact on careers for similar-scoring people at the national median?  That the average candidate is unworthy of becoming a lawyer?  I can live with the arbitrary line-drawing at the left tail where the candidates have already missed a lot of questions, but I am uncomfortable with labeling an above-average kid who got a 99 as unethical while his friend making a 100 lucks out.  (Especially if the difference is not in the raw numbers of questions missed, but rather in the scaling done after to correct for a historically 'easier' exam, by a hair.)  Anyway, it seems inherently wrong to me to focus any crucial cut point at the top of a bell curve!

California did wind up -- its says here in this official notice dated Dec. 2005 -- raising its passing score to 86, effective Jan. 2008.  Takers in the fall or earlier can pass with the old lowbar, 79.  That now makes California at the highest end of state minima, compared to almost all states.  (See this 2005 summary chart, state-by-state [though it still shows Cal as 79, and keep in mind that New York is now 86 85], or this chart from 2004 also by states).  Cal's new 86 bar is still quite a jump from that lax 79 legacy.  (Here is an Inter Alia blog post on the switch to 86, and also this one from John Steele in '05.)  I don't know how 86 was picked over 100, though I assume it was a choice -- a public statement -- to be the highest/hardest anywhere (tied with Utah and just above New York), if not that euphonic 100.  At least the above-average test-taker will not flunk, to piss off Lake Wobegon.

UPDATE:  See article on MPRE statistics from Dr. Susan Case, head of testing for NCBE, here.