California bar says no quick fix for botched exam

By Karen Sloan

March 14 (Reuters) - There will be no swift resolution to California’s bar exam mess, it seems.

The State Bar of California cannot make decisions about how to deal with the test scores on its disastrous February exam for at least nine weeks, the time it takes to grade the exams, bar staff and standardized test experts said on Friday.

Delaying scoring decisions until after grading will be "unpopular" with examinees who want answers but is the "best approach," said the state bar's Chief of Admissions Donna Hershkowitz during a meeting of its Committee of Bar Examiners.

February marked the debut of California’s hybrid exam given both remotely and in person, which does not include any components of the national bar exam the state has used for decades. The change was intended to reduce costs, but test takers reported a slew of problems ranging from software crashes to interruptions from proctors. The state bar is planning a limited re-test on March 18 and 19 and has said any of the 4,300 who took the February test and failed may retake the July exam for free.

The state bar on Friday heard from February examinees who were frustrated with how the organization handled the test rollout and the ensuing fallout from technical problems.

“It is you who failed the exam, not us,” February test-taker Eugene Stephen told the committee during more than two hours of public comments.

The committee spent little time Friday discussing the more extreme remedies favored by bar examinees—including a blanket upward score adjustment, a reduction to the exam’s pass score, or a diploma privilege that would allow them to become admitted without passing the bar.

But the committee endorsed a provisional licensing program that would enable February bar examinees and those who withdrew ahead of the test to practice under the supervision of a lawyer while they wait to take the bar exam—a move that requires the approval of both the state bar's board of trustees and the California Supreme Court.

The bulk of Friday’s discussion centered on how scores could be adjusted to account for the issues faced by individual test takers. Psychometrician Chad Buckendahl–an expert on the validity and scoring of standardized tests—said several processes that use statistical or other methods to estimate missing or compromised data could be used to generate scores for missing or incomplete portions of people's exams. The state bar used similar adjustments in 2021, when software problems marred its July test. The committee’s focus on psychometric score adjustments was met with skepticism among some examinees, however.

“Psychometricians are not going to be able to fix this,” February test-taker Edward Brickell told the committee, saying the exam's problems were too extensive.

Read more:

California bar approves bar exam probe as angry test takers sound off

California bar exam meltdown on Tuesday prompts offer of March retakes