The UBE Impact on Tennessee Bar Passage Rates
Tennessee administered the Uniform Bar Exam for the first time in February 2019.
Several of my students have asked me what impact did the adoption of the UBE have on passage rates in Tennessee.
It’s hard to make comparisons when dealing with only the February administrations. The pool of exam takers is much smaller than July administrations, so there’s much more volatility in bar passage rates from one February administration to another. A better comparison of UBE performance would be to compare the combined February and July administrations in the same calendar year with previous calendar year administrations.
With that said, however, I have compared the first UBE administration in Tennessee (February 2019) against the previous four February administrations (2015 to 2018) because, well, that's the only information that's available so far.
The Tennessee Board of Law Examiners provides some nice statistics on its website—mean scaled MBE scores along with the mean raw scores (one a 1-to-6 scale) for each MPT and essay.
By comparing the UBE performance on the February 2019 UBE exam with the average performance on the three corresponding components—the MBE, the MPT, and the essays—of the prior make-up of the Tennessee Bar Exam, there was very little difference in any of the sections.
The mean scaled MBE on the UBE was 134.66. The average mean scaled MBE for the previous four February administrations was 134.50, for a difference of 0.16.
The mean essay score on each MEE question on the UBE was 3.46. The average mean essay score on each of the state-drafted questions on the previous four February administrations was 3.47, for a difference of -0.01.
The mean MPT score on the two performance tests on the UBE was 3.53. The average mean MPT score on the previous four February administrations was 3.44, for a difference of 0.09.
Keep in mind that there are now two MPTs administered in Tennessee under the UBE compared to the one MPT on the old Tennessee format. So under the UBE, the MPTs are now worth 20% of the overall bar exam score compared to just 12.5% under the old format. So, looking at the weighted average of the MPT and essay portion of the exam (which, together, still make up 50% of the total bar exam score), the weighted written portion average on the February 2019 UBE was 3.50 (where the MPTs are worth 20% and the essays worth 30% of the overall bar exam score) compared to 3.45 on the previous four February administrations (where the MPT was worth 12.5% and the essays worth 37.5% of the overall bar exam score).
Again, not much of a difference (0.50). But, again, the data set for comparison is small.
With all that said, the bar exam rates increased for the February 2019 exam, compared to the previous February. The first-time bar passage rate on the first administration of the UBE in Tennessee was 64.29%, which was an increase over the 60.22% first-time passage rate on the February 2018 exam.
If I had to attribute the slight increase in first-time passage rate to something, I would point to the higher mean MBE score for two reasons.
First, as noted above, there was relatively little difference in written raw scores on either the MPTs or the essays between the UBE and the previous Tennessee format. Second, there likely will not be significant difference in UBE MPT and essay scoring since Tennessee has said in the past that its graders attempt to assign an equal number of submitted essays in each of the scoring columns. In other words, if there are 600 essays to score in a particular question, the graders will attempt to assign 100 essays a score of “1,” 100 essays a score of “2,” 100 essays a score of “3,” and so on. By scoring this way, the mean raw essay score will usually fall close to 3.50, thereby not creating much variance in raw written scores from one administration to another.
And since raw essay scores are scaled based on scaled MBE performance—on a side note, that’s another discussion on why it is done that way—that means an improved mean scaled MBE score actually has a double impact on an applicant's overall score because a higher mean scaled MBE also increases the mean scaled essay score.
And that was likely the case in Tennessee, where the mean scaled MBE score increased from 131.86 in February 2018 to 134.66 in February 2019.
But since the MBE is the only constant between the UBE and the former Tennessee format—for example, it is the same content, the same amount of questions, the same scoring weight, etc.—the fact that the MBE drove the higher scores on the UBE indicates that the change of the examination content, structure, and component weights by adopting the UBE did not negatively or positively impact passage rates in Tennessee.
The MBE was the main influencer on the higher passage rates in Tennessee.
I will update this blog once more UBE administrations have passed in Tennessee.
