Post-release Regrading of Bar Exam Scores
President Donald Trump’s campaign said yesterday it would ask for a recount of the presidential race in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is one of several jurisdictions that permit a losing political candidate to request that votes be recounted.
Boards of law examiners, however, are usually not so accommodating to examinees who fail the bar exam, even by the slimmest of margins.
For example, 38 jurisdictions have adopted the Unform Bar Exam, which is licensed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. While the UBE is uniformly administered, graded, and scored by user jurisdictions, the user jurisdictions agree not to engage in post-release regrading (although they are permitted to set their own pre-release regrading policies).
So, once bar exam results are out in UBE jurisdictions, they’re final.
What’s the NCBE’s rationale for not permitting post-release regrading?
Regrading is not likely to produce psychometrically sound scores if the pass/fail status of the applicants is known, if the original scores are known, if the regrading is done remote in time from the original grading of the entire pool of answers, if only failing answers are reviewed, and/or if scores are only increased and never decreased. Calibration or consistency with the grading standards is difficult to maintain under such circumstances. Because most, if not all, of these circumstances are present when regrading takes place after release of results, jurisdictions have good reason not to accept scores that are the result of post-release regrading. Therefore, UBE jurisdictions agree not to engage in post-release regrading.
Here are some specific rules from the state boards of law examiners:
Colorado: “As a Uniform Bar Exam jurisdiction, all examination results are final and not open to regrading or appeal.”
New York: “There is no appeal from a final score.”
Tennessee: “The only remedy afforded for a grievance for failure to pass the bar examination shall be the right to re-examination as herein provided.”
