When "the candidates got dumber" doesn't work as explanation

I'm pretty sure I posted the precursor to this story, but meh. Not searching for it.



http://ift.tt/1ECZqMi

Quote:

The debate over the exam is not new, but it broke out in the open after the results of last summer’s exam were released in the fall, showing that the 51,005 test takers had the poorest results in nearly a decade. Many law school deans, bristling from criticism that they are replenishing their ranks with less academically qualified students as the number of law school applicants has fallen sharply, began to openly question the mechanics of the bar exam. About 80 law school deans last November jointly asked, for the first time anyone remembers, for details on how test questions were chosen and scored. The situation was already touchy after remarks made the previous month by a top bar exam official, who defended the results as indisputably correct, and then, in what the deans viewed as verbal dynamite, labeled the test takers as “less able” than their predecessors. Indicators “all point to the fact that the group that sat in July 2014 was less able than the group that sat in July 2013,” said Erica Moeser, president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the nonprofit organization in Madison, Wis., that constructs and scores the professional entrance exam. Stephen C. Ferruolo, dean of the University of San Diego School of Law, said that it was the test, not the students. He asked the bar testing agency in December for details about the test to assure that it was fair and reliable.

hmmm, that sounds familiar

When "the candidates got dumber" doesn't work as explanation