Muller: The NCBE's Role in Declining MBE Scores and Bar Pass Rates

Following up on my previous posts (here, here, here, and here):  California released its July 2014 bar exam results on Friday:  a 48.6% overall pass rate (down 7.2 percentage points from 2013) and 61.0% first-time takers pass rate (down 6.7 percentage points from 2013).  (For more, see Vikram Amar (UC-Davis) and Dan Filler (Drexel)).  Derek Muller (Pepperdine) notes that California is the 20th state (out of 34 states that have released their results thus far) with at least a 5 percentage point bar passage rate decline:

Derek argues that neither the decline in student quality or the exam soft computer malfunction can explain these declining MBE scores and bar passage rates.