MBE scores dropped in February 2023 and the National Conference of Bar Examiners suggests that the COVID pandemic is to blame for the drop.
The national mean MBE scaled score for February was 131.1, down from the mean of 132.6 in February 2022. Just before that, the mean was 134.0 in 2021, when test takers would have started law school just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Research in K-12 and undergraduate settings clearly shows that the global COVID-19 pandemic had a negative effect on learning, and surveys of law students similarly suggest that those students who began law school in 2019–2020 would have been significantly impacted by pandemic-related educational disruptions,” said Rosemary Reshetar, the NCBE Director of Assessment and Research.
The NCBE also reported that the number of test takers in February increased slightly to 19,228, compared to 16,504 in February 2022. The report notes that the higher number of repeat test takers does not in itself fully account for the drop in the mean this year.
“We saw a decrease in performance across all groups of examinees and the decrease was the greatest (about two scaled score points) for likely first-time test takers,” Reshetar said in the report.
The NCBE suggested that many of the examinees had delayed taking the bar exam after graduation or had graduated a semester early.
“We know that first-time test takers tend to perform better on the MBE, on average, than those who are repeating the test,” Reshetar said. “A high proportion of repeat test takers compared to first-time takers is typical for February, resulting in lower February means compared to July results. This February is no exception in that regard and we believe that an increase in the number of likely repeat examinees compared to February 2022 is a partial reason for the decrease in the average score this year.”
