Folks,

At University of Colorado at Denver, we've been administering the ETS test
once a year in our senior capstone course for about 6 years.  My view
(widely shared by faculty and administrators) is that it is *not* a good
measure.  We've gotten highly varied assessments of fields also, Bob.
While most of our fields score in the 85th to 95th percentiles, our
marketing group scored in the 30th on one test and the 90th on the next.
A similar pattern occurred with statistics.  We got a copy of the test and
I evaluated the questions for b-law and was discouraged on three levels.
I didn't know, Marsha, that ALSB had input.

First, I found questions along the lines of, "The name of the statute that
makes price fixing illegal is?"  I'm familiar with the JLSE literature and
earlier debates on pedagogy in the ABLJ but I don't believe anyone in this
discipline seriously believes that memorizing names of statutes is a
primary teaching objective for legal studies.

Second, there were not that many questions on b-law--my recollection (this
was about 4 years ago) is that there were 6 questions.  Few questions make
sores volatile, greatly influenced by small variations in chapters/topics
covered.

Third, there was little testing of higher level abilities. Subjects were
not asked *use* business concepts to make decisions or to spot legal
problems.  In my view, it was largely a vocabulary test. Our stats people
had a similar view.

For us, the percentile range is also a problem.  The comparison group of
schools generally have lower admission standards so we will look good no
matter how poorly we teach.  And being at one end of the scale makes it
more difficult to detect real improvement.

We plan to develop in-house assessments until something better comes
along.

Ed