I’ve visualized a lot about the decline in bar pass scores and bar passage rates in the last few years, including a post on the February 2017 decline here. For some reason, this post in particular drew criticism as being particularly deceptive. It caused me to think a little more about how to best visualize–and explain–what the decline in multistate bar exam (“MBE”) scores might mean. (I’ll channel my inner Tufte and see what I can do….)
In the February 2017 chart, I didn’t start the Y-axis at zero. And why should I? No one scores a zero. The very lowest scores are something in the 50s to 90s. And the score is on a 200-point scale, but no one gets a 200. So I suppose I could visualize it on the low to high ends–say, 90 to 190.