America's Hot New Game Show: "Cents and Non-Cents" with Dean Nicholas Allard and NCBE President Erica Moeser

ANNOUNCER:   It's everyone's favorite hot new game show...empty your pockets for...

CROWD:  CENTS AND NON-CENTS!

ANNOUNCER:  That's right, and here's your host, Scammy McPhail!

SCAMMY:  Okay, folks, welcome to another addition of Cents and Non-Cents, the game that puts YOU in charge of the change.  Today's contestants are Nicholas Allard, the Joseph Crea Dean and President of Brooklyn Law School...

CROWD:  WOOT WOOT WOOT!

SCAMMY:  ...and National Conference of Bar Examiners President Erica Moeser.

CROWD:  Booooooooooooooooooo.

SCAMMY:  Tonight's debate is about July bar examination scores.  There's no dispute that they're down across the board.  Tonight's question is:  why?  We all know the rules.  We will bounce back and forth in point-counterpoint style and encourage the crowd to stupidly yell to determine a winner.  It makes no sense, but, hey! It's law!   Are we ready to play?!?!?!?

CROWD:  YES!!!

SCAMMY:  Ms. Moeser, you're up first.

MOESER:  All [indicators] point to the fact that the group that sat in July 2014 was less able than the group that sat in July 2013....it is the MBE, with scores equated across time,that reveals a decline in performance in the cohort that took July 2014 bar examinations.

SCAMMY:  Strong words from a law graduate who can't possibly be good at math.  Dean Allard, what say you?

ALLARD:  We don't know what evidence you have to support this surprising (and surprisingly disparaging) claim, but we do have evidence about our own 2014 graduates, and it tells us precisely the opposite:  their credentials were every bit as good as our 2013 graduates, if not even better...our graduates were every bit as qualified as in previous years, and just as well prepared...In plan language, I disagree with you: It is not the students, it's the test.

SCAMMY:  Ignoring the drop in applicants, LSATs, and GPAs.  Slick like butter!  Ms. Moeser?

MOESER:  While we always take quality control of MBA scoring very seriously, we redoubled our efforts to satisfy ourselves that no error occurred in scoring the examination or in equating the test with its predecessors.  The results are correct.

SCAMMY:  Ooooh, "redoubled!"  Sounds "effortacious."  Dean?

ALLARD:  I believe that a thorough investigation of the administration and scoring of the July 2014 exam is necessary because of the quality control issues you yourself raised...There is no explanation how you reached your conclusion, nor transparency to your process, so how can we have confidence in this self-serving unaudited assertion?  Frankly, your statements ring hollow.....please do not retreat behind that fig-leaf....

SCAMMY:  A law dean pushing transparency and auditing!  BOO-YA!  Want to ring hollow a little more, Ms. Moeser?

MOESER:  I can assure you that had we discovered an error in MBE scoring, we would have acknowledged it and corrected it.

SCAMMY:  Dean Allard, we need a non-sequitur about how great your students are!

ALLARD:  [G]raduating from an ABA accredited law school requires intelligence and hard work. Unlike some programs at the undergraduate level, earning a JD is in and of itself a significant accomplishment....

SCAMMY:  Not disparaging at all!  On one side, a neutral national standards organization with very little skin in the game claiming nothing went wrong on a standardized test with quality control metrics.  On the other side, a dean demanding an audited and transparent process to understand why bar pass rates are slightly dropping after admissions standards started dropping, where he has an incentive to push bar pass numbers higher...  What we do we think, folks, Dean Allard???

CROWD:  CENTS!

SCAMMY:  And how about Ms. Moeser?

CROWD:  NON-CENTS!

SCAMMY:  There you have it!  It's Dean Nicholas Allard!!!

Dean Nicholas Allard is given a very large bag of pennies, while Ms. Moeser is pelted by coins from a contingent of insulted third- and fourth-tier law deans.  Let's do another recount, Florida!

Ed. Note:  All dialogue above attributed to Allard and Moeser is intended to be verbatim from the items linked and have been rearranged to form a dialogue to more explicitly show just how silly Ms. Moeser is obviously being.