In many educational settings, students may have an incentive to take courses where high grades are easier to achieve, potentially corroding student learning, evaluation of student achievement, and the fairness and efficiency of post-graduation labor outcomes. A grading system that takes into account heterogeneity of teacher standards and student…

Standardized tests have been increasingly controversial over recent years in high-stakes admission decisions. Their role in operationalizing definitions of merit and qualification is especially contested, but in law schools this challenge has become particularly intense. Law schools have relied on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and an INDEX…

Beginning with the No Child Left Behind federal legislation, states were required to use data to monitor and improve student achievement. For high schools, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education chose End of Course Exams (EOC) to demonstrate levels of student achievement. The policy changed from school choice of paper-pencil…

As racial and ethnic population changes occur in the United States these same changes should be reflected in the legal community of lawyers and judges. Although Black and Hispanic populations have been increasing over the past 30 years in the United States, this same proportionate increase has not occurred in the American Bar Association (ABA)…

The literature on student academic success of law students is limited to mostly single institution studies, and as such, a nationwide, multi-institutional empirical study of the factors that predict student academic success is greatly needed by higher education scholars, law school admission officers, faculty, and administrators. This dissertation…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the evidence on whether grade inflation has led to an increasing emphasis on standardized test scores as a criterion for law school admissions. Design/methodology/approach: Fit probabilistic models to admissions data for American law schools during the mid to late 1990s, a period during which…

The relative contribution of undergraduate grade point average (UGPA) and the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) to predicting academic performance in each of three years of law school was investigated. The LSAT makes its greatest contribution in early years and UGPA in later years. (Author/BW)

In order to participate in federal student financial aid programs, law schools must be accredited by an agency recognized by the Department of Education (Education). Accreditation is intended to ensure that schools provide basic levels of quality in their educational programs, and Education recognizes those accrediting agencies that it concludes…

Since the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) was first administered, the sponsors of the test have carried out predictive validity studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the test and other predictors in determining first-year law school performance. This report presents a summary of correlation study results for the 1995 and 1996 study years. The…

This study was undertaken to evaluate the predictive validity of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) earned under accommodated testing conditions. Of special interest was the validity of scores obtained by test takers who were accommodated under nonstandard time conditions (i.e., accommodations that included extra testing time). Separate…

This study investigated differences in performance on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and subsequent applications and admission decisions separately for men and women. Data were drawn from the 1990-1991 law school applicant pool, a total of 83,336 applicants, who generated 417,103 applications at 178 law schools. The undergraduate grade point…

This study focuses on the relationship between the personality characteristics of entering law students and academic success in law school. The subjects (137) were entering law school students at Pepperdine University School of Law. Students were administered the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) as a measure of their temperament and…

This study was designed to examine questions about the validity and utility of two commonly used predictors of academic success in law school, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score and the undergraduate grade point average (UGPA), when the criterion measure is grade point average at the completion of law school (LGPA). The study also examined…

One purpose of this study was to summarize data across schools to provide documentation of the generalizability of the claim of validity of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) for use in the law school admission process. A more important purpose is to provide national longitudinal data for law schools to examine against their school-specific data…

Use of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and undergraduate grade point average for members of minority groups are examined in relationship to recent LSAT studies and related research on admissions tests and test bias. Traditional predictors of law school grades were found to be as accurate for minority as for majority persons. (JT)