FAMU’s first-try bar passage rate up; St. Pete Times still printing incomplete information

67.9 percent of FAMU’s College of Law students passed the 2008 Florida bar exam on their first try. The University of Miami led the state overall, with a 92.4 percent first-try rate.

A blog post by St. Petersburg Times reporter Donna Winchester stated that “[FAMU] fared considerably better than in February 2007, when only 52.4 percent of the students were successful.”

Winchester omitted the numbers from FAMU’s more recent bar exam results in July 2007. During that test, FAMU students passed with a 60 percent first-try rate. The university’s overall passage rate was 81.3 percent.

In February 2008, FAMU's first-try passage rate was 59.3 percent.

The improved first-try passage rates followed a sweeping leadership overhaul at the university. Shortly after taking FAMU’s helm in July 2007, President James Ammons successfully recruited Northern Illinois University College of Law Dean LeRoy Pernell to head FAMU’s law school. Ammons also poured more money into bar exam preparation by giving the college $5 million in legislative appropriations that FAMU’s previous interim administration refused to release.

Read more here.

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