FAMU’s transparency undercut Fineout’s attempt to paint distorted picture

Back when the FAMU College of Law reached Destination Accreditation in 2009, many Florida newspaper readers were confused. The St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times, had used lots of ink to try and convince the citizens of the state that FAMU Law was doing a poor job preparing its students for the Florida bar.

A Times article in 2008 said that “FAMU…has the lowest bar passage rate, with a little more than half of the students passing.” The article only mentioned the first-try passage rates. It ignored the fact that FAMU’s overall passage rate stood between 70 and 81 percent during the years of 2005 through 2007.

The Times consistently left FAMU’s overall bar passage rates out of its coverage. That’s why many readers were shocked to find out that FAMU had satisfied the American Bar Association’s (ABA) bar passage rate standard in 2009. The ABA requires a 75 percent overall passage rate and FAMU Law was at 77 percent when it earned full accreditation.

The FAMU interim administration made the wise move of posting the latest ABA report on FAMU Law on the university website last week at the same time that it sent out a press release on the issue. When Associated Press reporter Gary Fineout tried to use the ABA report to paint a distorted picture of FAMU Law’s bar passage progress, Rattlers already had the full facts.

Fineout wrote that “the 31-page report points out that 30 percent of the students admitted either do not graduate the school or do not pass the bar exam.” That information came from finding #59 on page 17 of the report. But Fineout’s article, as it appeared on the Miami Herald’s website, declined to mention the information from finding #58 on that same page.

FAMU’s 2007-2011 overall bar passage rate was 79.04 percent based upon the data from the ABA site visit. It went up to 82.97 percent after FAMU submitted updated data after receiving the Florida Bar Exam results from February and July 2012.

The numbers show that FAMU is doing better than ever in preparing its students for the Florida Bar Exam. Rattlers have circulated the report through email list serves and online chat pages. The next step is for Florida Rattlers to make sure that their elected state House and Senate members also know the full FAMU Law bar passage rate numbers.

Reporters like Fineout can’t stop FAMUans from knowing the facts and getting the facts out to the lawmakers who make budgetary decisions for the entire state. FAMU should continue to release big reports like the ABA site visit evaluation on its website so Rattlers can spread the truth about the university.