A Response to the Failure Rate on Presbyterian Ordination Exams

Another national Presbyterian exam process is complete. Again Facebook is filled with postings by readers of the exams defending the abysmal failure rates on these exams. I was unable to read this year, due to daily radiation therapy, but I continue to be at war with our system and wanted to post some objections. I frankly do not buy the contention that our excellent seminaries are not preparing people to explore the exam questions. The possible exception could be worship and sacrament as I like data on the number of students who have such a course prior to taking the exams.

Most of the folks who read exams have never graded exams at all, or have read our ordination exams for a nubbier of years. The materials given as guidelines fail in a number of ways.
1) They do not serve as guidelines but as models. Graders are sorely tempted to compare exams to the resource material models and fail to then read exams on their own merits.When readers say that the questions were not answered fully, I fear they mean that the responses do not look like the resource material.
2) The resources are lacking in providing a range o9f different approaches to the questions.
3) the resource papers need to provide a variety of sample answers considered adequate. I repeat not perfect, adequate.
4) We have no clear criteria as to what parts of an exam are not adequately covered require a failing grade.
5) Readers routinely admit to overstepping their bounds. They admit to grading on stylistic issues, organizational issues and the like. Again, readers usually lack training sufficient to grade someone down on what are often subjective measures.
6) Readers routinely grade someone down if they disagree with the premise, the method, the style of argument of the exam. Again, the point would be not if a student is agreeing with the reader, we need guidance as to how to judge the quality of the argument, irrespective of the reader’s opinion.
7) We have yet to come to grips with the critical question of the diversity of readers. A student may have to satisfy two professors, or two pastors, or two elders. I hesitate to claim this, but I will anyway. A number of pastors who read exams strike me as frustrated academicians and are determined to judge exams to a standard few can meet. Elders may come in with the discerning tool of thinking if they would like to hear this in their church, not if the response is an adequate one, whether they are attracted to the position of the piece or not.
8) I suspect that these exams require too much, in the time allotted. Increasingly exams are take-home, or group projects, or papers. Time sensitive tests with blue books ar enot as frequent as they once were in professional school.
9) It is high time to question that guilt-reduction notion that the exams are already failures or successes before the readers grade them. Readers bring a world of experience and attitudes toward the test. They interact with the material. They need more help in learning how to evaluate an adequate exam.