Talk:Taft Law School

User:Taftgrad COI declaration

As my login name implies, I am a graduate of Taft. However, the edits I made were largely clercial/factual in nature without my personal views/opinions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Taftgrad (talk • contribs) 00:47, 13 July 2010

Protection

(copied from SV's talk page)

Dear SV, the policy protection states

Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

You have fully protected the article, thus disabling my ability to improve it. It seems your protection may be contrary to the protection policy. I advocate you block the WP:SPAs and unprotect the article. Basket of Puppies 22:39, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi BP, there was a request for page protection, and when I looked at the edits it seemed to be a content dispute based on objections to the use of primary sources. [1] In addition, the links I checked were dead. It's unfortunate that, given the amount of reverting, there's no discussion of the issues here. If no one's willing to discuss their objections, lifting the protection early might be appropriate. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 00:43, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

SV, the RPP was in good faith but a protection is inappropriate as it prevents editors from improving the article and is contrary to policy. There issue was SPAs pushing a POV vs established editors maintaining the NPOV. Please unprotect the article and I suggest you familiarize yourself with the protection policy before continuing. Basket of Puppies 02:38, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Accreditation status

In an effort to clarify the issue, I am opening this discussion on the accreditation status of this school. I am of the opinion that this school is an unaccredited law school based on the fact that the only law school accreditation organization in the United States is the American Bar Association. They simply do not list this school under the list of accredited law schools. Furthermore, their documentation states that they do not accredit online or distance law schools. Regarding the DETC accreditation, that only accredit the college as a distance education school, but they specifically do not accredit the law degrees. This is very similar to the situation of the Southern New England School of Law which has regional accreditation but the ABA has not accredited their law degrees. The graduates are unable to sit for the bar outside of their region. I look forward to replies and dissenting opinions. Thank you. Basket of Puppies 19:57, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

What exactly is your concern? It is clear from the article that the law school isn't an accredited law school.

The complete story seems to be that Taft Law School has institutional accreditation from the DETC (I confirmed that on DETC's website), but lacks programmatic accreditation from any known programmatic accreditor of U.S. law schools. I suppose one could say that it has accreditation as an educational institution, but not as an offeror of legal education.

Educational accreditation is complicated. As has been said repeatedly on various talk pages for articles about accreditation and unaccredited institutions, accreditation does not necessarily guarantee educational quality or that degrees or credits will be acceptable to other institutions and employers, and lack of accreditation does not necessarily mean an absence of educational quality.

After having said all that, I must say that I have developed serious doubts about the credibility of DETC's accreditation. They are the sole or primary accreditor of institutions that appear to be solid providers of higher education, but my perspective from researching Wikipedia articles leads me to suspect that at least a few schools they've accredited are scam operations. --Orlady (talk) 20:49, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Orlady, the concern is this type of edit indicating the school is a "DETC accredited law school", when this simply does not exist. DETC cannot accredit a law program as they are not a law school accreditation service, but rather a distance education accreditation service. The issue at hand is SlimVirgin protecting the article instead of blocking the POV pushers, as is required by WP:PP. There is no legitimate content dispute but rather POV vs NPOV. I opened this discussion in order to make it clear that DETC does not accredit law schools (only the ABA does that) and the article must not reflect a POV that the law school is "accredited". Basket of Puppies 21:10, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Those and similar edits by WP:SPA contributors were reverted before the article was protected. I believe that SlimVirgin's main concern regarding the article was not an issue with that content, but with the fact that all of the links to the State of California bar (or baby bar) exam results are now dead links. --Orlady (talk) 21:23, 18 July 2010 (UTC) California has an annoying habit of reconfiguring its websites. Do you happen to have the current link(s) for the bar results? --Orlady (talk) 21:26, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Orlady, SV protected the article instead of blocking the SPAs. Blocking the SPAs is required by WP:PP

. Isolated incidents of edit warring, and persistent edit warring by particular users, may be better addressed by blocking, so as not to prevent normal editing of the page by others.

I am still uncertain why this article remains fully protected and the SPAs are not blocked, as this is exactly what policy requires. Basket of Puppies 21:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

IMO, protecting the article was a reasonable choice. Wikipedia policy on this sort of thing is not a matter of enacting specified "punishments" for particular classes of crimes, but rather is aimed at resolving problems with a minimum of disruption. In cases like this one, blocking SPAs often is like playing a game of "whack-a-mole" -- one SPA account is blocked, and another account takes its place. In this instance there were multiple SPA accounts involved already. With the article protected, the SPAs can have access to this page to explain their objectives in editing the article, and the disruptive game of whack-a-mole can be avoided.--Orlady (talk) 23:23, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Orlady, the policy requires blocking the SPAs and not preventing established editors from improving the article. I've quoted it twice now. I really do not understand why the clear policy is not being implemented. Basket of Puppies 08:10, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi BofP, I'm sorry for being slow to respond, but I don't have much time online at the moment. Now that protection has expired, I just wanted to stress again that you need secondary sources (e.g. papers, books, newspaper articles) that discuss the issues you want to add to the article. You can use primary sources to augment these, but the article needs to be framed by secondary sources to show that sources other than Wikipedians have discussed the issues the article refers to. And for anything contentious that might have an impact on living persons, it's better to stick to secondary sources entirely. Hope this helps. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 07:45, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

SV, huh?? Are you sure you're commenting on the right article? There is no living person being discussed, unless the school has somehow been anthropomorphized. But seriously, I have no idea what you are talking about. Basket of Puppies 15:02, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

• I believe she means that identifying it as unaccredited when it might be accredited has a negative impact on graduates - who are, y'know, people. Ironholds (talk) 15:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Um, the State Bar of California explicitly calls Taft Law School unaccredited.[2] OCNative (talk) 07:47, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi again, BoP, as I see the problematic material is still there, I'm going to remove from the article anything that's sourced to a primary source that doesn't clearly say what the article says. Please try to build the article up using secondary sources. Here are a couple of suggestions: [3] [4] The aim is to make sure the article doesn't violate the BLP policy regarding individuals or groups, or the NOR policy, particularly the sections about primary sources and SYN. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 06:00, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

• • That redorbit.com link is a reprint of a Taft press release. OCNative (talk) 07:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
  • Why were the baby bar passage rates table and bar passage rates table deleted? It just reported the percentage of people that passed the bar, as the state bar reported them.OCNative (talk) 07:47, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi OC, first, the material I removed was based entirely on primary sources, which is problematic for various reasons. Secondly, all the links I tried were dead, so whether the sources were primary or secondary is currently a moot point. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 12:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Thirdly and most importantly, noting the specifics of the inverse link between California versus Taft bar qualifications is synthesis of sources when it hasn't been done elsewhere and you are instead using primary sources to draw your own correlations. Ironholds (talk) 13:38, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly right. We need to see that reliable secondary sources have explicitly made any points our article makes, and not only Wikipedians. We can use primary sources to expand on issues raised by secondary sources. We can also use them alone where there's no contentious issue at stake. But for anything that involves drawing or implying conclusions, we must stick to secondary sources. Bear in mind that the article has the potential to undermine the organization and everyone who's graduated from it. We therefore have to be careful not to use primary sources to puff it up or run it down. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 13:58, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Indeed. One of the reasons we use secondary sources is so those sources can draw conclusions; to draw conclusions ourselves is original research. Ironholds (talk) 14:28, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Note that the sources previously used are available from http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Examinations/Statistics.aspx. Apparently CalBar has rebuild its website (why does nobody ever listen to The Man)? --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:00, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

It seems reasonable for the article to state the various bar passage rates of Taft students and also simply state the bar passage rates for all law school students in the state taking the exam in the same year as well as all distance-learning students. All that can be sourced to the spot Stephan located. No connecting sentence or conclusion is necessary, and simply presenting information wouldn't violate OR. We can simply state something like In February 2010, XX percent of Taft students taking the bar exam passed, XX percent of all law school students who took the exam passed and XX percent of distance-learning law school students passed. Something like that. That could also be done in a table. This is equivalent to population information listed in infoboxes for articles on cities and towns and is a commonsense exception to only using primary sources when secondary sources comment on the information (an even better example is Darien Public Schools#Connecticut Mastery Test scores, even though it looks very outdated). Since Stephan has identified a reliable source, there's no BLP violation in simple statements about bar-passing rates. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:00, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Alumni

BoP, et al--Let's get rid of "Notable People" and add "Alumni". Notable People is a vague term and is not relevant to the entry. Any person listed should be verified as alumni. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.196.65.122 (talk) 06:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

"Notable people" is the term used in the WP:UNIGUIDE. In any event, I've added graduation dates to the two "notables" and deleted the other two entries which did not have anything showing they attended.--S. Rich (talk) 14:46, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

From WP:

Noted people — This section is not for a list of famous alumni, but rather a description of notable academic staff and alumni presented in paragraph form. Summarize the number of affiliates and alumni who have won major scholarships (Rhodes, Fulbright, etc.), major awards (Nobel, Oscar, Pulitzer, etc.), served as heads of government or other major political office, or otherwise held elite or notable distinctions (astronauts, professional athletes, CEOs, etc.). Individuals who do not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline should not be included.

How is the nut-job attorney "notable" under this definition (i.e., "...served as heads of government or other major political office, or otherwise held elite or notable distinctions (astronauts, professional athletes, CEOs, etc.").?

Her name is obviously posted to make the school look bad--get rid of it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.197.24.38 (talk) 21:16, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Bar Pass Rate

The historic pass rate listed is 31% based on a count of 56 passers out of 180 first time takers. Recommend that IP user give us a count of the repeat taker passers IOT give us a "70%" pass rate. --S. Rich (talk) 22:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

IP editor is attempting to add in the repeaters to the pass rate, but that is, I'm afraid, a WP:CHERRY analysis. The State Bar stats do not tell us that only 180 different grads took the bar during 1997-2010 time frame. That is, there could be any number of repeaters from the years prior to 1997 who came on in to successfully take the bar. Those people would increase the overall pass rate based on the false assumption that only 180 different grads had taken the bar either as first timers or repeaters. Since we do not have WP:V as to those people, the only clean way to report a pass rate is with the numbers for the first timers. But also suppose we took the pass rate for the non-successful/successful repeaters and reported on that? E.g., we gave the 31% out of the 180 first timers figure and a xx% for the xxx number repeat test attempts? (Notice I do not assume that the number of repeat test attempts equals the number of repeat test takers.) That might be a verifiable figure from the State Bar WP:RS; however, do we really need this level of detail? --S. Rich (talk) 05:41, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

To illustrate how percentage pass rates for repeaters is subject to skewing, consider two scenarios. Each scenario requires a pool of takers who have failed the bar in the past -- it could be 20, 30, 40 or whatever number. For 5 different test dates (A, B, C, D, & E) we have 4 repeat takers on each particular date. To start both scenarios, 4 repeaters come in from the pool on test date A. 1 of the 4 passes. At this point the two scenarios vary. In the first scenario, the 3 failing repeaters from date A go on to try again on test date B and 1 comes from the pool. Of the 4 takers on date B, 2 pass. On the next date -- C -- the 2 failed repeaters from B come in and 2 from the pool come in. Zero pass on date C. On date D, these 4 repeaters from C come in and test. All 4 pass. On the last date -- E -- 4 repeaters come in from the pool to test and 3 pass. Total test takers for this first scenario = 11 and total passers = 10. A pretty good percentage (91%) is the result. But in the second scenario assume that none of the failed repeaters from dates A, B, C, or D goes on to try again on a subsequent date. That is, each of the 5 test dates is filled by 4 new repeat takers from the original pool for a total of 20 takers and 20 tests. Now compare the two scenarios: assume the pass rate for each of the 5 dates is the same, e.g., 1/4 (A), 2/4 (B), 0/4 (C), 4/4 (D), and 3/4 (E). Total people who passed = 10, but the pass rate is only 50% because 20 new people came in from the original pool on each of the test dates. (In other words, the second scenario provides that only one subsequent re-testing is done for the failed first time takers.)

The difference between the two scenarios is significant and, more importantly, difficult to describe. If we present the number of repeat takers (based on state bar stats), are we tacitly describing a "first scenario" or "second scenario" percentage? Either way, giving a raw number of repeaters and then calculating a "pass rate" is a poor way to convey information to the readers. I recommend against it.--S. Rich (talk) 01:58, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

The Entire Article has Several Issues

It seems as though the original author is a bit unaware of accreditation practices and professional licensure in California. There are a number of issues with this article. I figured a list is the best way to go about this.

1. Taft Law School is registered and recognized by the California State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners (who determine what is and is not a legitimate Juris Doctor degree, and therefore who can sit to test and receive a bar license) though it is considered unaccredited ONLY by the ABA and State Accreditation agencies, HOWEVER Taft Law School is nationally accredited by the U.S. Department of Education as a post-secondary education institution that grants juris doctor degrees in law by virtue of the Distance Education Accrediting Commission and the Taft University System. The Taft University System has been continuously accredited since 2003. This means that an L2-3 (meaning Law Student, Year 2 or 3) from Taft can legally practice law like a Law Student from UCLA can (under the supervision of a professor) and that graduates are eligible to become licensed attorneys in California (the license in California doesn't give you the ability to practice law in other states) like any ABA accredited law school. The only difference is that because of the unconventional format of learning, Taft graduates must spend 4-years in law school instead of 3 years, and must complete at least 864 hours of instruction each year in order to maintain eligibility to sit for the Bar. The FYLSX (First-Year Law Student Exam) administered by the CalBar, has nothing to do with any of this, per se, because it is technically a default test that most ABA-accredited students are exempt from. California State Bar - List of Recognized California Law Schools & DEAC Taft Law School Accreditation Disclosure

2. Everyone has to take the FYLSX, not just Taft Students. The baby bar has to be taken (unless exemptions apply) by every First-Year Law student in the State of California who is in an 'unaccredited-registered school', who is 'reading law' (where you don't go to law school at all, you simply study under the guidance of a judge or attorney), or who hadn't received an associates degree, at minimum, before attending law school of any kind. The reason behind this is that after your first year, you are permitted to engage in the limited practice of law under the supervision of a professor or other licensed attorney (in misdemeanor and limited-classification civil suits as well as some forms of arbitration and any felony criminal appeals). To protect the public from malpractice of well-intentioned students, the baby-bar is administered before this privilege is bestowed upon the lawyer-to-be. That statement in the article clearly sets forth that the FYLSX is somehow a forced requirement due to Taft's abnormal status as an 'accredited but not accredited' law school. But technically, its a requirement for all L1 students, just most meet the exemption of studying accredited and have a bachelor's degree under their belt. Nonetheless, that is the only aspect of the conclusory statement made in the article that's even remotely accurate. That you are going to have to take the FYLSX after your first-year... Hence the name... California State Bar - FYLSX

3. Regardless of what law school you went to, a california license isn't going to get you into court in any other state in the United States. This is because California is one of the only states that does not have reciprocity of its license to practice law with any of the other states in the country. Not because "Taft just sucks eggs" which is what I feel like the author wanted to write based on their lack of encyclopedic tone. Even though I am not a graduate of Taft nor do I know one, I'm fairly certain that these misrepresentations would have a significant impact on their prospective students and borders on the edge of disregarding NPOV or even just diligence and proper reading of reliable source material.

Thus, I propose that we neutralize the tone, and make changes in conformity with the reasoning supra. What's everyone's thoughts on that? Luxnir (talk) 12:54, 23 March 2022 (UTC)