The Joe E. Covington Award for Research on Testing for Licensure

The National Conference of Bar Examiners’ Joe E. Covington Award for Research on Testing for Licensure honors Joe E. Covington, a former dean of the University of Missouri–Columbia School of Law who was the first Director of Testing for NCBE. The Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) was created and launched largely through his vision and perseverance.

The award is intended to provide support for graduate students in any discipline doing research germane to testing and measurement, particularly in a high-stakes licensure setting.

For more information about the award and how to apply, see the 2013 Call for Proposals.

For a history of the award and selected abstracts of winning submissions, see The Joe E. Covington Award: Twelve Years of Encouraging Research on Testing for Licensure.

2013 Covington Award Recipient

Amy Clark, of the University of Kansas, received the 2013 Covington Award for her proposal "Review of Parameter Drift Methodology and Implications for Operational Testing.”

The Joe E. Covington Award: Twelve Years of Encouraging Research on Testing for Licensure

Joe Covington: A Remembrance

A Think-Aloud Approach to Understanding Performance on the Multistate Bar Examination (2004 Covington Award Recipient)

Item Response Theory Parameterization of the Multistate Bar Exam (2005 Covington Award Recipient)

Hate and the Bar: Is the Hale Case McCarthyism Redux or a Victory for Racial Equality? (Excerpts from the 2000 Covington Award Recipient)