Rut,
I agree with you that just because one has rules knowledge this doesn't make him a good official. There are many other factors and you have cited a few. However, my original post does not in any way concern this topic. I am simply saying that the purpose of the test as an evaluation tool is undermined if one cannot guage an official's RULES KNOWLEDGE by looking at his test score. The reason that this is so is because an official can significantly increase his score by simply guessing. This is my most important point and I hope that Dan will agree with me on this.
The crux of my argument is that under the current grading system a score of 70 does not mean that the official knows 70% of the material on the test, but rather means that he only knows about 50%. This is a problem because most people don't realize this.
If we adopted my +1, 0, -1 scoring, the scores would then much more accurately reflect how much of the material the officials know. I thought that was the purpose of the test--to see how much we know about the rules! For those of you out there that do not like this proposed scoring system, the are other alternatives. One is to simply go to the a,b,c,d,e multiple choice type of test. This would mean that a guesser would on average only get 1 out of every 5 blind guesses right. This would be an improvement over the current system in my opinion, but would require the NFHS to change the way they write the test. The beauty of my +1,0,-1 scoring system is that it does not require the NFHS to change anything. The state or local association that is grading the test simply changes how they score it.
Once again, I am not claiming that one's test score in any way equates to doing a quality job on the court. Clearly someone who scores an 84 may be a much better official than someone who scored a 99. However, I do believe that it is extremely difficult to do a quality job with poor knowledge of the rules. One can get away with it most of the time, but when the crazy situations do occur these officials are at a loss as to what to do. They will simply do what they think is right, try to sell that, and move on. If it works--great, but I would prefer to know how to handle the situation properly and never put myself in a potential mess.
PS Chuck, you crack me up!