Umpire rule knowledge is down this year

[SRW]

Up here in airport code SEA, we give the test twice - once to only first and second year umpires, and again to the veterans. Both are open book, open note, open neighbor. If you're able to talk to partners on the field, why not on the test? Testing how someone takes a test isn't the goal here. We are testing how well they know the rules, and how well they can refer to the book and find it.

And yes, even with this method, we managed to have a few people fail the test (less than 70%). When that happens, they know which questions they missed, so we make them go back and write every rule reference to every question (even the ones they got right) and turn it back in for grading.