There is no single national teaching certificate test.
Each state and licensing agency sets its own certification exams and passing scores, and the tests fall into three broad categories: basic skills, subject content, and pedagogy or performance.
Which program you take — Praxis, TExES, FTCE, NYSTCE or another state's own — depends on where you seek certification.
Here is how each category works and when private or charter school teachers need them.
What tests are required for teacher certification?
The state that issues the certificate sets the tests.
Testing companies deliver the exams: each state and licensing organization determines its own certification requirements and, for the Praxis family, its qualifying scores too.
ETS sets no national passing score.
Which tests you face, and in what order, follows the route you take.
Some testing happens before a preparation program even starts: ETS designed Praxis Core for candidates entering teacher preparation programs, and Texas requires a Pre-Admission Content Test (PACT) from certain candidates entering an educator preparation program.
More tests come at the end, when the state signs off on your license.
The exams serve the certificate, so two questions travel together: what your state requires for certification, and whether the job you want requires the state certificate at all.
Our guide to state teaching certificates covers the credential itself, and the rules for private school certification requirements are their own state-by-state question.
Basic skills, content and pedagogy exams
State exam programs draw on three kinds of tests.
ETS's family — the Praxis test lineup of Core, Subject Assessments and the Principles of Learning and Teaching — covers all three.
Basic skills.
These exams measure academic skills in reading, mathematics and writing.
Praxis Core is designed for candidates entering teacher preparation programs.
Florida's version is the FTCE General Knowledge Test, with four subtests: Essay, English Language Skills, Reading and Mathematics.
California's is the CBEST, one of several ways to meet the state's Basic Skills Requirement — and per the state's exam page, it is no longer required for most teaching credentials when the candidate holds a bachelor's degree.
Content.
Subject exams test what you know, not how you teach it.
ETS lists over 120 Praxis Subject Tests, from Agriculture to World Languages.
California's CSET: Multiple Subjects, the route for its elementary credentials, has three subtests.
Texas candidates for the Core Subjects EC–6 certificate must pass both the TExES Core Subjects EC–6 (391) exam and the Science of Teaching Reading (293) exam.
Pedagogy.
These test how you teach.
The Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching (PLT) tests measure general pedagogical knowledge at four grade levels: Early Childhood, K–6, 5–9 and 7–12.
Texas's counterpart is the TExES Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities (PPR) EC–12 exam.
Florida pairs its General Knowledge Test with a separate Professional Education Test.
Praxis states vs state-specific exams
Praxis is ETS's brand: the tests are owned and run by ETS, and the current information bulletin covers the 2026–27 testing year, August 1, 2026 through July 31, 2027.
What no bulletin publishes is a count of Praxis states.
Each state and licensing organization determines its own certification and Praxis qualifying score requirements, and ETS's job is to publish a requirements page for each of them — not a national roster.
A fixed number of "states that use Praxis" copied from article to article has no source behind it; ETS's state requirements pages are the authority.
The closest thing ETS publishes is score routing.
If you test in one of 40 listed jurisdictions, a copy of your score is sent automatically to that state's education department.
Routing is not requirements: California and Georgia are on the automatic-reporting list while running their own exam programs.
Treat the list as a hint about paperwork, never as a list of states that make you take Praxis.
Texas is the clearest state-specific program.
Its TExES, PACT and TASC exams — and edTPA for Texas — all register through the Texas Educator Certification Examination Program website run by Pearson.
Florida's FTCE and FELE are a Florida Department of Education program, with testing services provided by the Evaluation Systems group of Pearson.
Georgia's GACE is overseen by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission.
It moved from ETS to Evaluation Systems of Pearson, and June 15, 2025 was the last date to take a GACE content assessment with ETS — scores from the two suppliers cannot be combined within one assessment.
New York (NYSTCE), Massachusetts (MTEL), Illinois (ILTS), Ohio (OAE) and Michigan (MTTC) each run their own programs as well.
The table at the bottom of this page lists what the sources behind this guide show for each of them.
Performance assessments like edTPA
edTPA is a different kind of test.
It is a performance-based, portfolio assessment of student teaching: planning, instruction and assessment tasks, including unedited classroom video.
Stanford's SCALE developed it and is its exclusive author and owner; Pearson administers it.
According to edTPA's own state pages, accessed October 2026, the assessment is a licensure requirement in Tennessee for initial license applicants since January 1, 2019, in North Carolina since September 1, 2019, and in Oregon for the Preliminary Teaching License since September 1, 2018.
Alabama requires it of educator preparation program completers.
Other states have moved the opposite direction.
New York eliminated edTPA as a certification requirement as of April 27, 2022, and now requires registered preparation programs to embed a performance assessment in clinical experience.
Per edtpa.com, Connecticut stopped requiring it effective July 1, 2024, and Utah effective May 1, 2024.
Illinois enacted its elimination in Public Act 103-0488, signed August 4, 2023 — written to run through August 31, 2025.
The pages we read do not state what applies after that date, so confirm the current rule with the Illinois State Board of Education.
Minnesota took a middle path: its adopted performance assessment uses only Tasks 1 and 3 of edTPA, effective July 19, 2024.
The assessment itself is changing too.
Pearson is launching edTPA Essentials in August 2026, a simplified version with a two-task structure.
Confirm the performance-assessment rule in your state
Do private or charter school teachers need these tests?
These exams are the gate to a state certificate, so the private and charter question is really the certificate question: does the job require the state's credential?
At private schools, the answer is a state rule, and it is written school category by school category.
Where a state's certification rule reaches private schools, it may cover only some categories — accredited schools, approved schools, chartered nonpublic schools — so the answer can differ school to school within one state.
Where no rule reaches a school, the hiring standard is the school's own — a certificate, exam scores, a degree, subject expertise or, at a faith-based school, perhaps a religious credential.
The posting tells you which.
Federal statistics cannot settle it either.
NCES says certification-type data are not available for private school teachers, so there is no national share of certified private school teachers to generalize from.
Charter teachers sit closer to the certification system, but the rule is still each state's charter law.
Nationally, in 2020–21, 75.3% of public charter school teachers held a regular state teaching certificate and 11.5% held none, against 90.9% and 1.3% among traditional public school teachers, according to NCES's 2020–21 National Teacher and Principal Survey.
The exam attached to a charter job can even be a state-specific one: Texas requires a Pre-Admission Content Test (PACT) for some candidates pursuing a teaching assignment at some Texas charter schools.
The practical route is the same for both sectors: find the certification rule that covers the school you are targeting — the state-by-state private school certification requirements, or the charter school certification rules — and the exam list comes with it.
Exam program by state
The table below collects, program by program, what the sources behind this guide document.
It is not a national directory, and these programs move: the rows carry effective dates and last-administration dates because the underlying rules changed recently.
| State | Program | What the sources show |
|---|---|---|
| Texas | TExES, PACT, TASC | TExES, PACT, TASC and edTPA for Texas register through the Texas Educator Certification Examination Program website run by Pearson. PACT applies to certain preparation-program entrants and to some candidates pursuing teaching assignments at some Texas charter schools. |
| California | CBEST, CSET, NES | CBEST is one of several ways to meet the Basic Skills Requirement and is no longer required for most credentials with a bachelor's degree. CSET: Multiple Subjects has three subtests. The NES Foundations of Reading exam became operational July 1, 2025, for candidates who must show literacy-instruction competency but cannot complete the Literacy Performance Assessment, as the state's RICA requirement is phased out. |
| Florida | FTCE, FELE | A Florida Department of Education program, with testing services from the Evaluation Systems group of Pearson. The General Knowledge Test has four subtests. |
| New York | NYSTCE | The ATAS teaching-assistant test has been retired and replaced by the NES Foundations of Classroom Support and Instruction (519) test for New York Teaching Assistant certification. |
| Georgia | GACE | Overseen by the Georgia Professional Standards Commission. GACE moved from ETS to Evaluation Systems of Pearson; June 15, 2025 was the last date to take a GACE content assessment with ETS. |
| Massachusetts | MTEL | The Communication and Literacy Skills test is split into Reading and Writing subtests. NES Essential Academic Skills Reading and Writing subtests are accepted as an alternative. |
| Illinois | ILTS | The Elementary Education (Grades 1–6) test (305) is being retired in summer 2027. Its replacement, Elementary Education (Grades K–6) (702), is first offered June 29, 2026. |
| Ohio | OAE | Assessment of Professional Knowledge tests pair multiple-choice questions with a case study and a work-product written assignment. The State Board of Education adopted NES Foundations of Classroom Support (NT517) as a testing option for the ESEA educational-aide endorsement, with testing available from September 1, 2026. |
| Michigan | MTTC | The Elementary Education (103) test has a last administration date of December 20, 2026. Newer Lower Elementary (PK–3) and Upper Elementary (3–6) endorsements are tested through subtests. |
| Tennessee, North Carolina, Oregon, Alabama | edTPA (performance assessment) | edTPA's state pages, accessed October 2026, list it as a licensure requirement. Tennessee: initial license applicants since January 1, 2019. North Carolina: since September 1, 2019. Oregon: Preliminary Teaching License since September 1, 2018. Alabama: educator preparation program completers. |
For any state the table does not cover, and for any row that touches your own plans, the authority is the state education agency or professional standards board behind the program.
It names the required tests, the passing scores and how scores must reach it.
Career information, not legal advice. Exam requirements, program names and passing scores change; confirm the current requirements with your state education agency or licensing board before you register for a test or sign a contract.