CSET Multiple Subjects Pass Rate 2026: 64% Official

The official CSET: Multiple Subjects pass rate is 64.0 percent for the 2023-24 testing year. That figure is published by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing in its "Annual Report on Passing Rates of Commission-Approved Examinations from 2019-20 to 2023-24," presented to the Commission's Educator Preparation Committee in August 2025: of 5,554 examinees who completed the current version of the exam that year, 3,552 passed. The same table gives a cumulative rate of 70.7 percent — 8,410 of 11,888 examinees who have passed eventually, counting every retake. Both numbers are official, both are correct, and they are not interchangeable. Most rates quoted elsewhere are one of these two with the label that gave it meaning stripped off — or a percentage back-calculated from a scaled score that is not a percentage at all.

How the CSET: Multiple Subjects is actually scored

The exam is owned by the Commission and administered by Pearson's Evaluation Systems group. It is three subtests, each scored separately with its own pass or fail. There is no combined exam score.

Official parameter	Value
Subtests	Three: Subtest I (101), Subtest II (214), Subtest III (225)
Questions	143 multiple-choice and 11 constructed-response across all three
Section weighting	70% multiple-choice, 30% constructed-response on every subtest
Score scale	100 to 300, reported per subtest
Passing score	220 per subtest
Time, taken separately	3 hours (I), 3 hours (II), 2 hours 15 minutes (III)
Time, all three in one session	5 hours (300 minutes) total
Fee	$99 per subtest; $247 for all three taken together at a test center
Results	Available within 5 weeks of testing
Pass rate, 2023-24	64.0% (3,552 of 5,554 examinees)
Cumulative pass rate	70.7% (8,410 of 11,888 examinees)

220 is not 73 percent. A scaled score is not a share of questions answered correctly; converting one into a percentage produces a meaningless number. The Commission's description of the process is explicit: "The total subtest score is based on the number of raw score points earned on each section (multiple-choice section and/or constructed-response section) and the weighting of each section. Raw scores are converted to a scale of 100 to 300, with the scaled score of 220 representing the minimum passing score for each subtest."

Three things follow. The scale floors at 100, not zero, so dividing 220 by 300 to get 73.3 percent is arithmetic on the wrong quantity. The step from raw points to scaled points is a conversion, not a ratio — fixed by the standard-setting study the Commission adopted, and it absorbs differences in difficulty between forms. And the raw score is itself a weighted blend, 70 percent multiple-choice and 30 percent human-scored writing. The official test page adds that tests "may include questions that are evaluated for future administrations and do not affect a candidate's score," so you cannot count your own correct answers either. No public table maps a raw score to 220. Anyone publishing "you need 73 percent right" invented it.

Why the figures you find online disagree

The first reason is that California publishes two official CSET pass rates, and they measure different populations. The 64.0 percent above counts everyone who sat the exam. The Commission's Title II Annual Report Card for 2023-24, a separate federal reporting obligation, puts the CSET pass rate at 97 percent for all three preparation routes — but that number covers only candidates who completed a California teacher preparation program, is calculated subtest by subtest rather than exam by exam, excludes any program with fewer than ten completers, and reports CSET as a single line across all subject areas. It is a measure of preparation programs, not of the exam. Both figures are real; quoting the 97 without those four qualifiers is where much of the confusion starts.

The second reason is annual versus cumulative. The Commission defines the cumulative rate as the number of examinees who have passed divided by the number who have taken all sections, explicitly accounting for the fact that people retake until they pass. That is why 70.7 percent sits above 64.0 percent. It is also why the cumulative rate drifts upward as a cohort ages — recent cohorts have simply had fewer chances to retest.

The third reason is that two versions of this exam were running side by side in 2023-24, and they post very different numbers. The version updated in 2022 is the one nearly everyone now takes: 5,554 examinees, 64.0 percent annual, 70.7 percent cumulative over its short life. The older 2017 version was winding down — 94 examinees that year at 62.8 percent — but it carries a cumulative rate of 85.5 percent across 36,502 examinees since 2017. A page citing 85.5 percent is citing an exam almost nobody sits anymore. The Commission also notes that a further revised Subtest III, realigned to the 2019 California Arts Standards, launched more recently and that its results will appear only in a future report — so even the 64.0 percent describes a test that has since moved.

The fourth reason is that the population itself has changed, which quietly invalidates older figures. AB 130, signed in 2021, let candidates satisfy the subject matter requirement through program-verified coursework, a qualifying academic major, or a mix of coursework and exam. SB 153, signed in June 2024, let a bachelor's degree alone satisfy the basic skills requirement. Candidates meeting the subject matter requirement by examination fell from 7,178 in 2021-22 to 5,441 in 2023-24, a 24 percent drop, in a period when total credentials issued rose. In 2023-24 only 45 percent of Multiple Subject candidates used CSET at all. The Commission's own read is that the group still taking the test may differ from prior years — and its report runs only through July 31, 2024, one month after SB 153 took effect.

What separates passing from failing candidates

The Commission publishes item counts by domain rather than percentage weights, and the counts are unusually even.

Subtest	Domain	Multiple-choice	Constructed-response
I (101)	Reading, Language, and Literature	26	2
I (101)	History and Social Science	26	2
II (214)	Science	26	2
II (214)	Mathematics	26	2
III (225)	Physical Education	13	1
III (225)	Human Development	13	1
III (225)	Visual and Performing Arts	13	1
All three	Total	143	11

There is no averaging. Each subtest must reach 220 on its own, and the Commission states that candidates "cannot combine scores across different administrations of the same subtest" — each must be passed in a single sitting. Strength in reading does not carry mathematics. Three hurdles is a structurally harder task than one composite exam at the same nominal bar, which is the main reason a 64 percent rate coexists with content most candidates find individually manageable.

The five-hour bundle is a trap disguised as a discount. Booked separately the three subtests get 8 hours 15 minutes of testing time and cost $297. Booked together they cost $247 and get 5 hours. The subtests are not individually timed in that session and you may work them in any order, so the whole 3 hours 15 minutes of savings comes out of your own budgeting. Over-invest in Subtest I and you reach Subtest III with no clock left.

Thirty percent of every subtest is written. Eleven short focused constructed responses carry nearly a third of each subtest score, and no bank of multiple-choice drilling prepares for them. Subtest III is the most brittle: three unrelated fields at 13 questions and one essay apiece, so a single weak domain moves the scaled score more there than anywhere else. Subtest II is math and science, comes with a four-function on-screen calculator, and cannot be taken through online proctoring at all — that one requires a test center.

Retaking works, and the data says who needs it. The gap between the 64.0 percent annual rate and the 70.7 percent cumulative rate is the measured value of trying again. The Commission also publishes the spread underneath the headline for 2023-24: 42.7 percent for African American examinees, 54.9 percent for Hispanic American examinees, 73.5 percent for white examinees, 75.2 percent for Asian American examinees. Candidates whose undergraduate major was liberal studies — one of the majors California accepts in place of this exam entirely — passed at 51.3 percent, below the overall rate. Whatever that reflects, it is not a shortage of exposure to the content.

The bottom line

Roughly two in three people who sit the CSET: Multiple Subjects pass it in a given year, and roughly seven in ten pass eventually. Those are the Commission's own 2023-24 numbers. What they do not tell you is that the bar is 220 on a 100-to-300 scale per subtest, that no published table converts that to a percentage of questions, that all three subtests must clear the bar independently in single sittings, and that the cheapest booking gives you the least time. Those four facts shape a study plan; the pass rate does not. And with 55 percent of Multiple Subject candidates now meeting the subject matter requirement without the exam, the first question worth asking is whether your program will take coursework or your major instead.

If the exam is still your route, find out which of the seven domains is actually costing you before you book a $247 five-hour session. Work through a free CSET Multiple Subjects practice test and let the weak subtest tell you where the studying goes.

Official numbers that matter more than an estimated pass rate

The figures below come from the official source documents linked in the table. They are included so you can make study and registration decisions from published requirements rather than an unsupported estimate.

Published detail	Value	Official source
Passing exam scores must be used for certification purposes within ten years of the passing test date.	10 years	California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), administered by Pearson's Evaluation Systems (California Educator Credentialing Examinations program)