FTCE General Knowledge Pass Rate 2026: 63% Official

The official FTCE General Knowledge Test pass rate is 63%. That figure comes from the Florida Department of Education's FTCE/FELE 2025 Annual Administration and Technical Report, released in June 2026, and it means that of the 6,861 candidates counted at the assessment level in 2025, 63% passed all four subtests on their best attempt. The FTCE is unusual in this respect: Florida publishes pass rates by test and by year, so you do not need anyone's estimate. What you do need is to know which of Florida's several official numbers you are looking at, because the same report also supports 41%, 47%, 65%, 72% and 74%.

How the General Knowledge Test is really scored

The General Knowledge Test is not one exam with one score. It is four subtests, scored and reported independently, and you must pass all four. Three of them report a scaled score; the fourth reports rater points. Confusing those two is the source of nearly every wrong number written about this exam.

Subtest	Format and time	Passing standard	Max % correct needed
825 — Essay	1 essay prompt, 50 minutes	At least 6 of 8 rater points	Not applicable (holistic)
826 — English Language Skills	~30 multiple choice, 40 minutes	Scaled score of at least 200	63%
827 — Reading	~30 multiple choice, 55 minutes	Scaled score of at least 200	70%
828 — Mathematics	~35 multiple choice, 1 hour 40 minutes	Scaled score of at least 200	63%

Total seat time is 245 minutes, with a 15-minute break if you sit all four in one session. Registration is $32.50 per subtest or $130 for all four.

A scaled score of 200 is not a percentage. Pearson converts your raw score — the number of items you answered correctly — onto a common scale so that different forms of the same subtest can share a single passing mark. There is no "200 points" to earn and no "200 questions." Pages that convert 200 into a percentage are producing a number that does not exist.

The proof is in Florida's own Maximum Percentages of Correct Answers Needed to Achieve a Minimum Passing Score table, updated February 2, 2026. A scaled 200 on Reading corresponds to as much as 70% correct. The identical scaled 200 on English Language Skills or Mathematics corresponds to as little as 63%. Same score, different raw performance — and those figures are ceilings, because harder forms of a subtest require fewer correct answers to reach 200.

The Essay is scored on a different system entirely. Two trained raters each read your response holistically and assign 1 to 4 points; the two scores are added, and you need at least 6 of the 8 available points, a standard effective January 1, 2025. If the raters disagree by more than one point, a Chief Rater resolves it. There is no scaled score on the Essay, so a "200" is meaningless there.

One more detail that shapes the folklore: FTCE score reports show PASS, or NOT PASS with a numeric score. Candidates who pass never see a number at all. Every "I scored X" story you find in a forum comes from someone who failed.

Why the pass rates you see online disagree

Not because sources are guessing — because Florida publishes six defensible rates and most writers grab whichever one is highest or lowest. All of the following are official and all describe the General Knowledge Test.

Official figure	Rate	What it actually counts
Assessment level, 2025, best attempt (N = 6,861)	63%	Candidates who passed all four subtests
All subtest attempts, 2025 (N = 34,252)	65%	Every subtest sitting, first tries and retakes
First attempts only, 2025 (N = 25,535)	74%	Subtest sittings with no prior attempt
Retake attempts only, 2025 (N = 8,717)	41%	Subtest sittings that were retakes
Cumulative 2022–2025, best attempt (N = 22,436)	72%	Passed all four at any point over four years
Cumulative 2022–2025, first attempt (N = 22,436)	47%	Passed all four on the first try

The gap between 41% and 74% is not disagreement. It is the difference between counting people and counting sittings, and between counting first tries and counting everything.

The year matters just as much. At the assessment level, Florida reports 73% for 2022, 73% for 2023, 80% for 2024 and 63% for 2025. An article claiming "about 80%" is citing 2024 accurately and is simply out of date. Because 2025 is the sharpest single-year drop in the four-year series, anything written before mid-2026 will overstate current performance.

What the official rate does not cover is worth stating plainly. It is a record of how Florida's 2025 test-takers performed, not a forecast for you. It mixes candidates from state-approved preparation programs with everyone else, though Florida does report those cohorts separately. And it says nothing about how many attempts an individual needed.

What separates passing from failing candidates

Mathematics, and whether you get it right the first time. In 2025, across all attempts, the Essay passed at 70%, Reading at 68%, English Language Skills at 67% — and Mathematics at 58%. On retakes the spread widens brutally: Essay 42%, Reading 43%, English Language Skills 43%, Mathematics 35%. The 2024-to-2025 decline hit all four subtests, but Mathematics fell furthest.

The retake cliff is the other half of the story. First attempts passed at 74%; retakes at 41%. You must wait 31 calendar days before retaking a subtest you failed, you retake only the subtests you failed, and you pay $32.50 again each time. Candidates who treat the first sitting as a diagnostic are the ones who end up in the 41%.

Here is where the questions actually come from, per the official Test Information Guide blueprint.

Subtest	Competency	Approx. % of subtest questions
English Language Skills	Knowledge of language structure	33%
English Language Skills	Knowledge of vocabulary application	33%
English Language Skills	Knowledge of standard English conventions	34%
Reading	Key ideas and details	40%
Reading	Text structure and meaning	25%
Reading	Integration of information and ideas	35%
Mathematics	Number sense, concepts, and operations	25%
Mathematics	Geometry and measurement	25%
Mathematics	Algebraic thinking and the coordinate plane	30%
Mathematics	Probability, statistics, and data interpretation	20%

Three things fall out of that blueprint. Algebraic thinking is the largest single block on the weakest subtest — roughly ten or eleven of about 35 Mathematics questions. Reading is front-loaded on key ideas and details at 40%, spread over approximately five passages per form. And Mathematics gives you 100 minutes for about 35 questions, close to three minutes each, with an on-screen four-function calculator and a reference sheet; the failures there are not caused by the clock.

The Essay has no percentage breakdown because it is a single competency, formal college-level writing. The arithmetic is what matters: two raters, 6 points needed out of 8. Two 3s clear it. A 2 from one rater means you need a 4 from the other, which is why an uneven essay fails more often than a merely plain one.

The bottom line

63% of the candidates Florida counted in 2025 passed all four General Knowledge subtests. Roughly three in four first attempts pass; roughly two in five retakes do. Ignore any source that translates the scaled 200 into a percentage, because the real answer — at most 63% correct on English Language Skills and Mathematics, at most 70% on Reading, and no percentage at all on the Essay — is published by Florida and is different for every subtest. Budget your preparation toward Mathematics, and treat the first sitting as the one that counts, because statistically it is.

Once you know the standard you are aiming at, the useful next step is answering questions under the real time limits rather than reading about them. You can work through a free FTCE General Knowledge Test practice test to find out which of the four subtests is your weak one before Florida charges you $32.50 to find out for you.