MTEL Communication & Literacy Pass Rate 2026: 71.4%

Massachusetts publishes this one officially, so there is no need to estimate it. In program year September 2024 through August 2025, 71.4% of the 7,703 candidates who attempted the MTEL Communication and Literacy Skills test (field 01) passed it, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's annual summary of candidate passing rates by test. Broken out by subtest, 79.7% of 7,323 candidates passed Reading and 76.6% of 7,273 passed Writing. The combined figure sits below both subtest rates because the test is only cleared when you have passed both, and DESE reported the identical 71.4% overall figure the year before.

How the test is actually scored

The qualifying score is 240 on each subtest, and 240 is a scaled score. It is not a percentage, it is not a percent-correct figure, and it is not a number of questions. Pages that convert it into "80%" are doing arithmetic on a number whose denominator appears nowhere on the official test page.

The clearest proof is that the same 240 applies to two subtests that are not built alike. Reading (101) is 42 multiple-choice questions. Writing (201) is 35 multiple-choice questions, 7 short-answer sentence-correction items, and 2 open-response assignments — and on that subtest the open-response work carries half the score. A single percentage cannot describe both a 42-item multiple-choice test and a test that is 50% human-rated writing. The 240 is a common scale onto which different raw performances are mapped, which is precisely why the same threshold can be printed for both.

Two further details break the percentage math outright. The official test page notes that tests "may include questions that will not count toward candidates' scores," so the number of items on your screen is not the number of items you are scored on. And no raw-to-scale conversion is published anywhere, which means nobody outside the testing contractor can tell you how many questions 240 represents. Anyone who tells you to "get 34 of 42 right" invented that.

Official parameter	Value
Qualifying score	240 on each subtest, passed separately
Reading subtest (101)	42 multiple-choice questions
Writing subtest (201)	35 multiple-choice, 7 short-answer sentence corrections, 2 open-response assignments
Multiple-choice questions, both subtests	77
Computer-based appointment	4 hours 15 minutes (255 minutes), including a 15-minute tutorial and nondisclosure agreement
Online proctored, both subtests	2 hours 30 minutes Writing, 15-minute break, 1 hour 30 minutes Reading
Online proctored, one subtest	3 hours
Fee, both subtests	$112
Fee, single subtest	$69.50
Administered by	Pearson, for Massachusetts DESE

What the official rate does and does not cover

DESE states its methodology plainly. The report "presents the percent of candidates (i.e., test takers) who passed the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure on their initial or subsequent attempt(s)," and "the percent passing is based on each candidate's best attempt during the program year." Three consequences follow, and the sites quoting 71.4% miss all three.

It is not a first-attempt rate. A candidate who failed in October and passed in March is counted once, as a pass. So 71.4% is already a multi-attempt number. It answers "how many people got there inside twelve months," not "how likely am I to pass on Saturday."

It is censored by the program year. Someone who fails in July and passes in September is a failure in one annual report and a pass in the next. Because retakes are unlimited, the true eventual pass rate is higher than any annual figure DESE prints.

It averages two populations with very different odds. DESE's per-administration reports separate them, and that split is the most useful thing in the entire dataset. For the March 16 to May 10, 2026 administration window:

Subtest	Group	Candidates	Percent passing
Reading (101)	First-time takers	1,042	82.4%
Reading (101)	Retakers	305	44.3%
Writing (201)	First-time takers	1,024	77.7%
Writing (201)	Retakers	419	39.4%

First-timers pass at roughly double the rate of retakers on both subtests. That inverts the usual assumption that a second attempt is the easy one, and the reason it inverts tells you how to prepare.

What separates passing from failing candidates

The published content weights explain the pattern in the pass rates better than any study tip does.

Subtest	Objective	Weight
Reading (101)	Meaning of words and phrases	16.7%
Reading (101)	Main idea and supporting details	16.7%
Reading (101)	Writer's purpose and point of view	16.7%
Reading (101)	Relationships among ideas	16.7%
Reading (101)	Critical reasoning	16.7%
Reading (101)	Outlining, summarizing, graph interpretation	16.7%
Writing (201)	Establish and maintain a main idea	15%
Writing (201)	Sentence construction, grammar, usage	10%
Writing (201)	Spelling, capitalization, punctuation	10%
Writing (201)	Revise sentences containing errors	15%
Writing (201)	Summary exercise (open response)	15%
Writing (201)	Composition exercise (open response)	35%

The composition is the single heaviest thing on the test. At 35% of the Writing subtest it outweighs every other objective on either subtest, and it outweighs the grammar, usage, spelling, capitalization and punctuation objectives put together. Add the 15% summary exercise and half the Writing score is prose you have to produce and a rater has to judge. That is a performance skill. It does not respond to flashcards, and it is the reason Writing trails Reading in every cohort DESE reports.

Reading offers nothing to triage. Six objectives at 16.7% each, roughly six to eight questions apiece, spread evenly. There is no heavy domain to load up on and no light one to skip. Reading rewards pace and inference under a clock, which is why its first-time rate is the highest number in the data at 82.4%.

Retaking without changing method does not work. Retaker pass rates of 44.3% and 39.4% are what happens when candidates who failed on produced writing sit the same test again with the same preparation and write the same essay. The failure was never a knowledge gap that a second exposure closes.

Use the subtest structure. Reading and Writing are scored and passed separately, so a pass banks permanently. If you clear one and miss the other, you retake only the failed subtest for $69.50 rather than the $112 both-subtest fee — and you get to spend all of your preparation on the half that beat you.

The bottom line

The MTEL Communication and Literacy Skills pass rate is 71.4% overall, 79.7% on Reading and 76.6% on Writing, published by Massachusetts DESE for program year 2024–2025 and identical at the overall level to the prior year. That number already includes retakes. The single-sitting reality is better than it looks if you are new to the test — 82.4% on Reading and 77.7% on Writing among first-timers in spring 2026 — and considerably worse if you are coming back, at 44.3% and 39.4%. The 240 you have to reach is a scaled score with no published conversion to a percentage, so discount any page that hands you one. The practical takeaway is to get Writing right on the first attempt, because half that subtest is writing you generate under a clock and it is the part that does not improve merely by sitting the test again.

The cheapest way to learn whether Writing is your problem is to work both subtests against the timer before you spend the $112 — start with a free MTEL Communication and Literacy Skills practice test.