State teacher certification exams

Each state on this page runs its own teacher testing program instead of, or alongside, Praxis. The programs are built and delivered by Pearson's Evaluation Systems group under contract to the state agency — Florida's FTCE, Texas's TExES, California's CSET, Massachusetts's MTEL, New York's NYSTCE — with Georgia's GACE moving to Pearson from ETS. Because the state owns the program, it also owns the passing score, the subtest structure and the retake policy, and none of them transfer: a California CSET result means nothing in Texas.

The structural rule they share is pass-every-subtest. Florida's General Knowledge Test has four subtests including an essay and all four must be passed; Texas's Core Subjects EC-6 is five subject exams each passed on its own, with the overall result reported only as passed or not passed; California's CSET Multiple Subjects and Georgia's GACE are scored per subtest; New York's EAS is the exception, a single unified test. A retake is therefore usually one subtest.

Retake timing is the other difference. Texas holds you until the prior result posts and then imposes a waiting period before the next appointment; Florida, Massachusetts and New York publish their own retake windows; the pages link each policy.

Where a state program and Praxis overlap, the state agency decides which counts. Some states accept a Praxis subject test in place of their own for certain credentials; others require the state test regardless of Praxis results, and a few accept either. The credential route you are on also changes the list: a traditional preparation program usually sets the testing sequence itself, an alternative certification pathway front-loads the subject test so a candidate can teach while completing coursework, and an out-of-state transfer is assessed against the receiving state's requirements rather than the tests already passed.