NC won’t raise the minimum score to pass teacher licensure exams. Here’s why.
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- NC State Board of Education voted to keep current teacher licensure test scores.
- Officials cited teacher shortages and minimal impact on student growth as reasons.
- Data showed raising scores would lower pass rates without boosting effectiveness.
North Carolina is not raising its passing scores for teacher licensure tests out of concern it would reduce the number of educators working with students.
The State Board of Education voted Thursday to leave unchanged the cut scores on the edTPA exams that new and aspiring teachers are required to pass for licensure. State education officials say the negatives outweigh the benefits of raising the scores to what’s recommended by the test provider.
“Raising the cut score would not create a situation where we feel we have more effective teachers,” said Tom Tomberlin, senior director of the state Department of Public Instruction’s Office of Educator Preparation and Licensure. “That cut score would result in fewer candidates passing the test. But those candidates who do pass, we would not see a significant difference in the effectiveness of those teachers.”
Both DPI and the Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission (PEPSC) recommended not raising the passing scores. PEPSC is a state commission that was created by lawmakers to advise the state board.
Should NC require licensure tests for teachers?
The test score issue comes amid ongoing concerns about teacher shortages and whether the state’s public schools have enough teachers.
A state report released in April showed the teacher turnover rate was 9.88%. Nearly one out of every 10 North Carolina teachers left the profession between March 2023 and March 2024.
Legislation was filed this year to end all standardized testing requirements for teacher licensure and to prohibit the State Board of Education from requiring passage of a standardized exam to become a teacher.
But the bills, which would eliminate tests such as edTPA, have not made it out of legislative committees.
NC lower than recommended score
Since 2019, aspiring North Carolina teachers have had to pass the edTPA exam. The exam measures their pedagogy, or the effectiveness of their use of teaching methods and strategies.
Most applicants take the edTPA while they’re student-teaching in their senior year of college. But they can also take it within their first three years of teaching.
Aspiring teachers are tested on 13 to 18 rubrics, or content areas. Each rubric is worth up to five points.
Most teachers are tested on 15 rubrics with a state passing score of 38. Pearson recommends a cut score of 39 to 42, This group includes licensure in areas such as math, language arts, social studies, science and special education.
People who want to be licensed to teach world languages are tested in 13 rubrics and must score at least a 32 on the edTPA. Pearson recommends a passing score of 36.
People who want to be licensed to teach both elementary school math and reading are tested on 18 rubrics and must get at least a score of 45. Pearson recommends a minimum edTPA score of 50 for those teachers.
“We are a little lower than what Pearson generally recommends,” Tomberlin told the state board. “That decision was made at the time because it was the initial implementation of the edTPA.”
Impact of raising passing score
Out of the state’s test-takers, 74% pass the edTPA on the first attempt. After multiple attempts, the passing rate rises to 85%.
But Tomberlin said 57% of the people who fail the first time don’t make a second attempt. He said they either apply for a limited teaching license or quit the profession.
“Raising the cut score would increase the number of failures and therefore we would have to predict that the majority of those that fail would go on to never attempt the test,” Tomberlin said.
Raising the cut score from 38 to 39 would lower the pass rate by 3.9 percentage points, impacting 856 educators. But Tomberlin presented data showing that the one-point increase in the cut score wouldn’t have much impact on student performance.
The state annually assesses the effectiveness of teachers based on the growth their students show on state exams. A state analysis found student growth was essentially unchanged for teachers who scored a 38 or 39 on the edTPA.
Tomberlin said it would take raising the cut score to around 44 to see noticeable impacts on student growth. But that would also lead to a sharp decline in the number of people who pass to become teachers.
NC scores comparable with other states
Tomberlin said most states that use edTPA are like North Carolina in settling their cut score slightly below what Pearson recommends.
For instance, in the exam most teachers must pass, North Carolina’s cut score of 38 is higher than what’s required in Alabama, Connecticut, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. North Carolina has a lower cut score than California, Illinois and Tennessee.
The state board vote to keep the current scores was unanimous. But state board member Olivia Oxendine said she hopes that the schools that train future teachers will continue to try to improve their training methods.
In the meantime, Tomberlin said they’ll report back to the state board if there’s a substantial change in the pass rate.
Oxendine said North Carolina should make sure that its cut scores aren’t trailing the other states. Oxendine said the state should “stay at least in the middle, if not slightly higher, than those other states in terms of our standards.”
