License Exam Pass Rates

What does this dashboard show?

The dashboard shows pass rates on exams required for licensure.

Who is included in the dashboard?

Candidates pursuing initial teaching licenses (see Glossary) who completed an educator preparation program between 2015-present.

What years does it cover?

Includes exam attempts made over the last five years. No exam attempts beyond the most recent completion year in the data are included. For example, if the most recent completion year available is 2024, the dashboard will not display subsequent license exam results.

What are the sources of the data?

The rosters of EPP candidates are submitted annually to NCDPI from EPPs. The license exam data comes from two test vendors – ETS and Pearson.

Note that for data provided by Pearson (e.g., edTPA, Foundations of Reading), NCDPI does not receive a candidate identification number that allows for a direct match to the rosters provided by the EPPs. Consequently, NCDPI uses a multi-step matching process to verify whether the candidate in the test data matches a candidate in the rosters provided by the EPPs. These steps include matching on the last five digits of the SSN, first and last names, and the institution listed by the candidate when taking the exam. Using this process, NCDPI matches around 90% of the test scores to the EPP rosters of candidates.

What is the smallest disaggregation of the data that will display?

Results will be displayed for groups of ten or more candidates.

Is there any other context that would be helpful to know about the data?

Candidates are allowed to take the exams as many times as needed within their testing window, with no penalty for the number of attempts. You can learn more about license exam requirements in NC State Board of Education Policy LICN-003.

Depending on the question you are trying to answer, you can choose to see results based on all exam attempts, the first attempt, or best (highest-scoring) attempt. One note when looking at the line chart showing the trend by year–if you are examining all or first attempts, the year is straightforward; it is showing all the attempts or first attempts in the given year. However, if you are viewing best attempts, it is showing results for candidates’ whose best attempt to date happened in that year. Here’s an example:

Suppose a candidate took an exam two times in 2022, two times in 2023, and once in 2024, when the candidate passed. If you have selected “all attempts”, then all five attempts will factor into the graph–two in 2022, two in 2023 and one in 2024.  If you have selected “first attempt”, then the first attempt in 2022 will be included in 2022 and no other attempt will. If you have selected “best attempt”, only the attempt in 2024 will be included in the graph.

If you are interested in pass rates based on the best attempts from candidates, see the chart at lower left showing the pass rate by attempt, and cumulatively, for the given groups and filters that you have selected. Unlike the other charts on the dashboard, this chart does not change based on whether you select all, first or best attempts because its purpose is to show results by attempt. This way, you can see how many people attempt exams a second, third, fourth time and how many pass on those subsequent attempts. On this chart, the years included will be different from what you were seeing on the other charts. Because candidates have three years from their first attempt to pass the test, we have to go back further in time to allow the testing window to close. The following table illustrates:

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