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State Assessments for Educator Certification

Texas Examinations of Educator Standards (TExES)
Texas Oral Proficiency Test (TOPT)
Texas Examinations for Master Teachers (TExMaT)

The State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC)/Texas Education Agency (TEA) has developed assessments for each educator certificate, called TExES (Texas Examinations of Educator Standards). All initial certification students must pass at least two state exams: a content, or generalist, exam, and a pedagogy exam. Students seeking bilingual certification must take either the Texas Oral Proficiency Test (TOPT) or the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) in addition to their content and pedagogy exams. Note: The TOPT will not be administered after August 2010. Students seeking special education certification must take two content exams, and a pedagogy exam. To determine which state assessments are required for a certificate, students should check their degree or certification plan, view the SoE bulletin board in the hallway outside Bayou 1231, or ask an SoE Academic Adviser.

Initial certification students at UHCL may register to take their state assessments on any of the test administration dates under the following conditions:

Students must have an approved degree or certification plan on file in the School of Education that matches the state assessments for which they are registering.
Students must be formally admitted to the Teacher Education Program.
Students must be enrolled in or have completed a semester in either TCED 4010 or TCED 4012: Senior Seminar.

Students who meet the above conditions may register for the state assessments by completing the following steps:

Set up an SBEC account at www.sbec.state.tx.us. This account will follow the student throughout his/her Texas public school educator career, so it should updated whenever needed, such as for name and address changes.
Make a note of TEA ID number from SBEC account.
Log onto the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Web site at www.texes.ets.o rg and set up a New User account. Use the exact personal information for this account as in the SBEC account. Follow directions for registering for an exam, using TEA ID number retrieved from SBEC account.
If the candidate has any problems registering:
- Contact Educational Testing Services (ETS) at 1-866-902-5922;
- Contact UHCL School of Education, Suite B1231, 2700 Bay Area Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77058, 281-283-3609; or
- E-mail UHCL at stateassessments@uhcl.edu.

All test registrations are to be done online, unless test taker has no way of paying the test fees electronically, in which case registration may be done by telephone.

The following items are available to students to prepare for the state assessments:

Study Guides. Free preparation manuals for every certification area are available through Educational Testing Service, at http://www.texes.ets.org.
Library. The UHCL Neumann Library has the ETS TExES study guides on reserve and in the stacks for students’ use. The library also has TExES study guides other than those published by ETS in the stacks. The curriculum library contains textbooks for all grade levels and most subject areas, which students may find useful in preparing for content exams.
Review Sessions/Tutoring. Faculty often work with students to help prepare them for the state assessments through individual tutoring sessions.
Practice Assessments. Practice tests are administered in the courses TCED 4010 and TCED 4012 (Senior Seminar). SoE’s Office of State Assessments also gives practice tests several times a year. Contact the SoE Advising Office for more information.
Practice TExES exams are given periodically throughout the year at UHCL. See Schedule for Practice State Assessments for specific dates.

The State Exam Dates for the 2009-2010 calendar year are: