► ► NYSTCE Study Guide Reviews
The New York State Teacher Certification Examinations comprise a series of tests that prospective teachers must take in order to teach in New York. According the website of the NYSTCE,
The NYSTCE are criterion-referenced, objective-based tests designed to measure a candidate's knowledge and skills in relation to an established standard rather than in relation to the performance of other candidates. The explicit purpose of these tests is to help identify for certification those candidates who have demonstrated the appropriate level of knowledge and skills that are important for performing the responsibilities of an educator in New York State public schools.Since the exams are comprehensive and notoriously challenging, it is important to prepare thoroughly and get all the information you can before attempting these exams. Which tests you take, and how many tests you take will depend on the subject area and level you plan to teach. Most secondary and elementary school teachers need to pass at least four exams.
Test questions were developed using textbooks, New York State learning standards and curriculum guides, teacher education curricula, and certification standards. The tests were developed in consultation with committees of New York State teachers, teacher educators, and other content and assessment specialists.
The List of NYSTC Exams
General Tests:
Liberal Arts and Sciences Test (001)
Elementary Assessment of Teaching Skills—Written (090)
Secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills—Written (091)
Bilingual Education Assessments (024–059)
Communication and Quantitative Skills Test (080)
Assessment of Teaching Skills—Performance (Video)
Leadership Tests:
School Building Leader (100/101)
School District Leader (103/104)
School District Business Leader (105/106)
Content Specialty Tests:
| Agriculture (068) American Sign Language (061) Biology (006) Blind and Visually Impaired (062) Business and Marketing (069) Chemistry (007) Dance (070) Deaf and Hard of Hearing (063) Earth Science (008) Educational Technology Specialist (071) English Language Arts (003) English as a Second Language (022) Family and Consumer Sciences (072) Gifted Education (064) Health Education (073) | Latin (010) Library Media Specialist (074) Literacy (065) Mathematics (004) Modern Languages (011–020) Multi-Subject (002) Music (075) Physical Education (076) Physics (009) Social Studies (005) Students with Disabilities (060) Technology Education (077) Theater (078) Visual Arts (079) |
For complete descriptions of each exam, see the official page of NYSTCE Frameworks.
Which Exams Must You Take?
All teachers of academic subjects must take the LAST, either the Elementary or Secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills, at least one Content exam, and the Assessment of Teaching Skills Performance Video. Teachers of industrial arts and technology must pass the Communication and Quantitative Skills Test, as well as the video assessment.
Additionally, bilingual educators must pass a Bilingual Education Assessment for their chosen language. The available languages are: Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Farsi, French, Haitian Creole, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Yiddish.
Structure and Format of the NYSTCE Tests
Each exam is different in terms of content, but all the exams contain a mixture of both multiple choice and free response questions. The music exam has a listening component, and the language exams have listening and oral components as well.
For the American Sign Language Exam, test takers will be video taped while producing answers to free response questions in ASL. The Blind and Visually Impaired test requires test takers to transcribe texts in Braille, and so test takers will need to bring a Braille writer.
All exams are paper and pencil with approximately 70-90 multiple choice questions, and 1-10 free response questions. The video teaching assessment is a video recording of you teaching a class.
NYSTCE Scoring
Each exam is scored on a scale of 100 to 300 with 220 as the minimum passing score for each test. Each exam has several subareas for which you will also receive subscores that range from 100 to 300. There are no minimum score requirements for subscores; it is only necessary that your total score fore each exam be at least 220. The subscores merely give you an idea of which areas may need work.
Although the minimum score is 220, because of the competition for teaching jobs, test takers should aim for a higher score when taking practice NYSTCE tests.
