Report: 54% of aspiring Colorado elementary teachers fail licensure exam on first try

More than half of prospective elementary teachers in Colorado fail their licensure exams on the first try, and of those who fail, 40% don’t try again, according to new data from the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Only 46% of state elementar y teacher candidates pass their exam on the first try, similar to the national average.

Teacher candidates of color are more likely to fail on a first attempt than their white counterparts — and slightly more likely to not try again, derailing those students’ aspirations and hindering efforts to build a more diverse teacher workforce that would benefit all students.

For example, at the University of Northern Colorado, the state’s largest teacher prep program, 45% of elementary test-takers passed on their first try, compared with 33% of testtakers of color at the school.

“What would our teacher workforce look like if these teacher candidates of color could get their best score on their first attempt?” said Stephanie Perez-carrillo, manager of policy and partnerships for the Colorado Children’s Campaign. “And then what would that mean for our students of color, to see someone who looks like them in the classroom? We’re missing out on the richness of their experience in the classroom.”

Perez-carrillo knows firsthand how upsetting it is to fail a licensure exam. She herself took the secondary math licensure exam seven times in her first year of teaching but never passed. She wasn’t invited back to her high school, even though her students did well on their own tests. She ultimately left teaching.

“I knew I could teach those kids, I knew I could motivate them, but that door was shut,” she said. “It was very demoralizing.”

Licensure exams primarily cover content that teachers would need to know in order to teach that same content to their students. Colorado offers 48 endorsement — or specialization — areas for licensure, but only elementar y, early childhood, and special education teachers must pass content tests adopted by the State Board of Education. The elementar y test includes several subtests, and candidates must pass all of them. Other teachers have more flexibility in how they demonstrate knowledge, depending on their program requirements.

Colorado will start reporting similar data later this year, part of a new law that aims to identify ways to diversify the teacher workforce. State education officials also plan to pick up work that was derailed by the pandemic: a series of data “deep dives” with the state’s educator preparation programs to better understand gaps and necessary changes.

There is significant variation among programs. Eighty-nine percent of elementary education test-takers from private Colorado College passed on their first attempt, compared with 13% from the Centennial BOCES alternative certification program.

On average, 72% of potential Colorado teachers eventually passed their elementary licensure exam, ranging from 100% of nine candidates from Colorado College and six candidates at Western Colorado University’s alternative certification program to just 43% of seven candidates from University of Phoenix-colorado. Among larger programs: 73% of elementary test-takers at the University of Northern Colorado ultimately passed, compared to 85% of University of Colorado Boulder candidates and 58% at Metropolitan State University of Denver.