Virginia allows SAT scores to substitute for Praxis exam

Last month, the Virginia state board of education voted unanimously to permit college-entrance-exam scores to be used in place of the Praxis I licensing exam. Following Connecticut, Georgia, and Delaware’s lead, Virginia is the fourth state to make this change, which went into effect immediately.

Viewing the new measure as a recruiting tool, the state board hopes that by allowing the SAT to be used in place of the Praxis, high school students will be encouraged to consider teaching careers as they have already satisfied one of the requirements on the path to becoming certified. Virginia’s new SAT substitution measure states that if a teacher candidate took the SAT after April 1995, they would need to have earned at least 530 out of a possible 800 on each section, mathematics and verbal, and a combined score of at least 1100. If a candidate took the SAT prior to 1995, a minimum of 450 on the verbal section and 510 on the math section is required, along with a combined score of 1000.

Those who did not earn the requisite SAT scores will still have to take the Praxis, for which Virginia currently has the highest cutoff scores in the nation. The state requires at least a 178 in mathematics, 178 in reading, and 176 in writing for a total of 532 out of a possible 570.

The SAT substitution measure was approved after a March 24th meeting, during which the nine-member state board heard from a statistician with the Education Testing Service. The statistician presented evidence stating that those individuals who earned the aforementioned cutoff scores on the SAT were likely to attain the minimum sores that the state requires on the Praxis I exam.

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