PRAXIS® Content Knowledge for Teaching: Initial Reliability and Validity Results for Elementary Reading Language Arts and Mathematics

Abstract

The primary purpose of this report is to provide preliminary evidence on the measurement properties for newly designed assessments of content knowledge for teaching (CKT) in elementary reading language arts (RLA) and mathematics. The goal is to offer the CKT tests through the PRAXIS® assessment. Additional analyses were conducted to provide initial evidence on the validity of the CKT assessments. One set of analyses investigated whether the test scores were sensitive to differences in participants' educational backgrounds that might be associated with opportunities to develop CKT. A second set of analyses involved examining score differences by the race/ethnicity of the participating candidates to provide evidence on whether the sample of participants in this study show group score differences that are comparable to what is typically observed on licensure exams. Finally, participant performance on the CKT tests was compared with performance on comparable PRAXIS assessments to examine potential differences in the difficulty of the items.