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Interpreting Your Results on the MTEL Practice Questions

posted in: MTEL 2

Unfortunately, I can’ t give you a simple scale to tell you how your score on my practice questions relates to your likely score on the MTEL.   Setting the scoring level for each test is a complex process, and the scores are scaled in a way that does not correspond to points or percentages correct.

Some of my questions are simpler than many questions on the test and are intended to practice one skill, e.g. using the Pythagorean Theorem, whereas the actual test questions often mix things up more.

As I write this, my test questions are new.   After I have more experience using them with students, I should have a better sense of what they might predict about actual test scores.

With those caveats, here are some thoughts:

If you have tried a lot of questions, and are generally getting about 80% or more correct, then you should be in pretty good shape to pass the test.  Review topics in which you are weak.   When you take the actual test, be sure to read questions very carefully.

If you are getting between 50 and 80% correct, then think about why you are missing questions.  Is it because you never learned a topic?  Forgot?  Find the questions confusing?   Aren’t sure what you’re supposed to do?    In some cases you might want to take a test prep course with a teacher who can help you figure out what’s wrong and give you some strategies.   You may want to look for materials to practice specific topics or go for a review on those topics.   You may want to take a math for teachers course.   Or, you may find that working through many more questions on my site helps (as well as looking at the official materials and others that you can find).

If you are regularly missing more than half the questions, and if for a lot of the questions, you really don’t know how to do them,  then this test prep is probably not enough.   Have you taken a math for teachers sequence?  That would be my recommendation, although I know that time and money make that suggestion difficult for many people (don’t get me started on frustrating I find it that most graduate and alternative programs require very little coursework in math content — in order to teach math well, you need much more math knowledge than just this test, and doing well in high school algebra does not prepare you to teach fractions to fourth graders).

If you have already taken a math for teachers sequence, or you want to try to go ahead with the test without one, then you’re going to need some serious study with a tutor, test prep classes, self-study, study with friends, etc.   (Or, maybe I’m all wrong, and you’ll be fine, but I wouldn’t leave the test for the last minute counting on that).

2 Responses

  1. Susan Greco
    | Reply

    A question on the scoring. I am getting all the problems right but my final score is not 100%. Why is that? This happened when I did Concepts of Functions and Linear Functions/Equations. thanks for great problems!

  2. nanci
    | Reply

    hi

    how many questions on the mtel foundations of reading that arent counted for any points. I took the test but I cant figure out if I did good or bad because its so confusing to figure out

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