Roughly a quarter of candidates pass all four subtests at the first attempt

Every FTCE prep site quotes a pass rate for this test. Almost all of them quote one of the four subtest rates, usually the Reading one, because 78% is the friendliest number on the page. It is also the wrong number to plan against, and the reason is structural rather than statistical.

The four rates FLDOE actually publishes

Those come from the department's 2025 Annual Administration and Technical Report. Note what is missing from the table: a row for the test as a whole. FLDOE does not publish one, because the General Knowledge Test is not administered as a whole. It is four separately registered examinations that share a name.

Why you cannot read these one at a time

FLDOE's own rule is explicit: for examinations with multiple subtests, an examinee has to achieve passing scores on all subtests to receive assessment-level passing status. Passing the General Knowledge Test means passing four things. Passing three of them means you are still not certified, you are $32.50 and thirty days away from another try.

So a candidate reading "78% pass" and feeling reassured has read a rate for one of the four gates they have to walk through.

The arithmetic, and what is wrong with it

The independence assumption is the weak point and it is worth naming. A candidate who is strong at reading is more likely to be strong at the essay and at the language conventions questions, so the four outcomes correlate. Correlation pushes the true figure up, because the people failing one subtest are disproportionately the same people failing another. It also pushes the ceiling down for everyone else. Our best guess is that the real number sits somewhat above a quarter and well below any single published rate, and we cannot narrow it further without candidate-level data the department does not release.

Checked from the other direction

There is a second published figure that speaks to the same question. In 2025, 37.2% of General Knowledge candidates retook at least one subtest. If roughly a quarter pass everything first time, then roughly three quarters do not, and the 37.2% who actually came back is what that looks like once you subtract the people who took a failure and stopped.

Two figures derived from different tables in the same report, pointing the same way. That is about as much corroboration as this data supports.

The best-attempt column is the honest good news

Run the same multiplication across the best-attempt rates and you get 0.79 x 0.83 x 0.86 x 0.83, which is 0.468. Call it slightly under half. Same independence caveat, same our-arithmetic label.

The gap between those two figures is the single most useful thing on this page. Between the first attempt and the best attempt, the essay rate climbs 15 points and English Language Skills climbs 15. Reading climbs 8. People who come back mostly pass, and they mostly pass the subtests where practice moves the needle furthest.

What this changes about how you prepare

It moves the target. If you prepare to the level of the friendliest subtest you will pass Reading and get caught by English Language Skills, which fails ten points more people at first attempt and is the one candidates most often assume they can walk into. Prepare each subtest to its own standard, and treat the weakest one as the thing that decides your outcome, because arithmetically it is.

It also changes what a retake means. Failing one subtest is the ordinary experience of this test rather than a disaster, it costs $32.50 rather than the full $130, and the published data says most people who come back get through.