How the Texas insurance exam is scored

Scoring on this exam involves two organizations, three numbers and one thing that is deliberately not published. Take them in order and it stops being confusing.

Who does what

That first split matters. Pearson does not decide who passes and TDI does not run the test. When a study site says "Pearson requires 70 percent", it has got both halves wrong at once.

What counts, and what does not

Your raw score is the count of correct answers among the 130 scored items. The 15 pretest questions are being trialed for future forms and cannot help or hurt you, which is a much kinder arrangement than it first sounds.

One result, not two

The general and Texas portions are published as separate outlines and scored as one thing. There is no independent pass on either half, no carry-forward and no partial credit toward a retake.

Practically, the 100 general questions dominate the arithmetic. A candidate strong on statute and shaky on policy provisions is relying on the smaller portion to carry the larger one, which is a bet the numbers do not support. The 100/30 split works through what that should do to your revision.

The raw score is not what you are told

Pearson converts the raw count onto a common reporting scale before reporting it. That conversion is the reason your result arrives as a scaled number rather than as a share of questions answered correctly.

The purpose is comparability. Different candidates sit different forms of the exam, assembled from the same outline but not from identical questions, and a slightly harder form should not make a candidate look worse than an identical candidate who drew an easier one. Scaling adjusts for that difference so that the same scaled number means the same standard on any form.

So a raw percentage would not be comparable between forms, and that is the whole reason none is published. What a scaled score actually means takes the mechanics apart properly.

There is no published pass percentage

TDI determines the passing score. Pearson reports against the scale. Neither publishes a percentage of questions you have to get right, and this site does not print one.

What TDI does publish, in its FY2025 examination report, is a mean scaled score of 69.75 with a standard deviation of 14.51 against a first-time pass rate of 57.7 percent. Those are real, checkable figures, and why Texas publishes no percentage pass mark shows what they let you infer and what they do not.

What your score report gives you

The result is produced at the test center. You get a scaled score and an outcome, and you do not get a raw percentage to compare against a threshold nobody published.

Candidates find that unsatisfying and it is worth understanding why the design is defensible anyway. A percentage would tell you how you did on your form. The scaled score tells you how you did against the standard, and only one of those is the same question the Department is actually asking.

What this means for setting a target

You cannot aim at the cut, because you do not know it. You can aim well above wherever it plausibly sits, on your own papers, and accept that your practice percentage is a proxy rather than a measurement.

Our readiness target against our own mock papers is 78 percent. That is ours, it is a target and not a pass mark, and it deliberately sits above where the evidence puts the standard so that a candidate hitting it clears a harder form with room. We would rather label it plainly than let a number of ours be mistaken for one of the Department's.