Taking my DESE certification test in about six weeks and trying to figure out if I'm on track. I've been doing maybe 90 minutes a day on content knowledge and pedagogy sections, and my practice scores are hovering around 68-72%. Not sure if that's enough or if I need to seriously ramp things up.
The part that's tripping me up most is the curriculum design questions. I keep second-guessing myself between two plausible answers and end up picking wrong about 40% of the time on those. The foundational content stuff feels more solid — probably 80%+ on those sections consistently.
Has anyone taken this recently and can tell me what the passing threshold actually felt like going in? I've seen different numbers thrown around and the official docs aren't super clear.
The curriculum design questions are brutal — I missed 35% of them on practice exams and still passed. The trick is understanding the underlying instructional theory, not just memorizing frameworks. Spend a few days just on backwards design and you'll see improvement.
Just a heads up — the real exam felt harder than most of the free practice materials I found online. The official prep materials were much closer to the actual difficulty. Worth paying for if you haven't already.
I passed mine last fall after about eight weeks of prep, averaging around 75 minutes a day. My practice scores were in the low 70s two weeks out and I ended up passing comfortably. Don't freak out if you're not in the 80s on practice tests yet.
Six weeks is plenty of time if you're being consistent. I did it in four weeks at about 2 hours a day and passed on the first attempt. Focus on the areas under 70% and leave your strong sections alone.
Honestly, I almost bailed around the four-week mark because my scores were stuck in that exact same range and I was convinced I just wasn't going to pass. What actually helped me was getting really specific about where I was losing points -- for me it was the special ed components, so I drilled into stuff like dese special education iep development until it clicked. Once I stopped doing general review and started targeting my weak spots, my scores jumped about 8 points in two weeks.
68-72% at six weeks out isn't a disaster, you've got time. I'd say 90 minutes is fine if it's focused practice, but if you're just passively reading through content you're probably wasting half of it. I passed with two weeks to spare and I wasn't some genius studier -- I just got honest about what I didn't know and stopped avoiding it.