ICTS Tests

Since 1988, candidates seeking certification to teach in Illinois have been required to pass a test. The same is true for all school service personnel and those seeking administrative certificates. The ICTS (Illinois Certification Testing System) was developed by Pearson's Evaluation Systems group to meet the needs and requirements of the State of Illinois relating to the certification of educators.

While some people may be able to take an ICTS test and succeed with minimal preparation, most test takers will benefit from allocating time to study beforehand and reading through a ICTS Test Study Guide or practicing with a set of ICTS Exam Flashcards. Regardless of your studying techniques, be sure that you plan ahead and leave yourself enough time in advance of the test day to become adequately prepared. Last minute studying is likely to be rushed and does not maximize your chances of being successful.

The ICTS are criterion-referenced, which means that they are designed to measure the skills and knowledge of a candidate in relation to an established standard rather than in relation to other candidates' performances. These tests are also objective-based, which means that all questions are keyed to objectives aligned with state and national standards.

ICTS Exam Study Guide | ICTS Test Flashcards

Each set of test objectives has been subjected to a content validation survey that involved randomly-selected Illinois school personnel, including educators, teacher educators, and other content specialists. These participants ensured that the objectives selected for the ICTS accurately reflect the minimum basic skills and content knowledge needed by the Illinois public school educator.

The following categories of tests are included in the ICTS:

Basic Skills Test: This test consists of 125 multiple-choice questions on reading comprehension, language arts (writing and grammar), and mathematics, along with a constructed-response (essay) writing assignment.

Assessment of Professional Teaching (APT) Tests: These tests evaluate the professional and pedagogical skills of candidates. Each test has 120 multiple-choice questions and two constructed-response assignments. These tests have four levels: Birth to Grade 3, Grades K-9, Grades 6-12, and Grades K-12.

Content-Area Tests: Most of the ICTS content-area tests have 125 multiple-choice questions. The exceptions are the Special Education General Curriculum Test, which has 65 multiple-choice questions, and the Foreign Language Content-Area Tests (see below).

Foreign Language Content-Area Tests: The French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish tests each have 100 multiple-choice questions as well as two constructed-response assignments. The Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean tests have seven constructed-response assignments and have no multiple-choice questions.

Learning Behavior Specialist II (LBS II) Tests: Each of these tests has six constructed-response assignments. Three of these are stand-alone assignments, and three are associated with a single case study.

Tests for Removal of a Learning Behavior Specialist I (LBS I) Limitation Only: Each of the tests in this ICTS category has 125 multiple-choice questions.

Language Proficiency Tests for the Transitional Bilingual Certificate: There are 55 multiple-choice questions and two constructed-response assignments in both the English Language Proficiency (ELP) test and the Target Language Proficiency (TLP)-Spanish test. Other TLP tests have four constructed-response assignments.