Hawkins, Jacqueline2013-12-022013-12-02August 2012011-08http://hdl.handle.net/10657/498Education continues to remain at the forefront of research and discussion in the United States. As a result, the requirements for teachers to be able to teach in the classroom have become more stringent. More specifically, No Child Left Behind requires states to test pre-service teachers, upon graduation, in the content areas in which they will teach to ensure that teachers are “highly qualified” as mandated by this federal law. In order to successfully pass state examinations, teachers should be prepared through some type of teacher preparation program. Previous research suggests that preparation plays an integral role in teacher effectiveness however, researchers have not defined what constitutes appropriate teacher preparation. One example of a preparation program at a large, urban university in Texas prepares pre-service teachers to pass the TExES Exam, the state certification exam in Texas. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teacher scores on the EC-4 Generalist and EC-6 Generalist TExES exams, overall scores and content area scores, in order to assess which content areas are challenging. The TExES scores that have been examined are from testees who attended the teacher preparation program at this large, urban university in Houston. Although a high percentage of pre-service teachers are passing the TExES exam, findings indicate that it is important to align the preparation program standards with the test standards to address those pre-service teachers who are failing the overall exam and/or content areas on the exams.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Teacher preparationTExES examNo Child Left Behind (NCLB)Teacher testingTeachers--Certification--TexasTeaching--Texas--Examinations2013-12-02Thesisborn digital