I get asked the same question by HR directors in almost every intake call: "what's the passing score for the para test in our state." The honest answer is that the question has five possible shapes, and I cannot tell you which one applies to you until you tell me your state.
That surprises people who have been hiring paraprofessionals for years. Most assume there is one national para exam with one national cut score, the way there is one national driving test format state to state. There is not. I have seen HR directors build a hiring timeline around a passing score that does not apply to their district, because they searched for "the para exam" and landed on a page written for a different state's requirement.
Here is what I tell every district I talk to: find out which of the five you are actually dealing with before you plan around any of it.
The five things a state can require
A published Praxis ParaPathways cut score. Twenty-four states set a statewide passing score on the two ParaPathways subtests, Reading and Writing (5758) and Mathematics (5759). Most use 332 on 5758 and 334 on 5759, but not all of them. Arkansas and Washington set 324 and 325. Minnesota sets 332 on both subtests, not the usual 334 on math. If your district operates in one of these states, the number is public and specific to you.
A ParaPro score with no end date. Sixteen jurisdictions, including Illinois, still qualify paraprofessionals on the ParaPro assessment (1755) and have not published a ParaPathways score. I want to be direct about this because the misinformation on it is bad enough to cost someone a booking: the ParaPro exam has not retired. There is no national sunset date. Some states have set a deadline for when they stop accepting ParaPro scores, and those deadlines vary by state, not all of them landing in 2026. If your state is on the ParaPro list, that exam is still live and still the one your candidates need to pass.
A district-set score with no statewide number. California, Florida, Montana, Pennsylvania and Texas do not publish a single statewide cut at all. Each district sets its own. If you are HR in one of these states, "what's the state passing score" is not a question with an answer, because the state did not set one. Your own district policy is the requirement, and if you have not written that policy down somewhere your hiring team can find it, that is the actual gap.
An entirely different exam. Six states do not use a Praxis exam at all. Georgia uses the GACE Paraprofessional Assessment. New York uses NES 519, a newer Pearson exam that replaced the old ATAS. Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina use ACT WorkKeys, which returns skill levels rather than a scaled score, so it cannot even be compared to a Praxis cut. Kentucky runs its own instrument, the Kentucky Paraeducator Assessment, scored out of 60 and administered by the district itself. A candidate who studies Praxis content for a WorkKeys or KPA requirement has studied for the wrong test.
No exam at all. Iowa asks for an approved paraeducator certification program, proof of a high school diploma or equivalent, and mandatory reporter training. No test.
Why this matters more than it looks like it should
If you hire across district lines, or your organization operates in more than one state, "the para exam" is not one requirement you can standardize prep around. It is a lookup you have to do state by state, sometimes district by district. A prep plan built for the common 332 and 334 Praxis cuts does nothing for a candidate in Georgia sitting the GACE, and it tells a candidate in Texas nothing useful about what their specific district actually requires.
This is also why I will not give you a single national pass rate or a single national cost figure when you ask. Those numbers do not exist in a form that is true across fifty states and the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Anyone quoting you one is guessing.
How to find your district's actual requirement
Three steps, in order, before you build anything around a number:
- Check whether your state publishes a statewide score. If it is one of the twenty-four with a published Praxis ParaPathways cut, or one of the sixteen still on ParaPro, you have a real number to work from.
- If your state is district-determined, ask your own HR policy, not the state. California, Florida, Montana, Pennsylvania and Texas leave this to you. If nobody can point to where that number is written down, that is worth fixing regardless of what you decide to do about prep.
- If your state runs a different exam, confirm which one before anyone studies. Georgia, New York, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Kentucky are not Praxis states. Sending a candidate into GACE prep for a Praxis exam, or the reverse, wastes the time you were trying to save.
We keep a state by state breakdown of all five categories, sourced from each state's own published requirement, at our paraprofessional requirements page. It is the fastest way to confirm which of the five applies to you before you commit a hiring timeline to a number that might belong to a different state entirely.
If you want to talk through what your district specifically requires and how that should shape your hiring pipeline, get in touch.