The Core Academic Skills for Educators Test in Reading measures academic skills in reading needed to prepare successfully for a career in education. All skills assessed have been identified as needed for college and career readiness, in alignment with the Common Core State Standards for Reading.

In particular, there is an emphasis on skills that are critical to learning and achievement in teacher preparation programs. These skills include the ability to understand, analyze, and evaluate texts of different kinds. Varying in difficulty, the reading material on the test is drawn from a variety of subject areas and real-life situations that educated adults are likely to encounter. Each passage is followed by questions that are based on its content and that relate to reading skills. All questions can be answered by using information contained within the passage; no question requires outside knowledge of the content.

The test consists of four types of stimulus material: paired passages totaling approximately 200 words followed by four to seven questions, long passages of approximately 200 words with four to seven questions, short passages of approximately 100 words with two or three questions, and brief statements followed by a single question. Passages are drawn from both print and electronic media, such as newspapers, magazines, journals, nonfiction books, novels, online articles, and visual representations (e.g., diagrams, charts, drawings, maps, floor plans, or graphs). Questions in each of the formats may pose tasks of varying difficulty and test any of the skills identified in the Content Topics section. This test may contain some questions that do not count toward your score.