Praxis Core practice test 2026: Reading, Writing and Math, free

Reading opens with three passage sets of four questions each (longer passages of about 200 words, and paired passages you compare), then twelve short passages with one question, and four questions that ask what a table of data supports. The questions cover ETS's three Reading categories: key ideas and details, craft and structure, and integrating ideas, which is where argument questions (assumption, strengthen, weaken) live.

Writing has sixteen single questions, a mix of usage (find the bracketed error or choose "No error"), sentence correction (pick the best version, the first choice repeating the original) and research skills (sources, citation, searching), followed by a short draft with four revision questions. Math has number and quantity, data and probability, and algebra and geometry in roughly the real proportions.

Every math and table question is generated with new numbers in every mock and its answer is computed, so you never meet the same problem twice. The reading passages and writing items are hand-written for LifeScore and dealt out so that no mock repeats another.

Take this mock first, then drill the test with the lowest percent. Most states score each test on its own, so a strong Reading result cannot carry a weak Math result over the line. The state-by-state numbers are on Praxis Core passing scores.

Sources disagree on whether the combined test has 152 or 154 questions. Both are right: 152 selected-response questions plus the 2 essays. The Praxis Core test guide covers who needs it, registration and the score report.

Each real Writing test ends with two 30-minute essays: an argumentative essay on an issue, and an informative/explanatory essay that draws on two short sources. ETS combines the essay scores with your selected-response score into one Writing score, and Text Types, Purposes and Production, which includes both essays, is about 60% of the test. So the essays matter as much as the grammar questions.

The Praxis Core Writing practice test page has two practice prompts and a six-point checklist written from ETS's description of a strong essay. Write each one under a 30-minute timer, then grade it line by line. The study guide in the Pass Pack has the same prompts with a planning template.

These were written for this page, so none of them is in a mock. More, each with its trap, are on Praxis Core sample questions.

Read the lowest test first. If Reading is at 85% and Math at 60%, your risk of a retake sits in Math, and your result page starts your study plan there.

ETS reports a scaled score from 100 to 200 and does not publish how raw answers convert to it; the conversion also varies between test forms. So we never turn a practice percent into a Praxis score or tell you that you would pass. What a practice score shows you is which question types cost you points and whether you finish inside the clock.

Most candidates who miss a cut score do not lack the skills. They lose points to repeatable slips: an inference that goes one step past the passage, a verb matched to the wrong noun, a percent change divided by the new number. A timed practice test shows which slips are yours, and each explained answer shows the habit that stops it.

The day-by-day plan is in how to pass Praxis Core. Many teacher candidates also sit a placement or admissions test along the way; the ACCUPLACER practice test and the SAT practice test use similar reading and math.