No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor RooseveltTexas Credit by Exam (CBE) testing dates and registration deadlines, 2026–2027
When each Texas school district holds Credit by Examination and Exam for Acceleration testing, when the parent application is due, and how to apply through your campus counselor. 0 districts, from their own calendars.
How this works →Independent · not affiliated with any district.
More families are testing every year
Middle-school credit-by-exam sittings through UTHS, one of the two vendors Texas districts buy from. Volume is up 66% in five years. This is a floor on the state total, not the total itself — Texas Tech sittings and district-written exams are not counted here.
29% passed
29% passed
32% passed
30% passed
35% passed
Sittings are the six series UTHS publishes — maths and science at grades 6, 7 and 8 — added together. The pass rate shown is for 8th-grade maths, the largest single series, at the 80% bar. See the five-year breakdown →
No district guides are tagged yet — run scripts/backfill_blog_districts.py.
How Texas CBE scheduling works
Under 19 TAC §74.24, a district must offer a testing window in each quarter of the year — January–March, April–June, July–September and October–December — so there are normally four chances a year. A student may sit a given exam once per window, and the rule also says the dates are to be publicized. Every district we have fully surveyed offers a window in all four.
The rule fixes how many windows, not where the quarters fall. Most districts draw them on the calendar year as above; Mansfield ISD runs September–November, December–February, March–May and June–August instead. Both satisfy §74.24, so do not assume two districts’ cycles line up. Some districts also offer more than the minimum — Allen and Pflugerville publish six.
What changes district to district is who may use which window. Some restrict the mid-year windows to one-semester courses, so a year-long course such as Algebra 1 or Geometry can only be taken in summer. Some open only grades 9–12 outside the summer windows. That restriction is in the “Who” column of each district's calendar above.
The deadline that matters is the parent application deadline, not the campus ordering deadline that follows it. A campus cannot order an exam against a request that was never filed, so the later date is not a second chance. Lead times vary widely — Houston ISD gives families a five-day request window; Katy ISD asks five weeks ahead of the exam.
Every date on this page is copied from the district's own published calendar, stamped with the day we last checked it and linked back to the source. Even so, figures and dates here may differ from what your district tells you. Districts revise calendars during the year, some leave last year's schedule published for months, and a few give only a month range or send families to a counselor instead of publishing dates at all — those are marked as such rather than filled in with a guess. Counts on this page describe the districts we have surveyed, not all of Texas, and they change as we add more. Confirm with your campus counselor before you file anything, and treat the district's own page — linked from every entry — as the authority over ours.
Credit by Examination in Texas — common questions
Answered from the 0 districts surveyed on this page, not from the rule alone.
How many times a year can a Texas student take a Credit by Examination?
Under 19 TAC §74.24 a district must offer a testing window in each quarter of the year, so there are normally four opportunities, and a student may sit any given exam once per window. Some districts offer more than the minimum — Pflugerville ISD publishes six.
What score does a student need to pass a Texas CBE?
For credit without prior instruction under TEC §28.023 — the free district route — the standard is 80%. The paid route under 19 TAC §74.24, with prior instruction, is 70%. Districts may also set the bar by purpose rather than by route: Northside ISD requires 80% to accelerate but 70% to validate or recover credit.
Which deadline matters — the application deadline or the campus ordering deadline?
The parent application deadline. The campus ordering deadline that follows it is not a second chance, because a campus cannot order an exam against a request that was never filed. Lead times vary widely: Houston ISD gives families a five-day request window, while Katy ISD asks about five weeks ahead of the exam.
Do all Texas districts use the same testing quarters?
§74.24 fixes how many windows a district must offer, not where the quarters fall. Most draw them on the calendar year — January to March, April to June, July to September, October to December — but Mansfield ISD runs September to November, December to February, March to May and June to August. Two districts’ cycles cannot be assumed to line up.
Do all Texas districts publish their CBE testing dates?
No. Of the 0 districts surveyed here, 0 publish exact dates. The rest give only a month range, or direct families to a campus counselor. Several also leave the previous school year’s calendar published well into the new one, so the year on the page is worth checking.
Who writes the exams a Texas district uses for Credit by Examination?
Most districts order from the University of Texas High School (UTHS) or Texas Tech University K-12. Some split by subject — Carroll ISD uses UTHS generally but Avant for world languages, and Denton ISD lists all three. Richardson ISD requires a student’s second attempt to come from a different vendor than the first.