The Virginia Board of Education heard a presentation from ETS on proposed Praxis assessments that the state could adopt as options for school librarian, theater and agriculture endorsements. Malik McKinley, director of educational partnerships at ETS, outlined test designs, study evidence and offers to provide practice items and Virginia-specific alignments.

Board members said the tests could help address teacher shortages by giving candidates an alternate route to endorsements, but several members pressed for clarity about whether multiple-choice or selected-response exams can accurately measure hands-on, safety-sensitive skills. "I don't think you can give the skills required purely on a written test," one member said, echoing concerns about set construction, lighting rigging and agricultural equipment safety raised throughout the discussion.

Malik described ETS's development process: convening national advisory committees of K–12 teachers and university faculty, drafting knowledge-and-skill statements from national standards, surveying thousands of teachers for validity evidence, and building an exam blueprint mirrored in ETS study companions. For the school librarian assessment, McKinley said ETS updated category weightings to align with the American Association of School Librarians and reported a recommended raw cut score of 63 out of 100. He said the exam is used in 28 states and that the reported passing rate to date is just under 90 percent. (ETS offered to provide clarifying documentation if the board requests explicit alignments to Virginia standards.)

Board members sought detail on two linked issues: (1) whether the exams align precisely with Virginia educator-preparation program requirements and division-level duties, and (2) whether purely paper/computer assessments can replace coursework or supervised practicum where safety or hands-on demonstration is essential. Speaker Brian, identifying his office as the Virginia Department of Education, explained that some states allow assessments as alternate routes for secondary endorsements but noted that endorsement policy is a state policy decision rather than an ETS decision.

Several members recommended adding a required performance component or preserving coursework options for endorsements that involve safety-critical tasks. One member described common practice in larger divisions where facilities or operations staff support productions, while smaller divisions may rely heavily on teachers wearing multiple hats — a factor board members said increases the risk of entrusting safety-critical duties to candidates assessed only by a written exam.

McKinley offered concrete follow-ups: ETS can produce an explicit alignment between each proposed exam and any Virginia standards the board supplies, and ETS can provide interactive practice tests or sample questions for committee review. The board paused the meeting for a 10-minute break with the intention of returning to further agenda items after reviewing the offered materials.

The board did not take a vote on adopting the three assessments during this session; next steps recorded in discussion included staff accepting ETS's offer to provide test samples and a Virginia-alignment report to inform a subsequent review.