Texas to create its own psychology licensing test amid pushback on national exam

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

---

After leading a national pushback against a costly new national certification exam for psychologists, Texas has approved crafting its own cheaper test with hopes that other states will take it.

On Tuesday, the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists announced its intention to develop a less expensive state exam, rather than requiring applicants to take the test offered by the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards, also known as ASPPB. Gov. Greg Abbott has approved the test development in the state budget.

“What it means is that we are going to begin the process of designing the test and just deciding what it should look like, how it should function, and what the things that it should test are. And we’re going to be seeking a whole lot of input from stakeholders across the state, and we’ve already reached out to stakeholders across the nation,” said John Bielamowicz, the presiding member of the Texas psychologists’ licensing board.

Texas is the first licensing board in the nation to consider an alternative to the national exam, which states have been using since 1965 to license psychologists. In 2022, the national board decided that starting in 2026, it will start adding a $450 “skills” test to the already required $800 knowledge exam known as the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology, or the EPPP test.

This additional skills test was designed to identify applicants who lacked the necessary skills to work in a clinical setting.

Hugh Moore, ASPPB's president, said Texas' move raises serious concerns, chief among them that Texas' license won't be accepted in other states and vice versa.

"Psychologists licensed under a Texas-only exam will likely face barriers to practicing in other jurisdictions, the vast majority of which will continue to require the EPPP. Likewise, psychologists relocating to Texas after passing the nationally recognized exam may now face duplicative testing and regulatory hurdles," he said Tuesday night.

Moore called the departure of Texas from the program an undermining of long-standing standards across the United States and Canada.

"Replacing it with an untested alternative severs Texas from this shared framework and risks complicating accreditation for doctoral programs, internships, and residencies operating within the state," he said.

The national board's decision to add another test led to immediate blowback in Texas, where a mental health professional shortage is plaguing the state, and the state’s licensing board found adding any additional cost to the licensure process would only make things worse.

Today, 246 of Texas’ 254 counties are wholly or partially designated by the federal government as “mental health professional shortage areas,” and that’s in a state where roughly 5 million people do not have health insurance.

Currently, Texas licensed psychologists must have a doctoral degree and pass a $800 knowledge exam by the national testing board and a $210 jurisprudence test. This is in addition to the additional money a prospective psychologist must pay to do the required 3,500 hours of supervised work.

Any failure requires a candidate to retake an exam and pay the price again. Several mental health providers testified to the Texas board last year that they had spent thousands of dollars trying to pass the current knowledge exam.

This led to the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council sending a letter in the summer of 2024 to the Federal Trade Commission, stating that the national board had violated federal antitrust laws by updating the EPPP without approval and input from the states.

The national board denied these claims, stating that the allegations against it ignore the long development history and justifications behind the additional test. The board added that the test change is consistent with every other doctoral-level health service licensure examination in the United States.

Soon, other state licensure boards began to voice their displeasure, including those in California, New York, and Oklahoma, while Texas’s licensing board started the process of determining if creating an alternative test was possible.

A couple of months later, the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards released a statement before its national meeting in Dallas, stating that the organization had decided to pause the rollout of an additional qualification test to the industry.

Moore said he is concerned that the Texas test could lower professional standards and include messaging reflective of the state's political leanings — neither of which serves the public interest.

"We are not convinced that going it alone serves Texas or the profession well," he said.

Bielamowicz said he hopes other states will join their effort to break away from the national testing organization and use the test Texas develops.

“We have made it very clear that this will be open. We are planning on asking other states, and we are going to seek input from across the nation on what this test should look like because it’s obvious that people across the nation are concerned about this,” he said.

Bielamowicz acknowledges that once Texas launches its own licensing test, critics might say it’s easy to pass, but he said the state wins if it has more licensed psychologists because of it.

“This needs to be the right-sized test, testing the right skills, and if our graduates coming out of school pass the bar, then they pass the bar,” Bielamowicz said.

---

Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O’Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer.

Get tickets.

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.