Last week, the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Boards (AMFTRB) emailed hundreds of examinees who failed the National MFT Exam between January and March of this year. The examinees were told they would get free re-tests, and any re-testing fees already paid would be refunded.
I believe it was our advocacy that made that happen. Here's the story.
Background
The National MFT Exam (formally, the Marriage and Family Therapy National Examination) is produced by AMFTRB. Like any license exam, it is regularly updated. The knowledge it assesses is summarized in an exam outline that examinees and prep providers use to capture the range of content that might actually appear on the test.
At present, every state except California uses the National MFT Exam as the clinical exam for marriage and family therapist licensure. California uses its own exam, but is planning to switch to the national exam sometime in 2027. At High Pass Education, we're in the process of developing a prep program for the National MFT Exam, to be released later this year. As part of that development, we've been keeping a close eye on what's been happening with the national exam.
How the National MFT Exam problems began
Starting with the January 2026 test window, AMFTRB significantly updated the exam. They changed the balance of content across domains, and they added several new task and knowledge areas that could be included on the test.
But they didn’t publish the new outline in their candidate handbook or anywhere else on their site, as best as I can tell. Like most everyone else, we didn't know the new outline existed until later. January examinees appear to have been tested based on an unpublished, very different outline from the one they would have prepared for. AMFTRB has since said this was an inadvertent error that they became aware of that month and took “immediate steps” to address.
Whatever those steps may have been, they were not immediate enough to help February examinees, who tested between February 14 and 21. AMFTRB posted an updated 2026 Candidate Handbook — the official publication of information about the exam, including the exam outline — sometime between February 24 and March 20, based on my earlier reporting. This means February examinees also appear to have been tested based on an unpublished, very different outline from the one they would have prepared for.
Other than including the updated outline, the updated handbook gave no indication that it had been changed. Same link, same cover, same title. Not even so much as a “revised on” date.
Nor was any notice of the changes posted anywhere on the AMFTRB site, to my knowledge. I am not aware of any notification, via email or any other means, to examinees that the outline had changed, or that they had been tested under an updated outline rather than the one they had been given.
Examinees and prep providers who had previously downloaded the 2026 Candidate Handbook and thought it would be good for the year would have had no way to know they needed to download it again.
It seems to me that AMFTRB was just hoping they could update the handbook quietly, and no one would notice.
How we got involved
We only became aware of a concern when we went to download the handbook in March. At that time, we realized that the version of the outline published in the handbook — the updated outline — was meaningfully different from the one that had been in the handbook at the start of the year. Furthermore, that old outline was still published on the “Exam Info” page on their website, presented as current and official. We wrote an article about it and contacted the California licensing board.
We received a lukewarm response to that initial outreach more than two weeks later, without any commitments for improved processes or assistance for impacted examinees. Of course we understand that mistakes can happen in any process. But failing to rectify those mistakes once known is a bigger issue.
I get especially fired up by those mistakes that set up therapists to fail. I felt that was the case here. I believed AMFTRB owed it to examinees to acknowledge and address their mistakes, considering that at least some early 2026 examinees could have diligently prepared under the old outline and then failed because they were not informed that the exam had switched to a new outline, with many new content areas.
It was only on April 17 -- on the next-to-last day of the fourth testing window under the new outline – that AMFTRB finally removed the old exam outline from its web site.
I wrote to several state licensing boards actively using the National MFT Exam, as well as Professional Testing Corporation and other stakeholders. PTC is a third-party company that AMFTRB and other organizations use for test administration. You can see my letter here.
AMFTRB offers refunds
While of course we're not privy to conversations happening behind the scenes, it's reasonable to believe that several of the stakeholders we contacted were in touch with AMFTRB at that point. AMFTRB formally responded to my letter on May 1, acknowledging mistakes around the rollout of the updated exam plan and noting that they were working with boards and PTC on a path forward.
Last week, AMFTRB emailed those who failed in the January through March testing windows, and said they will be providing free retests. This includes refunding those candidates who had already paid re-examination fees. We do not have exact numbers, but believe that these refunds and free retests will impact hundreds of examinees in total.
You can see AMFTRB’s email to examinees as an attachment to my followup letter to stakeholders here.
I do not believe these refunds would have happened were it not for our direct involvement, pushing state licensing boards and other stakeholders to demand that AMFTRB live up to industry standards for fair testing. I'm tremendously grateful for the work of those boards and stakeholders, and to AMFTRB for ultimately offering a substantive remedy for impacted examinees.
It is not yet clear how April examinees will be addressed. Based on when these events occurred, it is possible that scoring for the April exam administration will be adjusted. [Update 5/20/2026: AMFTRB is offering free retests to those who failed in April, just as they did for those who failed in January through March.]
What happens now
California's Board of Behavioral Sciences discussed the issue at their quarterly meeting last Friday. The BBS will be voting in August on the next round of regulatory changes needed for the National MFT Exam transition. I continue to think the transition is good on balance, but we encouraged the board to preserve an option to maintain their existing exam if AMFTRB does not take significant action to ensure timely and accurate communication to examinees in the future.
The Texas Board of Examiners of MFTs will include this item on their agenda on May 29. Texas has shown their willingness to fight exam processes they deem to be troubled, as evidenced by their work on an alternative to the EPPP in Psychology.
We are continuing work on a National MFT Exam prep program. As always, we will keep a close eye on all of the exams for which we help people prepare, to ensure that our prep materials are as current and accurate as possible. We will call out concerns where we see them. And as always, we will continue to fight for a licensing process that is fair and equitable for all.
