About this site and its sources
Facts checked against nursingworld.org, codeofethics.ana.org and 6 more sites · Last checked Nov 6, 2026 · Not affiliated with ANCC, ANA, AONL, NLN or AACN.
Nurse Leader & Educator Certs is an independent study resource for six certification exams taken by nurse managers, executives, educators and informatics nurses. None of the certifying bodies runs, reviews or endorses it. Pages appear under the site's name; there is no named author, and no clinical or academic credentials are claimed for one.
Handbooks first
Eligibility, fees, test length, pass marks and renewal rules are copied from documents the three certifying bodies publish:
- ANCC: the certification handbook, each exam's test content outline, the exam pages that carry the prices, and the yearly report of certification data where pass rates appear.
- AONL: the CNML and CENP candidate handbooks, the program pages with their FAQs, and the annual statistics PDFs.
- NLN: the March 2026 candidate handbooks, the test blueprints, the fee pages and the certification statistics page.
Every row of every table points to a numbered document, with the day it was last compared. Each exam's figures are stored once and reused, so the NPD-BC fee on the cost page and on a comparison page cannot drift apart.
Conflicting documents
Certifying bodies sometimes publish two answers to one question. Rather than choose, the pages show the disagreement:
- CNML, non-member price: the program page and the FAQ print different amounts, so tables carry a range and a note.
- NLN results: the statistics count every registration that passed, without a first-time split, and are labeled that way.
- ANCC retest price: absent from the handbook, the retest page and the exam pages, so no figure is printed.
- Stale prep material: retired outlines, the old RN-BC label for informatics and a nine-provision ANA Code still circulate; the current documents win.
How practice items are vetted
Items come from the banks that feed our study apps. Each one is matched to a domain of the outline in force for its exam, then its keyed answer and per-option explanations are verified. A second reviewer, working without the key, answers it cold, and only items that pass that blind review go live.
Subjects that several exams test (staffing math, Kotter and Lewin, EBP versus QI) are explained once, on the page of the exam assigned to own the topic, and the rest link across.
Reading the dates
A page's "updated" stamp and a fact's check date are two different things. Some facts already have a known change ahead of them, the ANCC renewal handbook of February 1, 2027 for instance, and say so where they appear.