TELPAS Released Tests: What TEA Publishes and How to Use It

A TELPAS released test is a set of real test questions that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has made public, together with the material that explains how they are answered and scored. They are the closest thing available to seeing the actual test before test day.

TEA lists them on its TELPAS released test questions page, at tea.texas.gov/data-reports/student-assessment-overview/telpas-released-test-questions. This site is independent and not connected to TEA; the details below describe what that page offers, and TEA's page is the one to trust if anything changes.

Released tests cover the two online tests taken in grades 2–12: the listening and speaking test, and the reading and writing test. There is nothing equivalent for kindergarten and grade 1, where teachers rate students instead of giving a test, as explained in TELPAS in kindergarten and first grade.

The 2025 release covers every grade cluster for both online tests, and for each one it includes three documents: an answer key, an item rationale, and a scoring guide for the open-ended part of the test.

The answer key lists the correct answer for each item. The item rationale explains the reasoning behind the answers. The scoring guides are for the parts students answer in their own words: the Speaking Scoring Guide for the listening and speaking test, and the Writing Scoring Guide for the reading and writing test.

TEA's page also keeps two earlier releases. They are useful as extra material, with a few gaps to be aware of.

The 2020 materials come from before writing moved onto the online test in 2023, so they do not reflect the current writing items. For writing, the 2025 and 2023 releases are the ones to use.

• 2023 listening and speaking: answer keys and speaking scoring guides.
• 2023 reading and writing: answer keys and writing scoring guides for grade 2, grade 3, and grades 4–5, 8–9 and 10–12. Grades 6–7 is not listed for 2023.
• 2023 sentence rewrite: separate Sentence Rewrite Scoring Guides for elementary, middle school and high school. Sentence rewrite is the editing item where students retype a whole sentence correctly.
• 2020 listening and speaking: answer keys and scoring guides.
• 2020 reading: answer keys. Writing was not part of the online test in 2020.

Not of the test questions themselves. This is the point that confuses most people looking for a TELPAS practice test PDF. The PDFs on TEA's released test page are answer keys, item rationales and scoring guides. The test questions are taken online, on TEA's Practice Test Site at txpt.cambiumtds.com/student.

TELPAS is a computer test with audio, recorded speaking, clickable pictures and typed answers, which a printed booklet could not reproduce. Taking the questions online also means students practice in the same interface they will use on test day.

So the practical setup is two windows: the Practice Test Site open for the student, and the answer key or rationale PDF open for the adult. If you want TELPAS sample questions to look at before sitting down with a child, open the Practice Test Site yourself first and go through a few.

For listening and reading, an answer key tells you whether a choice was right. For speaking and writing, there is no single right answer, and that is where the scoring guides earn their place.

Each scoring guide shows real student responses at each score point. For a teacher, reading a set of them is the quickest way to calibrate what a 2-point or a 4-point answer actually sounds or looks like. For a parent, they make the rubric concrete: you can see what a short, incomplete answer looks like next to a full one.

The TELPAS speaking test guide and the TELPAS writing test guide explain the rubrics those scoring guides are built on.

There is a limited amount of released material, so treat it as something to use carefully rather than repeating it until the answers are memorized. A sequence that works well:

• Pick the right cluster. Remember that the two tests are clustered differently: a grade 7 student takes the grades 6–8 listening and speaking test but the grades 6–7 reading and writing test.
• Let the student take the items on the Practice Test Site in one sitting, without help, as on test day.
• Afterwards, check answers with the answer key and read the item rationale for anything missed. Talk through why the correct answer is correct, going back to the passage or replaying the audio.
• For speaking and writing, compare the student's response with the scoring guide examples. Ask which score point it is closest to and what would move it up one.
• Note the patterns: a domain that is consistently weaker, an item type that causes trouble, answers that are too short. Those are what to practice next.

Released tests and the practice on this site do different jobs. The released tests are real TELPAS items in the real interface, which nothing else can match. But there are only so many of them, and once a student has seen a form, taking it again mostly tests memory.

The TELPAS practice tests on this site are original questions written to match the published test design, not copies of TEA items. Each question has an explanation of the answer, and new questions mean a student can keep practicing a weak skill after the released items run out. For example, a student who struggled with the reading on the 2025 grades 4–5 form can continue with the grades 4–5 reading and writing practice test, and a high school student who found the listening hard can try the grades 10–12 TELPAS listening practice test.

A sensible order is: the official Practice Test Site first to learn the interface, then a released test to see where the student stands, then targeted practice here, and another year's released materials closer to the spring window. The guide on how to prepare for TELPAS has more on preparing each domain.