What Is TELPAS? Meaning, Grade Levels and Ratings

TELPAS stands for the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System. It is run by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), and its job is narrow: to measure how well a student who is learning English can listen, speak, read and write in English. It is not a test of math, science or general ability, and it does not decide whether a student moves up a grade.

Federal law requires every state to assess the English of these students once a year. TELPAS is how Texas does that. The results tell families and schools how a student's English is developing, help schools plan language support, and form one of the criteria for deciding when a student no longer needs to be identified as an English learner.

Texas uses the term emergent bilingual (EB) for students who are learning English as an additional language. You may also see the older term English learner on some documents. Every emergent bilingual student in kindergarten through grade 12 takes TELPAS every year until they are reclassified as English proficient.

That means TELPAS is not a one-off. A student who starts school in Texas as an emergent bilingual in kindergarten might take it for several years in a row. Each year's result shows where their English stands at that point, and comparing years shows progress.

A small group of students in grades 2–12 with the most significant cognitive disabilities take TELPAS Alternate instead. That decision is made by the student's ARD committee together with the Language Proficiency Assessment Committee (LPAC). It is covered in its own guide on this site.

In kindergarten and grade 1 there is no online test. Instead, teachers who have completed TEA's holistic rating training rate each student in all four domains, based on what they observe of the student's English in ordinary classroom activities over time.

The ratings use the same four levels as the older grades, from Beginning to Advanced High. For a young child this is a sensible approach: a five-year-old's English shows up far more accurately in how they talk with classmates and follow directions than it would in a test session at a computer.

The guide to TELPAS in kindergarten and first grade explains in more detail how this works and what families can do to help.

From grade 2, TELPAS is given on a computer as two separate tests: a listening and speaking test, and a reading and writing test. Students take them at school during the spring testing window, on days the school chooses.

Students in neighboring grades are grouped into clusters, sometimes called grade bands, and each cluster takes the same test form. The two tests are clustered differently, which surprises some families. Reading and writing is grouped more finely than listening and speaking.

So a fourth grader and a fifth grader take the same grades 4–5 forms for both tests, and the grades 4–5 TELPAS practice on this site is written for that cluster. The free TELPAS practice tests here follow the reading and writing clusters from grade 2 to grade 12.

Listening: students hear short spoken directions and watch short videos of stories and informational passages, then answer questions. Most questions are multiple choice; some ask the student to click on a picture. Students do not see a written transcript of what they heard. The guide to the TELPAS listening and speaking test covers this test in more detail.

Speaking: students record spoken answers on the computer. Each answer has a time limit of 45 or 90 seconds, depending on the item. Prompts include retelling a story from a short video (students may watch it again before they speak), describing a picture, giving an opinion and comparing two pictures. The directions tell students to tell as much as they can.

Reading: students read passages and answer questions about word meaning, what the text says and what can be inferred from it. Most questions are multiple choice; a few ask the student to click on words in the passage or drag answers into place.

Writing: since spring 2023, writing in grades 2–12 has been part of the online reading and writing test. There are three written responses and six short editing questions. Before 2023, writing was rated by teachers from a collection of each student's classroom writing. In kindergarten and grade 1, teachers still rate writing holistically from the student's classroom writing, and a writing collection is still used in some special holistic administrations for grades 2–12.

Separate guides go into the TELPAS speaking test and the TELPAS writing test in detail, because those are the two parts families most often ask about.

Each domain is rated at one of four proficiency levels. Each level describes what a student can generally do in English. They are not grades in the classroom sense.

From grade 2, each domain on the online tests also gets a scale score from 1000 to 2000. The scale score is what places the student in a level. The four domain ratings are then combined into a composite rating, with each domain counting for 25 percent.

The guide to how TELPAS scores work explains the scale, the composite and how to read the report.

• Beginning: the student has little ability to understand and use English in an academic setting and relies heavily on support.
• Intermediate: the student can handle simple, familiar English and still needs considerable support with grade-level material.
• Advanced: the student can take part in grade-level work in English with some support.
• Advanced High: the student can take part in grade-level work in English with minimal support. A composite rating of Advanced High is one of the state criteria for reclassification.

TELPAS is given once a year, in a spring window set by TEA. In 2026 the window ran from February 16 to March 27. In 2027 it runs from February 15 to March 26. Kindergarten and grade 1 holistic ratings are completed within the window too.

Your school sets the exact days within that window, so ask the teacher or campus testing coordinator when your child's sessions are scheduled. The test dates guide has more on the calendar.

TELPAS results are used in three main ways. Schools use them to plan the English language support each student receives. TEA uses them for state and federal reporting on how emergent bilingual students are progressing. And the composite rating is one of the criteria the LPAC uses when deciding whether a student can be reclassified as English proficient, alongside a state reading test and a teacher's evaluation.

That last point is the one most families care about. Reclassification is a significant step: the student no longer takes TELPAS and no longer needs to be identified as an emergent bilingual student, though schools continue to monitor their progress for a period afterwards. The TELPAS reclassification guide explains the criteria grade by grade.

Texas adopted new English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) in 2024, and schools begin teaching to them in the 2026–27 school year. TELPAS is not changing overnight. In 2026–27 and 2027–28, TELPAS keeps its current test blueprints and its four proficiency levels, and assesses only the parts of the standards that the old and new ELPS share. TEA plans a new assessment for 2028–29.

For families, the practical message is that the test your child takes in spring 2027 will look much like the test in recent years, and the released tests and official practice tests remain a fair guide to it.

This site is independent and is not connected to TEA. The authoritative source is TEA's TELPAS page at tea.texas.gov/assessment-and-accountability/telpas, which links to the test blueprints, scoring rubrics and proficiency level descriptors. TEA's official practice tests, at txpt.cambiumtds.com/student, run in the same interface students use on test day and are worth trying at least once.

For anything about your own child, including test days, accommodations and results, your school is the right place to ask.