ELPS Explained: Texas English Language Proficiency Standards

Last updated: September 16, 2026

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

The ELPS, Texas’s English Language Proficiency Standards, define the English that Emergent Bilingual students must learn and that teachers in every subject are required to address. They are the Texas counterpart to the WIDA standards most other states use, and they underpin the TELPAS assessment. This guide explains what the ELPS are, how they shape instruction, and the revision that reached classrooms in 2026-2027.

Executive Summary

The English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) are Texas’s standards for the English language development of Emergent Bilingual students. They require teachers in all content areas, not just ESL or bilingual classes, to integrate listening, speaking, reading, and writing language objectives into instruction. The ELPS define proficiency level descriptors used by TELPAS. A revised ELPS, adopted by the State Board of Education in 2024, moves from four proficiency levels to five. It applies in classrooms from the 2026-2027 school year, while TELPAS goes through two transition years.

Key Takeaways

• The ELPS are Texas’s English language proficiency standards for Emergent Bilinguals.
• They apply across all subjects, not only language classes.
• They define the proficiency level descriptors TELPAS uses.
• They cover four domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Revised ELPS apply from 2026-2027, moving from four to five levels.

What Are the ELPS?

The ELPS are part of the Texas Administrative Code and require districts to provide English language development instruction so that Emergent Bilinguals can learn English while accessing grade-level content. They include cross-curricular learning strategies and proficiency expectations in the four domains. Crucially, the ELPS are the responsibility of all teachers, making English language development a shared, schoolwide duty.

Quick answer: the ELPS are the Texas standards that define the English Emergent Bilinguals must learn and require every teacher to integrate language development into instruction.

Texas ELPS PDF: The Official TEA Documents

Quick answer: TEA publishes the official Texas ELPS as a PDF of the rule adopted by the State Board of Education in 2024, with separate PDFs for the student expectations and the proficiency level descriptors. The standards are codified in 19 TAC Chapter 120, Subchapter B (§120.20 for kindergarten through grade 3, §120.21 for grades 4-12), and districts implement them beginning in the 2026-2027 school year.

All of these are linked from the TEA English Language Proficiency Standards page. The 2007 standards sit in 19 TAC §74.4, which the State Board of Education moved in 2026 to repeal, with a proposed effective date of August 1, 2026, to avoid confusion with the new standards. A district document that still cites §74.4 is citing the old four-level ELPS.

The acronym is not unique to Texas: the Arizona ELP Standards are also called the ELPS, with ten standards and a different level scale.

How the ELPS Shape Instruction

1. Identify the language demands. Teachers determine the listening, speaking, reading, and writing demands of each lesson.
2. Set language objectives. Alongside content objectives, lessons include ELPS-based language objectives.
3. Differentiate by level. Instruction is matched to students’ proficiency levels.
4. Build academic language. Students practice producing academic English across subjects.

The ELPS and TELPAS

The ELPS and TELPAS are two sides of the same system: the ELPS define proficiency, and TELPAS measures it. The proficiency level descriptors in the ELPS are what TELPAS uses to rate students. For how TELPAS turns those descriptors into domain ratings and a composite score, see TELPAS scores explained and what is TELPAS.

For the free TEA released items and online practice materials that let students meet the format before the spring window, published by grade cluster with answer keys and scoring guides, see TELPAS practice test.

The 2026-2027 ELPS Revision

In 2024, the State Board of Education adopted revised ELPS. The new standards move from four proficiency levels to five and apply in classrooms from the 2026-2027 school year, the year now under way. Curriculum, professional development, and data systems that still assume four levels are out of step with what classrooms are required to teach.

The Five New Proficiency Levels

The revised standards do not simply add a level to the existing four. The labels change as well, which matters for every curriculum document, lesson template, and data field that still references the old names.

Note the trap in the right-hand column: “Advanced” exists in both scales but does not mean the same thing. Under the 2007 ELPS it is the third of four levels; under the revised ELPS it is the top of five, the position “Advanced High” held on the old scale. Any district document, report, or reclassification workflow that references proficiency by label alone now reads incorrectly, and the error looks like a data problem rather than a naming problem.

When TELPAS Becomes Fully Aligned to the New ELPS

Quick answer: TELPAS is not aligned to the new ELPS the year the standards reach classrooms. The 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 administrations are transition years, so full alignment follows them, in the 2028-2029 school year.

This is the detail districts most often get wrong, because the classroom date and the assessment date are not the same date. The revised standards apply to instruction from 2026-2027. The assessment lags deliberately: TEA’s draft transition documents state that “only the 2024 standards that overlap with the 2007 ELPS will be assessed in the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 grades 2-12 TELPAS tests.” In other words, for two full years teachers instruct against five levels while TELPAS reports against the overlap with the old four.

The practical consequence is a two-year gap in which TELPAS data cannot fully evidence the instruction being delivered. A district that sets a growth target on TELPAS ratings for 2026-2027 is measuring against a partially aligned instrument, and should say so in its improvement plan rather than discover it at reporting time.

District Benchmark: A Standard Assigned to Everyone

The ELPS differ from most standards documents in one respect that determines whether they work: they are assigned to every teacher, not to a department. Count what that means in a real building.

Take a Texas high school of 1,800 students where 360 are Emergent Bilinguals. Those students are distributed across the master schedule, so a typical EB passes through seven teachers a day, and a typical content teacher has Emergent Bilinguals in five of six sections. The ELPS make all of those teachers responsible for language objectives. In a district of 10,000 students, that is not a training obligation for the EL department; it is a training obligation for essentially the entire instructional staff, repeated for every new hire, every year.

This is why ELPS implementation so often stalls at the documentation stage. Writing a language objective into a lesson plan template is achievable district-wide in a semester. Getting 400 content teachers to run genuine oral production tasks for the Emergent Bilinguals in front of them is a different order of problem, and it is the one the 2026-2027 revision has landed on top of.

What a Cross-Curricular Standard Costs in Teacher Attention

The ELPS ask every teacher to develop oral language, which collides with the Speaking Time Gap: the shortfall between the responsive spoken practice an Emergent Bilingual needs and what one teacher can supply across a full class. The Texas version of this arithmetic is distinctive because the standard is distributed rather than concentrated.

The math, counted per teacher rather than per student. Take the high school above: 360 Emergent Bilinguals, seven periods a day, a content teacher carrying EBs in five sections. If each of those five sections holds six Emergent Bilinguals, that teacher is responsible for ELPS language objectives for 30 students across a day, on top of teaching their subject to everyone else. Giving each of those 30 a single minute of responsive spoken feedback consumes half an hour of instructional time that has to come out of content teaching. Multiply by the number of content teachers and the district is asking for hundreds of hours a week that do not exist anywhere in the schedule.

That is not an argument against the ELPS, which are among the better-designed standards documents in the country precisely because they refuse to quarantine language development in the ESL room. It is an argument that a distributed standard needs distributed capacity. Districts that pair the ELPS expectation with practice a student can do without waiting for one of seven teachers to reach them are the ones where the language objectives in the lesson plan correspond to something that happens.

Common Mistakes District Leaders Make

1. Treating the ELPS as ESL-only. They apply to all teachers and subjects.
2. Writing content objectives without language objectives. The ELPS require both.
3. Ignoring the 2026-2027 revision. Still planning, placing, or reporting on four levels.
4. Setting expectations without capacity. Asking for oral practice the schedule cannot provide.

Recommended Actions

Immediate (this month): Confirm all teachers, not just EL staff, are using the ELPS in lesson planning.

Medium-term (this year): Finish aligning curriculum and PD to the five-level ELPS now in effect.

Long-term (strategy): Resource individual speaking and language practice so the ELPS expectations are achievable at scale.

Questions District Leaders Should Ask

• Are all our teachers using the ELPS, or only EL specialists?
• Do lessons include ELPS language objectives, not just content?
• Have our documents and data systems caught up with the five-level ELPS now in effect?
• Do students get enough oral practice to meet the standards?

The Structure of the ELPS: Strategies, Domains, and Descriptors

The ELPS are not a single list but a document with distinct parts. The table below follows the 2007 ELPS, codified at 19 TAC §74.4; the 2024 ELPS, codified at 19 TAC §120.20 and §120.21, are written in two grade bands (K-3 and 4-12) and keep the four domains. Knowing which part you are looking at is what makes the standards usable rather than abstract.

The PLDs do double duty, and that is the detail most worth understanding. Teachers use them to locate a student and plan the next step, and TELPAS uses the same descriptors as its rating scale. That is why the standards and the assessment stay tightly aligned in Texas, and why a change to one is automatically a change to the other.

The ELPS Proficiency Levels

The 2007 ELPS, in force through 2025-2026, defined four proficiency levels, the same four labels used in TEA’s ELPS-TELPAS proficiency level descriptors. The table below describes those four; the five levels of the revised ELPS are listed in the revision section above. A student receives a level in each of the four domains, so a single student commonly sits at different levels in listening and speaking than in reading and writing. How TELPAS turns these domain levels into ratings and a composite score is covered in TELPAS scores explained.

Quick answer: the revised ELPS that apply from 2026-2027 have five proficiency levels: Pre-Production, Beginning, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and Advanced. The 2007 ELPS had four: Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High.

How the ELPS Levels Compare to WIDA

Anyone reading national research, evaluating a vendor, or moving a student across state lines needs the crosswalk, because the two scales are not interchangeable and a “level 3” means nothing until you know which system produced it.

The mapping is approximate by nature: the two systems were built independently, with different descriptors and different cut points, so no official crosswalk exists. Treat it as a rough orientation rather than a conversion table. The differences are covered in full in TELPAS vs WIDA.

Preparing for the Five-Level ELPS

The revision adopted in 2024 replaces the four proficiency levels with five, giving a more granular picture of a student’s development, and it applies in classrooms from 2026-2027, with transition-year assessments. For district leaders, the switch has happened in classrooms, and the practical work is completing it: update curriculum documents and lesson templates that reference proficiency levels, retrain staff on the new descriptors so that placement and instruction stay consistent, and confirm that data and reporting systems can handle five levels rather than four. Because TELPAS assesses only the standards that overlap the 2007 ELPS during the two transition years, districts operate with both models in view until 2028-2029, which makes clear internal guidance especially important. Treating the change as a multi-year rollout, rather than a one-time update, is what keeps instruction steady while the standards shift underneath it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the ELPS?

The ELPS (English Language Proficiency Standards) are the Texas standards that define the English language development of Emergent Bilingual students across listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and require all teachers to integrate language instruction into their subjects.

Who is responsible for the ELPS?

All teachers, not just ESL or bilingual staff. The ELPS make English language development a shared, cross-curricular responsibility.

How do the ELPS relate to TELPAS?

The ELPS define proficiency and its level descriptors; TELPAS measures students against them. They are two parts of the same Texas system.

What is changing with the ELPS?

A revised ELPS adopted in 2024 moves from four proficiency levels to five, in effect in classrooms from the 2026-2027 school year. The five levels are Pre-Production, Beginning, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and Advanced, replacing Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High.

What school year will TELPAS be fully aligned to the new ELPS?

The 2028-2029 school year. The revised ELPS reached classrooms in 2026-2027, but 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 are TELPAS transition years in which only the 2024 standards that overlap the 2007 ELPS are assessed. Full alignment follows those two transition years.

What are the five new ELPS proficiency levels called?

Pre-Production, Beginning, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and Advanced. Note that “Advanced” changes meaning: under the 2007 standards it was the third of four levels, while under the revised standards it is the highest of five, the position “Advanced High” held on the old scale.

What are the parts of the ELPS?

The ELPS include cross-curricular second language acquisition learning strategies, proficiency standards for listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and proficiency level descriptors for each level: five levels in the 2024 ELPS, four (Beginning to Advanced High) in the 2007 ELPS. TELPAS uses the ELPS descriptors as its rating scale.

What are the ELPS proficiency level descriptors?

The proficiency level descriptors (PLDs) describe what a student can do with English at each proficiency level in each domain. Teachers use them to place students and plan instruction, and TELPAS uses them to assign ratings.

How should districts prepare for the five-level ELPS?

Update curriculum and lesson templates that reference proficiency levels, retrain staff on the new five-level descriptors, and confirm data systems can handle five levels. The change applies in classrooms from 2026-2027, with TELPAS transition years through 2027-2028, so this is current work rather than future work.

Where can I find the Texas ELPS PDF?

On the TEA English Language Proficiency Standards page. The adopted rule, the K-12 student expectations and the K-3 and grades 4-12 proficiency level descriptors are each published as a PDF, and the direct links are in the table in the Texas ELPS PDF section above.

Related Resources

• Emergent Bilingual Students
• English Learners in Texas
• What Is TELPAS?
• TELPAS Scoring Explained
• Texas English Learner Requirements
• Complete Guide to WIDA

Conclusion

The ELPS are the foundation of how Texas develops and measures Emergent Bilinguals’ English: cross-curricular standards that every teacher must address, and the basis for TELPAS. With five levels in classrooms since the start of 2026-2027, alignment is current work rather than preparation. And because the ELPS ask every teacher to build oral language that the schedule cannot fully supply, resourcing individual practice at scale is what makes the standards achievable.

Sources: Texas Education Agency, txel.org (ELPS); TEA, ELPS-TELPAS Proficiency Level Descriptors; TEA, English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) Update 2026-2027; TEA, 2026-2027 TELPAS Grades 4-12 Transition Years Assessed Curriculum.

Making a Shared Standard Workable for Every Teacher

The ELPS put a language objective in every classroom, which means the algebra teacher and the biology teacher are now responsible for oral language too. Most will say they believe in it and still struggle to give a room full of Emergent Bilinguals time to actually speak.

The obstacle is not buy-in, it is arithmetic. A standard can ask every teacher to build academic English, but it cannot add minutes to the period or hands to the room.

So districts are looking for ways to make the expectation practical, especially now that the five-level model is in classrooms. Telo AI is one example some teachers use to extend oral practice, in English plus Spanish and French for bilingual settings.

See how districts make cross-curricular language practice workable: https://mytelo.ai/how-telo-works/

A standard is only as strong as a teacher’s ability to meet it on a normal day. The ELPS set the bar high on purpose, and the districts that reach it are the ones that found a way to give every student the practice the standard assumes.