Office of Curriculum, Technology, & Assessment

Beginning with the school year 2002-2003 the State of South Dakota required that all children identified as children who are Limited English Proficient by an LEA be provided with an annual assessment of English language proficiency. The assessment included the areas of speaking, listening, reading, writing conventions and open-ended direct writing.  Comprehension skills were assessed by combining the results of the listening and reading subtests. This annual assessment was the Stanford English Language Proficiency (SELP) assessment.

Beginning February 2006, the State of South Dakota designated the Dakota ELP (an augmented and aligned Stanford English Language Proficiency test) assessment as the assessment that will accomplish these requirements. The assessment will be augmented and aligned with the South Dakota English Language Proficiency standards and will be linked to the reading, math, and eventually science content standards.

Once determination of LEP status is accomplished at the local district, the student will be annually assessed using the South Dakota English Language Proficiency Test (DELP) produced by Harcourt.  The Dakota ELP will annually measure the English language proficiency of all identified LEP students, documenting their progress in acquiring English language proficiency.  The Dakota ELP will be administered in February of every school year.  Districts will be sent the appropriate Dakota ELP test based on the information encoded into the district’s SIMSNet data base by the district SIMS coordinator and information entered into Harcourt SPECTRUM by the district’s test coordinator.