SDL · Start Here · NY School Leadership Prep

The single most surprising fact The SDL testing windows are not the SBL testing windows. Both exams are offered by appointment inside short windows rather than year-round, and the two calendars publish the same score report dates — which is exactly why candidates assume they are the same calendar. They are not. SDL windows run about eleven days and open one to two weeks later than the SBL windows that share their score date. If you are pursuing the new Administrator certificate you will sit both exams, and planning SDL off the SBL calendar is the mistake that costs you a whole cycle. The dates are in the table below, and on the NYSTCE 103/104 test page.

What the assessment is, and who sits it

Two separate tests, scored separately, both required. Test codes 103 and 104.

The exam

The NYSTCE School District Leader (SDL) assessment is New York’s district-level administrative licensure exam. It comes in two parts — Part One (test code 103) and Part Two (test code 104) — and both are required. Each part is a 60-item multiple-choice section plus two written assignments, four hours of testing time, scored on its own scale with its own 220 passing score.

You can register for the two parts together or separately. They are scored independently: passing one does not carry over if you fail the other, and you retake only the part you failed.

Who takes it

Candidates for district-level administrative roles — the positions NYSED lists as acceptable for the SDL experience requirement are District Superintendent, Superintendent, and Deputy, Associate or Assistant Superintendent (non-civil-service). The role must be administrative in nature: hiring and retention, pedagogical supervision and evaluation, budget preparation and implementation, curriculum development, and non-membership in the teachers’ bargaining unit.

The stated experience requirement is three years of full-time classroom teaching, pupil personnel service, or educational leadership experience. NYSED’s experience page — note it was last updated October 19, 2020 — is the source. It states no degree requirement; we could not confirm one on any NYSED page, so we do not state one. Check the Search Certification Requirements tool in TEACH for yours.

Read this before you decide the SDL is going away New York is retiring the SDL certificate and keeping the SDL exam. The January 2025 Regents action created a new Administrator certificate, and NYSED’s own Q&A says applicants for it must “achieve a passing score on both parts of the SBL AND SDL exams,” or use the Individual Evaluation Pathway. So 103/104 is not a sunsetting test — it is a required test on the new pathway, and its candidate pool is about to include every building leader who wants the Administrator certificate. That is consistent with what NYSTCE has published: SDL is not on the National Evaluation Series transition list, it has no replacement test code, and it is not NYSTCE Flex–eligible. Administrator Certificate Q&A (PDF).

How the two parts are built

Straight from the official test design. This table is why the rest of this site is organized the way it is.

Multiple-choice items per part

Written assignments per part

50 / 50

MC share / written share, both parts

220

Passing score, each part separately

Part	Subarea	Objectives	MC items	MC %	Written assignment	Written %
One (103)	I. Developing, Communicating, and Sustaining an Educational Vision	0001–0004	30	25%	Assignment One — Work Product 150–300 words	17%
	II. Supervising Districtwide Change and Accountability	0005–0008	30	25%	Assignment Two — Case Study 300–600 words	33%
	Total	0001–0008	60	50%	2 assignments	50%
Two (104)	I. Leading the District Educational Program	0001–0005	37	31%	Assignment Two — Educational Program Analysis 300–600 words	33%
	II. Managing District Resources and Compliance	0006–0008	23	19%	Assignment One — Management Problem Solving 150–300 words	17%
	Total	0001–0008	60	50%	2 assignments	50%

Source: NYSED / Evaluation Systems, School District Leader Test Design and Assessment Framework (© 2008) and the Preparation Guide (© 2009–2010). Counts and percentages are the framework’s own “approximate” figures. The multiple-choice section includes some non-scorable field-test items; every scorable item counts the same.

The number people get wrong The multiple-choice section is worth 50% of your score and the two written assignments are the other 50% — on Part One and Part Two alike. Two essays weigh as much as sixty items. The single long assignment is worth 33% of a whole test — more than every multiple-choice item in an entire subarea of Part One. Studying content and never rehearsing a timed 300–600-word response is studying half the exam.

The asymmetry on 104 On both parts, Assignment One is the short task (150–300 words, 17%) and Assignment Two is the long task (300–600 words, 33%). On 103 that maps the way you would expect — short task from Subarea I, long task from Subarea II. On 104 it inverts: the long 33% task, Educational Program Analysis, comes from Subarea I, and the short 17% task, Management Problem Solving, comes from Subarea II. Net effect on Part Two: instructional programme content carries 31% of the MC and the 33% essay — roughly two-thirds of the test. Finance, facilities and compliance total 36%.

When you can actually sit it

SDL is not offered year-round. It is by appointment during testing windows only — seven published windows across 2026–27, most of them about eleven days long, with gaps of two to five months.

SDL 103 / 104 testing window	Score report date	Days after window closes	SBL 109 / 110 window — for contrast
Apr 22 – May 2, 2026	May 20, 2026	18	Apr 11 – Apr 27, 2026
Jun 17 – Jun 27, 2026	Jul 15, 2026	18	Jun 6 – Jun 22, 2026
Aug 12 – Aug 22, 2026	Sep 9, 2026	18	Aug 1 – Aug 17, 2026
Nov 16 – Nov 26, 2026	Dec 14, 2026	18	Nov 5 – Nov 21, 2026
Feb 10 – Feb 20, 2027	Mar 10, 2027	18	Jan 30 – Feb 15, 2027
Apr 21 – May 1, 2027	May 19, 2027	18	Apr 10 – Apr 26, 2027
Jun 16 – Jun 26, 2027	Jul 14, 2027	18	Jun 5 – Jun 21, 2027

Sources: NYSTCE score report dates, School Leadership Assessments (linked from the 103/104 test page as “View testing windows”) · the separate SBL table, shown here only to make the difference visible. Verified August 2026; NYSTCE republishes these each year, so confirm before you register.

Two things to take from that table One: the score report dates are identical for SDL and SBL, and the windows are not. That coincidence is what makes the mix-up so easy. Every SDL window opens eleven days later than the SBL window that shares its score date, and closes five days later. If you sit SBL on the first Monday of its window and expect the same date to work for SDL, the SDL centre is not yet open. Two: scores post at 10:00 p.m. on the score report date, roughly two and a half weeks after the window closes — and the date is fixed by the window, not by when in the window you tested. Sitting on day one and sitting on day eleven produce the same score date, so there is no advantage in rushing to the front of a window, and there is a real advantage in taking the extra week to prepare.

Registration

Register at nystce.nesinc.com. A registration is valid for one year from its issue date, so you can register now and schedule into a later window. If you neither test nor withdraw within that year, it expires with no refund or credit.

Rescheduling

You may reschedule up to 24 hours before your appointment, and there is no rescheduling fee. Cancelling releases your seat — any later appointment is subject to available space, which in an eleven-day window is a real constraint.

Refunds

Full refund if you withdraw before scheduling, or cancel at least 24 hours ahead. No refund if you are absent. Refunds are usually issued within a week of the request.

Sources: Withdrawal and refund policy · Changing your registration.

What it costs

Verified August 2026. Fees change — confirm on the official test page before you pay.

$169

Part One (103)

$168

Part Two (104)

$337

Both Parts — exactly $169 + $168

There is no bundle discount — there is a bundle appointment $169 + $168 = $337. Registering for Both Parts saves you nothing. What it buys is a single appointment covering both parts on one day: 8 hours 40 minutes, including a 40-minute lunch break. Register the parts separately and, in an eleven-day window with finite seats, you may not be able to get them onto the same day at all. So the choice is not financial — it is a stamina-versus-scheduling choice. Weigh it honestly: eight and a half hours of district-scenario reading and constructed-response writing in one sitting is a demanding day, and if you fail one part you re-register and pay that part’s full fee again either way. See Day-Of for a both-parts plan and a use for that 40 minutes.

Source: NYSTCE School District Leader 103/104 test page.

How it is scored

Each part is scored and reported on its own. The passing score is 220.

The two halves

220 passes, on each part, computed separately. There is no combined or averaged SDL score, and no compensation across parts.
The multiple-choice section is 50% of the total test score. Each scorable item counts the same; some items are non-scorable field-test items and you cannot tell which.
The written section is the other 50% — approximately 17% from Assignment One and approximately 33% from Assignment Two.
You may complete the two assignments in either order and return to either as time permits.

The three written criteria

Every SDL written response is judged on these three, quoted from the official directions:

PURPOSE — fulfil the charge of the assignment.
APPLICATION OF CONTENT — accurately and effectively apply the relevant knowledge and skills.
SUPPORT — support the response with appropriate examples and/or sound reasoning reflecting an understanding of the relevant knowledge and skills.

Responses are evaluated on those criteria, not on writing ability — but they must be clear enough to permit a valid judgment, and must be your own original work.

Score	What it means
4	Thorough command of the relevant knowledge and skills.
3	General command.
2	Partial command.
1	Little or no command.
U	Unscorable — off topic, not in English, illegible, not original work, or otherwise not scorable.
B	Blank — no response. On the 33% assignment this is unrecoverable.

Source: NYSED / Evaluation Systems School District Leader Preparation Guide, written-assignment directions and performance characteristics. SDL’s criteria are not SBL’s — if you have studied SBL material, its completeness / accuracy / depth of support and understanding language does not apply here. Work the SDL wording in the Task Playbook.

Getting your results

Score reports post online beginning at 10:00 p.m. on the score report date for the window in which you tested.
Scores go to NYSED automatically and attach to your certification file.
NYSTCE publishes two free explainers on reading the report — How to Read Your Score Report and Understanding Candidate Score Reports.

If you do not pass

You may retake a test until you pass it. Two rules govern when.

The written rule

You must wait 30 days after taking the test before retaking the same test. SDL is not on NYSTCE’s 60-day list — that list is subject-area tests, and 103/104 is not on it.
You must reregister and pay the full fee again each time you retake. There is no retake discount.
You retake only the part you failed. A passed part stays passed and may not be retaken.

The rule that actually binds

The 30-day wait is almost never what delays you. The window calendar is. Look at the table above: after the August 2026 window closes, the next SDL window opens November 16. Fail in August and your realistic next attempt is roughly twelve weeks away, not four — and your score does not arrive until September 9, which leaves about ten weeks to rebuild and re-register.

Unconfirmed: NYSTCE’s published retake policy says nothing about retaking inside a single testing window, and we found no official statement on it. Do not plan a same-window second attempt on the assumption that it is allowed — ask Evaluation Systems first.

Source: NYSTCE retake policy for test 103.

Practical consequence Because a failed part costs you a whole cycle rather than a month, the cheapest thing you can buy on this exam is preparation for the written section. It is 50% of the score, it is the half most candidates under-rehearse, and it is the half where the gap between a 2 and a 3 is procedural — answering every part of the charge, hitting the required counts, supporting each claim — rather than a matter of knowing more.

The score waiver most candidates have never heard of

If you miss the passing score by a very small margin, New York has a route that does not require you to retake the exam. It is real, it is published, and it is easy to miss.

What it is NYSED will consider waiving a required NYSTCE exam score if your score falls within 0.5 standard error of measurement (SEM) of the passing score and you meet a grade-point condition. The waiver scores are published per test, and for SDL they are:

Exam	Test code	Passing score	0.5 SEM waiver score	Margin
School District Leader Part One	103	220	212	8 points
School District Leader Part Two	104	220	211	9 points

Source: NYSED Certification Exam Waiver. That page was last updated June 18, 2026 — recent, but check it again before relying on the figures. The related NYSTCE announcement, “Certification exam waiver process now available,” is dated February 26, 2025.

What you must have

A score of 212 or higher on 103, or 211 or higher on 104 — below the 220 pass, but within 0.5 SEM of it.
An overall GPA of 3.5 or higher on your bachelor’s and/or master’s degree transcripts. NYSED’s wording: check the transcripts to determine whether your overall GPA is 3.5 or higher.
The transcript you submit must show conferral of the bachelor’s or master’s degree. Coursework in progress does not qualify — the degree must have been awarded.
An active certification application in TEACH before you submit the waiver request.
Transcripts on file should not be more than five years old.

How to proceed

Get your score report and compare it to the waiver score for that specific part — 103 and 104 have different thresholds (212 and 211), so check the right row.
Confirm the degree is conferred and the overall GPA on that degree is 3.5 or higher.
Apply for the certificate in TEACH so there is an active application on file, and make sure your conferred transcript is on file and current.
Submit the waiver request following the instructions on https://www.highered.nysed.gov/tcert/certificate/certexamwaiver.html — that page is the operative one, and the request procedure and any forms are published there.

We describe the eligibility conditions because NYSED states them plainly. We deliberately do not paraphrase the submission mechanics, form names or processing times — read them off the NYSED page, which is the only version that will be current when you need it.

Why this matters more on SDL than on most tests A missed SDL part costs a full window cycle, so an eight-point miss on 103 is the difference between certifying this spring and certifying next winter. Check the waiver scores before you register for a retake, not after.

The certification landscape around the exam

New York is mid-transition on administrative certification. None of this changes what is on the test — it changes how long the SDL certificate route stays open, and why the SDL exam does not close with it.

The regulatory action On January 13, 2025, the New York State Board of Regents approved Regulation sections 52.21, 80-1.2, 80-4.3, 80-5.20 and Subpart 80-3, establishing a new Administrator certificate and a Superintendent Extension. Institutions could begin applying to register Administrator and Superintendent Extension programs on January 29, 2025. NYSED — new Administrator certificate.

Date	What happens
February 1, 2025	NYSED no longer registers preparation programs leading to the current School Building Leader and School District Leader certificates.
September 1, 2030	All registered programs leading to SBL and SDL certification are discontinued on or after this date.
January 1, 2031	Individuals must apply and meet all requirements for the Initial SBL and/or the Professional SDL certificate by this date. The FAQ adds that candidates must also apply and qualify for SBL and SDL Internship certificates, SBL Initial and Conditional Initial certificates, and Transitional D certificates on or before this date.
September 1, 2031	NYSED will no longer issue current SBL and SDL certificates with an effective date beginning after this date — except for the Professional certificate and reissuance of an Initial certificate.

Sources: NYSED Administrator certificate · Administrator Certificate Q&A (PDF).

Level

SDL is a Professional certificate

Note the wording in the January 1, 2031 deadline: it names the Initial SBL and the Professional SDL. SDL is issued at the Professional level, not the Initial level — a difference worth carrying into any conversation about reissuance or renewal, because the rules that apply to an Initial certificate are not the SDL rules.

Who needs the new certificate

The 25% rule

Educational leaders with more than 25 percent of their assignment in a school-level and/or district-level administrative position must obtain the Administrator certificate. The Administrator certificate’s scope excludes a person serving as a school district business leader — SDBL sits outside this requirement.

The exam requirement

Both exams, or Individual Evaluation

Applicants for the Administrator certificate must pass both parts of the SBL exam and both parts of the SDL exam, or use the Individual Evaluation Pathway. If you already hold an SBL, NYSED’s Q&A says you can apply for the Administrator certificate and earn a passing score on the SDL exam to fulfil the requirements. The Superintendent Extension is not available directly to an SBL holder — you obtain the Administrator certificate first, then apply for the extension.

One question we cannot answer, and will not pretend to Does an existing SDL certificate holder have to convert to the new Administrator certificate? NYSED’s sentence on this reads: individuals who hold a valid SBL, SAS, or SDA will not be required to obtain the new Administrator certificate, as those certificates will continue to be recognized. SDL is not named in that sentence, and the FAQ answers the parallel question only for SBL. We searched the Administrator certificate page, the new-certificate page, the Q&A PDF and NYSED site search and found no official statement either way for SDL. The surrounding language — continued recognition of existing credentials, and the September 1, 2031 carve-out for Professional certificates — strongly implies a valid SDL stays valid. That is an inference, not an NYSED statement, and this is a question you should not settle from a study site. Confirm it with NYSED’s Office of Teaching Initiatives, or check the Administrator Certificate Decision Tree (PDF), before you make an employment or application decision on it.

What the exam is actually built from

The blueprint is older than most of the vocabulary your preparation programme uses. Both facts matter, and they are not in conflict once you see the split.

The blueprint: the 2008 framework

The School District Leader Test Design and Assessment Framework is © 2008 by the New York State Education Department; the Preparation Guide is © 2009–2010 Pearson.
SDL was never revised the way SBL was. SBL moved from test codes 107/108 to 109/110 with new competencies; SDL 103/104 has kept the same subareas and the same sixteen objectives throughout.
The framework cites no external standards set at all — not PSEL, not ISLLC, not the NYS leadership standards. It is organized solely by its own four subareas and its own objectives 0001–0008 per part.
Therefore the scored content is the framework objectives. That is the document to study, and it is free: the framework PDF. The Cheatsheet compresses all sixteen.

The practice vocabulary: PSEL, NYS Version

NYSED separately publishes the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL), NYS Version. The Board of Regents adopted the 2015 PSEL standards in 2017; the NYS version makes small but significant changes focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. PSEL NYS Version (PDF).
Beginning with the 2025–2026 school year, all Principal Practice Rubrics used in Educator Evaluation Plans must align to the NYS version of the PSELs. That is why PSEL is the language you hear in districts and in preparation programmes.
No official crosswalk between the 2008 SDL framework and PSEL exists as far as we can find — we searched nysed.gov and highered.nysed.gov and found none. Any crosswalk you are handed is somebody’s construction, including ours.

Say it plainly PSEL is the vocabulary of current New York practice. The 2008 framework objectives are the blueprint of this test. They overlap heavily in substance — vision, instructional programme, capacity, data, ethics, resources, compliance — because good district leadership did not change in 2015. But if you study PSEL domains expecting them to be the scored categories, you will find content the framework tests (BOCES structure, the Commissioner’s §310 appeal, district financial and facilities management, compliance supervision) that PSEL does not organize you toward. Speak PSEL in your district; write the framework on the test. Do not accept any claim — including a confident one — that SDL is aligned to PSEL. It is not, on the face of its own framework.

The free official materials — every one of them

Everything NYSTCE publishes for SDL is free. This is the complete list as of August 2026. If someone is charging you for “the official study guide,” these are the documents they are reselling.

Document	What it gives you	Link
Test Design and Assessment Framework, 103/104	The blueprint tables and all sixteen objectives with their descriptive bullets. 15 pages, © 2008. The single most important free document.	PDF
Preparation Guide (complete)	“Preparing for the Test” plus both parts’ sample questions and written assignments in one file. 47 pages. This is the SDL study guide — the NYSTCE Study Guides index links to it.	PDF
Part One sample questions and written assignments	Nine sample selected-response items with the annotated answer key and objective tags, the written-assignment directions, and a sample Work Product and Case Study with strong responses and evaluations. 18 pages.	PDF
Part Two sample questions and written assignments	The same for 104: nine annotated items, plus sample Management Problem Solving and Educational Program Analysis assignments with strong responses. 22 pages.	PDF
How to Read Your Score Report	What each block on the report means.	PDF
Understanding Candidate Score Reports	The longer explainer, including how subarea performance is reported.	PDF
Computer-based testing tutorials	The interface you will meet in the 15 minutes before the clock starts. Worth ten minutes at home.	Tutorials
Pearson Professional Centers tour	A walkthrough of check-in, security and the testing room. Linked from the preparation materials page.	Prep materials
Test policies	ID rules, prohibited items, conduct, what happens if you arrive late.	Policies
Alternative testing arrangements	How to request accommodations. Request these before you schedule — they take time.	Requesting

All fetched and verified 2026-08-05 from the NYSTCE 103/104 preparation materials page.

There is no official SDL practice test — and here is exactly how strong that claim is NYSTCE sells online practice tests for various fields, starting at $11.00 with 120-day access. School District Leader does not appear to be one of them. The SDL preparation materials page contains no practice-test link and the phrase “Practice Test” does not appear on it at all. Be clear about what that evidence is: it is silence, not an affirmative statement. The NYSTCE practice-test page does not enumerate which fields are covered, so we cannot point to a sentence saying SDL is excluded — only to the SDL page’s total absence of one. We treat “no official full-length SDL practice test” as strongly supported and clearly unconfirmed. Practically: the eighteen annotated sample items and four sample written assignments in the free guides are the entire official item supply, which is why the Practice bank on this site exists and why it labels every item’s provenance.

Commercial SDL “study guides” and “practice tests” are not official, are not reviewed by NYSED, and are not on this list.

What this site is — and what it is not

Read this before you memorize anything here.

Official material, reproduced and labelled

The subarea and objective language throughout the site is quoted or compressed from the NYSED assessment framework (© 2008).
The eighteen official sample selected-response items — nine per part — appear in Practice marked official, with NYSED’s own published rationales and objective tags.
The four sample written assignments, the published strong responses and their evaluations, and the three scoring criteria and four-point scale in the Task Playbook come from the official Preparation Guide.
Legal, finance and certification facts on Law & Ops carry inline citations to statute, regulation or an official page.

Practitioner-written — useful, not authoritative

The 25 answer patterns are an inferred model of how this exam rewards answers, argued from eighteen official items and their rationales. NYSED has never published anything like them, and eighteen items is a small evidence base — that page says so itself.
Items marked adapted or practice in the bank carry practitioner-written rationales, not NYSED rationales. Where a practice rationale and an official one disagree, the official one wins.
The response skeletons in the Task Playbook and the pacing plans in Day-Of are one reasonable approach among several. The test allocates no time per section; every internal split you see here is ours.
Nothing here is a leaked or reconstructed live form. Anyone selling you that is selling you a problem.

Free

No cost, no sign-up, no catch. Use it, print it, share it with your cohort, put it on a programme’s resource page, fork it and change it.

Unaffiliated

Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by NYSED, the NYSTCE programme, Pearson or Evaluation Systems. Official sample items and rubrics are reproduced for study and remain the property of their publishers.

Private and offline

No accounts, no tracking, nothing stored anywhere. Practice and Quiz Mode keep score in memory only and reset on reload — deliberately, so you can redo a set honestly. Every page works offline once loaded.

Verify anything decision-critical Windows, fees, policies, waiver scores and certification rules were checked against official sources in August 2026 and will drift. Before you spend money or miss a deadline on the strength of something you read here, confirm it at nystce.nesinc.com and on NYSED’s certification site. The Sources page links every official document directly. Corrections — a dead link, a stale fee, a rationale you think is wrong — are the most useful thing you can send back.

A study sequence for the nine pages

In order. Each step assumes the one before it.

#	Page	What to do there	Time
1	Start Here this page	Fix the logistics first: pick your window, check the fee, decide one part or both in a day, and diary the score date. Everything else is easier once the calendar is settled.	30 min, once
2	Cheatsheet	Learn the blueprint cold — four subareas, sixteen objectives, the 50/50 split, the 17/33 written weights and the 104 inversion. Then read the free framework PDF once end to end alongside it.	2–3 hours
3	Answer Patterns	Twenty-five patterns in seven groups, plus the distractor taxonomy and the 60-second elimination checklist. This is the page that changes how you read a stem.	2 hours
4	Task Playbook	The half of the exam most candidates neglect. Learn the three criteria, the four-point scale, and one skeleton per task type — Work Product, Case Study, Management Problem Solving, Educational Program Analysis. Read the official strong responses and their evaluations.	3–4 hours
5	Law & Ops	The dense, memorizable half of Subarea II on both parts: governance, the budget cycle and tax levy limit, reserves and internal controls, purchasing, tenure and §3020-a, the Taylor Law, APPR, IDEA and Part 200, civil rights, §2-d, ESSA. Work it in passes, not in one sitting.	6–10 hours
6	Practice	99 items across 17 scenarios. Do the 18 official items first and read every NYSED rationale, then the rest. Read the rationale on items you got right too — that is where the pattern lives.	4–6 hours
7	Quiz Mode	Recall drilling on the material Law & Ops and the Cheatsheet cover. Best done out loud, in short sessions, in the last two weeks.	20 min a day
8	Task Playbook, again	Now write. Two full timed responses per part, hand-scored against the three criteria — a 300–600 word Assignment Two and a 150–300 word Assignment One. Untimed rehearsal does not prepare you for the thing that actually goes wrong.	4 hours
9	Day-Of	Read it a week out and again the night before: the pacing plan, the checkpoints, what to bring, and what to do when Assignment Two is running long.	30 min
—	Sources	Throughout. Every official document linked directly, with what each one is and how far it can be trusted.	as needed

If you only have one week Read the Cheatsheet blueprint and the sixteen objectives. Read Answer Patterns once. Work the 18 official items in Practice and read every NYSED rationale. Memorize the skeletons and the three criteria in the Task Playbook, then write one full timed Assignment Two for the part you are sitting — the 33% task is the highest-value hour on this site. Drill the numbers on Law & Ops. Read Day-Of the night before and then stop.