The paradigm of the teaching and learning of world languages has been significantly impacted by Communicative Language Teaching approaches. An increased emphasis on the proficiency testing of language learners is now prioritized where program coordinators and administrators have set proficiency benchmarks for language learners to achieve at all levels of instruction. Established at the turn of the twenty- first century, the Language Flagship program—a national effort to change the way Americans learn languages—calls for institutions of higher education to create a “viable process to assess proficiency learning in high quality, well-established academic language programs” (Swanson et al. 2). Perhaps in line with the national movement, the Secretary of the United States Air Force stated that the Language Enabled Airman Program—a congressionally mandated program—serves to “[I] ncrease the language inventory from within the force . . . we can’t contract this ability out to non-warfighters” (Chesser 3). In 2020, leadership at the United States Air Force Academy directed faculty to create Language Roadmaps to Proficiency, where proficiency benchmarks were developed for each of the eight languages taught at the Academy. Afterward, a comprehensive proficiency testing regime was set into place. In 2021, students enrolled in first- and second-year Spanish took the ACTFL Proficiency Placement Tests in fall 2021 and again in spring 2022 to gauge potential gains in Spanish proficiency. Students showed impressive gains in both reading and listening modalities. Results have implications for instructors, program directors, language learners, and language curricula.