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WIDA Levels & Assessment
 

What are WIDA Levels and Who is an English Learner (EL)?

All students who speak a home language other than English are eligible for to be tested for EL services. View the slide show on the right to learn more about Academic Language levels and services given to all EL students here at Sullivan. 

 

From the WIDA Website:

English Learner (EL) students in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade participate in the the ACCESS for ELLs® language proficiency test.  ACCESS provides a standardized measurement of academic language proficiency for ELL students throughout the state of Minnesota and in other states.  With this information, we monitor individual EL student progress on an annual basis. 

Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State to State for English Language Learners (ACCESS for ELLs), a large-scale language proficiency test for K–12 students, is one component of the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA®) Consortium’s comprehensive, standards-driven system designed to improve the teaching and learning of English language learners (ELLs). The test, developed in partnership with the Center for Applied Linguistics, was inaugurated in spring 2005 in three states after extensive development and pilot and field testing. ACCESS for ELLs was administered to more than 1,000,000 students across the country.
 
The purpose of ACCESS for ELLs is to monitor student progress in English language proficiency (ELP) on a yearly basis and to serve as a criterion to aid in determining when ELLs have attained language proficiency comparable to that of their English-proficient peers. The test is carefully crafted to be representative of the social and academic language demands within a school setting.

More information can be found at www.wida.us.