ACCESS Scores and Reports
Resources to help students, families and educators understand WIDA ACCESS scores
WIDA provides sample ACCESS score reports and additional resources to help students, families and educators understand ACCESS scores. Check out the following key resources:
For Families
- WIDA ACCESS: Understanding Your Child's Scores is a family-focused flyer, available in 18 languages, that explains the terms in the score report.
- WIDA ACCESS Parent Letters are family-focused letters, available in 49 languages including English, that may accompany score reports to help introduce the report to families. The letters are in word format so that schools and districts can easily edit them.
For Educators
The WIDA ACCESS Interpretive Guide for Score Reports is a comprehensive document that helps teachers understand what ACCESS scores mean and what to do with that information.
Looking for Alternate ACCESS score information?
Visit the WIDA Alternate ACCESS page for score guidance and family-focused resources related to that assessment.
What ACCESS Measures
ACCESS measures students’ English language skills in Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing. Testing helps teachers understand if students still benefit from English language support services.
Did you know?
ACCESS is a test based on standards. This means students’ answers are measured against the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework — not against other students' performance on the test. Any student can earn any score, and they are not compared to monolingual English speakers.
Understanding the Individual Student Report
The Individual Student Report shows all the scores for an individual student. It provides brief descriptions of each proficiency level with a lot of visual support. Teachers may send translated copies of the Individual Student Report home with students and/or discuss it at conferences with students and their family members.
The sample report below has three columns:
- The first column lists four language domains and four composites in Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Oral Language, Literacy, Comprehension and Overall.
- The second column lists examples of proficiency level scores between 1-6 for each of the four language domains and four composites.
- The third column lists examples of scale scores between 100-600 for each of the domain categories. The scale score numbers point to the middle of confidence bands – bars of varying width that represent relative confidence in the score.
Review the Interpretive Guide for Score Reports for definitions of these elements of the report.
Did you know?
Students do not receive letter grades or passing/failing grades on ACCESS. Learn more about the types of ACCESS scores below.
What's on the Report
Proficiency Level Scores
Proficiency level scores range from levels 1-6 and align to the six WIDA English language proficiency levels. They give an interpretation of scale scores.
Scale Scores
Scale scores take item difficulty into account, so educators can use them to examine groups of students, or student performances over time. Scale scores, not proficiency levels, contribute to the percentages used to calculate composite scores.
Proficiency Level Descriptors
Proficiency Level Descriptors describe how multilingual learners use language toward the end of each of the six language proficiency levels.
Top Things to Keep in Mind
Keep the following in mind when using the information in the report.
- Proficiency levels are domain specific
For example, a sixth grader who earns a scale score of 370 in Listening is at proficiency level 4.3. If that same student earns a scale score of 370 in Reading, they will have a Reading proficiency level of 3.8.
- Proficiency level scores should not be compared across grades
A second grader with a 4.0 in Listening and an eighth grader with a 4.0 in Listening are exposed to very different, grade-level appropriate content as they test. While their score reports reflect the same proficiency level, the eighth grader is demonstrating more skill by responding to more challenging content.
- Scale scores precisely track student growth over time and across grades
Because scale scores consider differences in item difficulty, they place all students on a single continuum that stretches from kindergarten through grade 12. In addition, scale scores allow you to compare student performance across grades, within each domain, with more granularity than you’ll see with proficiency levels. For example, using scale scores, you can track how much a student’s listening ability increases from grade 6 to grade 7, or you might compare the speaking skills of your school’s second graders to those of the fifth graders when evaluating curricula.
Note: 2025–2026 WIDA ACCESS scale scores have been reset as part of ensuring the assessments reflect the WIDA ELD Standards Framework, 2020 Edition. For this reason, treat this year’s scale scores as a new baseline to measure growth against (you can’t compare scale scores from previous years).- Scale scores are not raw scores
A raw score is simply a tally of correct responses. Raw scores are not reported for ACCESS because they do not provide a meaningful measure of student performance. For example, consider two students taking ACCESS Online. As the students move through the test, their performance determines which questions they see. The student at beginning proficiency sees easier items, and the higher-proficiency student sees more difficult items.
- Confidence bands are included on the Individual Student Report
A scale score is reported as a single point within a confidence band that shows the Standard Error of Measurement. The Standard Error of Measurement is commonly included in score reports and can help test experts understand student performance.
Talking About ACCESS Scores
During conferences, family nights or home visits, use the following discussion topics to talk about how the school uses ACCESS scores:
- To track English language development goals for students
- To help students make progress in developing English
- To set learning goals for students
- To decide when students stop receiving English language services
Did you know?
Translated versions of some of these questions are in the What is WIDA ACCESS? family flyer.
Using ACCESS Scores
Students use scores to
- Help set learning goals at school
- Track learning progress
- Practice English language at home
Did you know?
Reading, storytelling, playing games, singing and even watching TV can help promote English language development
Families use scores to
- Advocate for their child’s learning goals at school
- Help their child practice their English language skills at home
Educators use scores to
- Establish when English learners have attained English language proficiency according to state criteria
- Inform classroom instruction and assessment
- Monitor student progress by comparing current scores to previous scores
- Collaborate with content area colleagues
School Districts use scores to
- Monitor student progress
- Make decisions about English learner program entry and exit
- Meet federal and state accountability requirements
Types of ACCESS Score Reports
The same types of score reports are generated for all students taking WIDA ACCESS (Online, Paper and Kindergarten). All of the score reports provide score information for the same eight categories: four language domains (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) and four composite areas (Oral Language, Literacy, Comprehension, Overall).
