This WIDA Focus Bulletin explores the integral connection between language and culture for American Indian English Language Learners.
Published May 2014
Authors: Rosalie Grant, Paula White, Julia Cortada, Sookweon Min
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ACCESS for ELLs Online technical reports provide evidence for validity and reliability of ACCESS for ELLs Online and support intended uses, interpretations, and decision made with the test. This is the redacted report for the 2021-2022 administration of ACCESS for ELLs Online without item information.
Resource Details View Download NowACCESS for ELLs Paper technical reports provide evidence for validity and reliability of ACCESS for ELLs Paper and support intended uses, interpretations, and decision made with the test. This is the redacted report for the 2021-2022 administration of ACCESS for ELLs Paper without item information.
Resource Details View Download NowAlternate ACCESS for ELLs technical reports provide evidence for validity and reliability of Alternate ACCESS for ELLs and support intended uses, interpretations and decisions made with the test.
This is the redacted report for the 2021-2022 administration of Alternate ACCESS for ELLs. Item information is removed from the report.
Resource Details View Download NowThis study investigated a coaching process in which state educational representatives (SEAs) and WIDA staff engaged during 2012. The purpose was to enhance the quality of the professional development offered by states to their educators.
Published May 2013
Authors: Daniella Molle, Christie Reveles
This WIDA Focus Bulletin emphasizes the many benefits of collaboration. The collaborative approach is presented as a cyclical process with shared responsibility by educators assessing, reflecting upon, planning for and teaching multilingual learners.
Published July 2020
Authors: John Nordmeyer, Andrea Honigsfeld
This research brief reports preliminary results from a study of teachers’ successful experiences engaging ELLs in collaborative learning with peers.
Published May 2014
Resource Details View Download NowWIDA and the National Science Teaching Association formed Making Science Multilingual to support equitable and inclusive forms of science instruction through which all students, but especially multilingual learners, can learn science and language simultaneously. To guide this work, the Making Science Multilingual team devised eight design principles to define the integration of contemporary three-dimensional science and language-in-use pedagogies. These principles will guide educator resource development at both organizations and facilitate critical examination of how well educator resources support inclusion of multilingual learners in rigorous science learning.
Resource DetailsThis research project explored the patterns of district-level ELL “growth” for the 2007-2011 time period and identified the existence of “high-flying” and “low-cruising” districts within ACCESS for ELLs in terms of ELL growth.
Published May 2013
Author: Narek Sahakyan
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This 16-state survey of school districts with fewer than 500 English language learners revealed that few district-level English language learner staff had formal preparation in educating English language learner or using English language proficiency standards. A wide school-level disparity existed between English as a second language or bilingual teachers and general education teachers in terms of their engagement with proficiency standards and assessment data.
Resource DetailsThis Focus Bulletin offers strategies for advancing equity in bilingual settings during the mundo actual of COVID-19. The bulletin emphasizes the importance of valuing multilingual learners’ linguistic and cultural diversity, using translanguaging, and leveraging technological resources.
Published August 2020
Authors: Sam Aguirre, Erika Rosales
In this Focus Bulletin, WIDA revisits landmark legislation and policies that shaped language education in the U.S. It presents unintended consequences on programming and instruction of bi/multilingual students; showcases how field practitioners address language policy and its consequences; and includes tools for reflection, collaboration, professional learning and community engagement.
Published November 2022
Author: Mariana Castro
This Focus Bulletin reframes the WIDA Can Do Philosophy as a can do cycle of actions that can be embedded into teaching and learning experiences throughout the entire school year. In it, we offer resource banks of questions that can be used to elicit student assets and reflect on ways to build on student assets at the beginning of each unit, during each unit, and at the end of each unit.
Published April 2022
Authors: Maya Martinez-Hart, Christina Nelson
The purpose of this WIDA Focus Bulletin is to provide guidance to teachers of English language arts (ELA) who are implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and working to respond to the specific needs of ELLs. In their treatment of academic language (or the language of school), the CCSS represent a departure from existing content standards.
Published November 2013
Authors: Daniella Molle, Mariana Castro, Julia Cortada, Leslie Grimm
Regardless of the growth model, aggregate test-score-based models of student growth require large and longitudinally connected samples of student data. When sample sizes are small it becomes impossible to reliably estimate and disentangle district, school and teacher effects from student growth data.
Published June 2015
Author: Narek Sahakyan
This study examines how 476 K–12 educators in 35 U.S. states identify and place English learners in language instruction educational programs. Findings reveal information about these educators, the instruments and information sources they use for decision making, and their perceived appropriateness of the decisions. Results provide practical implications for improving the English learner identification and placement decision at the district and school levels.
Resource DetailsThis research report provides a description of a study examining school districts in the WIDA Consortium whose English language learners (ELLs) exhibit consistently high growth on the ACCESS for ELLs (ACCESS) assessment.
Published August 2014
Authors: Narek Sahakyan, H. Gary Cook
This report examines English learners’ (EL) testing, proficiency and growth in the academic years of 2018–19, 2019–20 and 2020–21, using population-level data from ACCESS for ELLs Online, administered across the WIDA Consortium to students identified as ELs. The objective of the report is to shed light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ELs’ educational outcomes.
October 2021
Authors: Narek Sahakyan, H. Gary Cook
This report examines English learner testing, proficiency, and growth in the years surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. This research builds on an October 2021 report on the impact of the pandemic, and includes data from the 2021-22 ACCESS for ELLs test administration. Findings indicate that in some grades and language domains EL's average proficiency and growth have returned to pre-pandemic levels. However, for most grades and language domains the evidence points to a continuing impact of COVID-19 on English learners’ English language development.
Published April 2023
Author: Narek Sahakyan, Glenn Poole
Motivated by findings of a 2018 WIDA report pointing to large overlap between ELs with Individualized Education Program (IEP) designations and those ELs who could be identified as LTELs, this study further focuses on these dual-identified students. Grouping ELs by ever-IEP (i.e., being assigned an IEP at any point in the longitudinal record) and never-IEP status, we compare these two subgroups’ English language growth trajectories across time. Our findings show consistent trends of differential growth and reclassification rates for these two subgroups.
Published November 2021
Authors: Narek Sahakyan, Glenn Poole