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If you are looking for ACCESS checklists or Identification and Placement Guidance documents, please visit your member page from the Members/States dropdown.

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Test Administrators and District Test Coordinators can find role-specific resources in the following portals:

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Technology Coordinators can find role-specific resources in the following portal:

WIDA AMS

ACCESS for ELLs Interpretive Guide for Score Reports

This comprehensive document explains the types of scores reported by ACCESS for ELLs for students in kindergarten through grade 12.

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ACCESS for ELLs Parent Letters

This letter, available in many languages, contains general information about ACCESS for ELLs and is meant to accompany ACCESS for ELLs score reports as an explanation for parents and guardians. It is provided in an editable format to allow districts and schools to include additional information regarding test administration dates and state policy.

 

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ACCESS for ELLs: Understanding Your Child's Scores (multiple languages)

Send this flyer home with students along with the ACCESS for ELLs Individual Student Report. This flyer explains each piece of score information included in the report. Use this guide, available in several languages, to help parents understand what scores mean and how they are used.

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Accessibility and Accommodations Manual

This accessibility manual was developed to guide the selection and administration of Test Administration Considerations, Universal Tools, and Accommodations for individual English Language Learners (ELLs) in order to produce valid assessment results.

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Alternate ACCESS for ELLs Participation Decision Tree

This guide helps IEP teams determine if a student should take the Alternate ACCESS for ELLs assessment, or the ACCESS for ELLs (Online or Paper) with accommodations.

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Alternate ACCESS Sample Items

This document is intended to help Alternate ACCESS for ELLs test administrators become familiar with features of the Alternate ACCESS assessment. One sample item is provided for each domain (Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing) so that test administrators can see how test items are formatted in each section. Only grade-level cluster 3-5 sample items are represented.

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Choosing an Interim Assessment: Guidelines for Stakeholders

This document describes WIDA's viewpoint of the criteria for an assessment to be used as a valid interim English language proficiency assessment in support of the annual administration of ACCESS for ELLs.

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Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness Using ACCESS for ELLs

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

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Examining District-Level Growth Using ACCESS for ELLs

This 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

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Examining English Learner Testing, Proficiency, and Growth: Before, During, and “After” the COVID-19 Pandemic

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

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