What is a WIDA Screener?

Our District is required to administer a WIDA Screener to newly enrolled students who indicate on the home language survey that they speak any language other than English.

Students are eligible for EL services if they earn a score of 1-4.9 on Screener for grades K-12

What is WIDA ACCESS?

WIDA advances academic language development and academic achievement for children and youth who are culturally and linguistically diverse through high quality WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards, assessments, research, and professional learning for educators. Utah uses WIDA Screener for Kindergarten and WIDA Screener Online (Grades 1-12) to identify English Learners (ELs). Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State (ACCESS) for English Language Learners (ELLs) is given to all EL students during the annual testing window to measure proficiency and growth toward academic language proficiency in English.

ACCESS for ELLs Online is Utah's online summative assessment of EL students. It is developed and maintained by WIDA.

This assessment is administered for a number of purposes:

• to measure individual students' progress in achieving proficiency in speaking, listening to, comprehending, reading, and writing academic English,

• to determine the success of language development programs in individual schools and school districts, and

• to fulfill federal requirements of The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 and Title III law.

All EL students must be tested annually using the ACCESS assessment. When students earn an Overall Composite score of 4.2 or higher with a Speaking score of 3.5 or higher, they are considered fluent in English and are exited from EL status. Students are then re-designated to monitoring status for four years. Students are not required to take the ACCESS assessment during these four years of monitoring. (Please note, this exit criteria was updated in the fall of 2023 from the Overall Composite score of 5.0 or higher.)

All who administer WIDA assessments must complete the online test administer trainings annually.