World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment
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About Us > Background

Background

The WIDA Consortium is a non-profit cooperative of sixteen states working together to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for English Language Learners (ELLs) with innovative standards and assessments. It is housed at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research in Madison, Wisconsin. WIDA was founded in 2003 when it received a federal enhanced assessment grant. Those funds have been used to develop:

A) The WIDA English Language Proficiency (ELP) Standards that were recently adopted by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the national ESL organization, to form the basis of the next national NCLB-compliant model standards for ELP proficiency. These standards are aligned to the academic standards of all WIDA member states.

B) Spanish Language Arts Standards which were modeled after English language arts standards in two Consortium states, and cross-referenced with three other states' standards.

C) The ACCESS for ELLs® English language proficiency test, based on the five WIDA standards and aligned to the academic standards of member states. ACCESS for ELLs® was developed by Dr. Margo Gottlieb, The University of Illinois, and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), and meets all requirements of NCLB for testing and reporting of English proficiency. WIDA revises its operational form of ACCESS for ELLs® annually with a complete item turn over every three years (33% change per year). ACCESS for ELLs® comes in five grade clusters (K, 1-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12) and three tiers (A, B, C). Tiering the test allows students to avoid responding to questions that are inappropriately difficult or easy. WIDA followed State of Wisconsin procurement regulations in seeking a commercial vendor to print, distribute, score and report the ACCESS for ELLs®. The award was granted to MetriTech, Inc. in Urbana, Illinois.

D) A screener test known as the WIDA ACCESS Placement Test (W-APT)™ which is based upon the ACCESS for ELLs® and is used to identify students in need of ESL program support and place them in tiers for the ACCESS for ELLs® assessment.

E) The Consortium is planning a system of parallel academic assessments for beginning English language learners (ONPAR™) that will allow them to demonstrate abilities on an assessment comparable to a statewide assessment of academic content standards.

F) Ancillary materials and services like the WIDA website, a customer service unit, staff development, validation, alignment studies, and research. The WIDA Consortium has developed the infrastructure to accomplish its goal of providing standards, assessments and professional development to member states.

G) As part of this process, WIDA staff routinely conduct standards and cut score settings, alignment studies, and statistical analyses required to maintain the validity and reliability of NCLB-compliant assessments. ACCESS for ELLs® is a secure assessment to further ensure reliability. Our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) lends its expertise to all psychometric decision-making processes. When conducting item development, alignment, standards setting and similar tasks, WIDA routinely involves teachers in member states to ensure that the instruments are relevant for use with students. WIDA member states are voting members of the WIDA Board and hence have a voice in the destiny of the standards and assessments WIDA offers.