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WIDA Membership > WIDA Products and Services

WIDA Products and Services

  • You may view or print copies of WIDA's English Language Proficiency (ELP) Standards. The classroom/formative framework of WIDA's ELP standards has been adopted and augmented by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) as a national model for K-12 settings. When new member states join WIDA, an alignment study is conducted between the WIDA ELP Standards and the new state's academic standards. It is highly recommended that new states adopt the large scale/summative WIDA ELP standards but they may keep their prior standards as companion documents.

  • WIDA is phasing in the use of color graphics beginning with the 2006-2007 form of ACCESS for ELLs®.

  • The WIDA ACCESS Placement Test (W-APT)™ became available in August 2006. This semi-secure test can be downloaded as a series of PDF files by WIDA districts at no extra charge. It allows teachers to obtain a quick proficiency level score for new arrivals at any time of year to help determine program eligibility and placement.

  • An assessment of academic progress is being developed especially for beginner ELLs. Beginners are students within the first three years of schooling in the U.S., who are most likely to be adversely affected by large-scale academic testing not designed to meet their linguistic and cultural needs.

  • WIDA engages in quality research aimed at improving the educational opportunities of English language learners and is deeply committed to supporting the evolving practice of educators of this growing population of students. To learn more about our research agenda and methods, please visit the Research section.

  • WIDA offers both on-line and site-based professional development for using the standards within classrooms, using the English language proficiency assessment system, ongoing classroom assessment, assessment literacy for school reform, and best practices for instruction and assessment. Each member state is granted a certain number of face-to-face professional development days annually (based on its number of ELLs), but extra days can be purchased and carried over from year to year if unused.

  • WIDA has a customer service unit in place to assist educators with any questions or concerns that may arise. The Help Desk is staffed Mondays-Fridays from 8:00-5:00 Central time, but teachers and administrators may access our online Help Form or leave a voice mail at any time and expect a response within one business day.

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