K-12 Student Assessments - English Language Learner

Highlights

Record Level: Student by Year by Assessment 
Record Count: 65,000-100,000 records per year 
Years Covered: 2007-Present 
Population Coverage: Data covers all students from private, home schooled and public schools who have participated in these assessments. While private and home schooled students are included in this dataset, they are not advised for reporting unless specifically researching questions around those groups of students.

This English Language Learner Assessment Researcher file contains commonly requested student-level assessment data from the K-12 environment pertaining to English language learner assessments. These assessments are composed of the English Language Proficiency Assessment (ELPA) and the WIDA. The ELPA was administered to K-12 students identified as English Learners until the 2012-13 school year, and the WIDA has been administered since the 2013-14 school year. We have data from the 2007-2008 school year forward. We anticipate having future years' data as it becomes available.

We have English Language Learner Assessment records for over 320,000 students in total. With regards to each specific assessment, we have records for 150,000 students that were assessed using the ELPA and 245 thousand students that were assessed using the WIDA. Note that 2 thousand of the WIDA students were assessed with the Alternative WIDA because they are students who receive special education services. We have scores for around 100,000 individuals that were tested in Kindergarten. A similar number were tested in 1st and 2nd grade. From 3rd to 12th grade there is a steady decline in the number of individuals assessed; across that grade range the number of students assessed goes from 90,000 to 30,000.

The WIDA consists of four main components: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Our data contains a scaled score for each of the four main components, and it contains a scaled scores for four combinations of the main components: Oral Language (Listening and Speaking), Literacy (Reading and Writing), Comprehension (Listening and Reading), and Overall (a combination of all four language domains). The ELPA consists of the same four core components as the WIDA: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Our ELPA data contains a scaled score for each of the four main components, and it contains a scaled score for two combinations of the main components: Comprehension (Listening and Reading) and Overall (a combination of all four language domains). In addition to the scaled score for each component of the assessment, we have the corresponding performance levels. For the WIDA, we have performance levels corresponding to each scaled score. Students who receive special education services and were assessed with the Alternative WIDA receive distinct performance levels. For the ELPA, we simply have a performance level corresponding to the "Overall" scaled score.

2017 WIDA Update

Students who take the WIDA summative assessment are scored on four language domains and receive a scale score and performance level for each domain. Each of the domain scale scores contributes to an EL’s overall English language proficiency score, with reading and writing being weighted most heavily (35% reading, 35% writing, 15% listening, 15% speaking). In 2017, the WIDA assessment was recalibrated (going from WIDA ACCESS 1.0 to 2.0), and the exam was 1) made substantially more difficult and 2) the modality changed from paper and pencil to online.

Dr. Gary Cook from WIDA has explained that it is not possible to create a 1:1 crosswalk between scale scores from before and after the recalibration. In addition to the change in difficulty and the mode of assessment, the standard setting changed substantially for the writing and speaking components of the exam. Moreover, the WIDA ACCESS 1.0 was a static assessment, and after the switch to WIDA ACCESS 2.0, the reading and listening components are staged adaptive tests, while the speaking and writing are static forms selected based on the performance of students in reading and listening. The domain scores were also rescaled.

Although there is no crosswalk between scale scores on the WIDA ACCESS 1.0 and 2.0, there is a crosswalk between performance levels (PLs). The ordinal performance levels range from 1.0 to 6.0 and the cut scores for PLs are based on scale scores, so these also changed when the standards changed in 2017. Gary Cook shared the 4 attached files, which outline the relationship between PLs across the two versions of the assessment.

Additional Resources

For more information on interpreting the scores, please refer to the official WIDA Interpretive Guide and the Alternative Interpretive Guide for the assessment administered to students who receive special education services.