ACCESS for ELLs

EL Assessment Update: End of Year Reminders and Announcements

Thank you for your efforts to instruct and assess your grades K–12 EL students. We appreciate your efforts to ensure the testing of more than 100,000 students this year. Below are a few reminders and important announcements as we end the school year.

Scoring Appeals and Booklet Search Requests (Due by June 22)

Scoring appeals and booklet search requests must be submitted to the Department by June 22 through the Service Now Form: Test Discrepancies — Request a Scoring Appeal or Test Booklet Search.

• A scoring appeal, for example, might be requested for a student who took the Speaking or Writing test online, but for whom there are no results in WIDA AMS.
• A booklet search might be requested for a student whose test booklet was shipped to DRC using a District label containing incorrect information, and for whom test results are not provided in WIDA AMS.

You will be notified by the Department if your request can be processed, since only a limited number of requests can be submitted to the testing vendor.

Participation Discrepancies (Due by July 15)

Districts and schools are responsible for reporting any errors in student participation (for example, students who were exited from EL status prior to ACCESS testing but were coded incorrectly as EL in March 2022 SIMS) to the Department at ACCESS@mass.gov by July 15.

As a reminder, student level data (without Student Growth Percentile on ACCESS (SGPA), progress indicator, attainment, or 2023 targets) will be posted in DropBox in late June and in Edwin in early July. Please check your student data to ensure there are no errors or missing reports. Errors in student participation cannot be corrected after July 15.

Reminder: WIDA Will Retire the K W-APT on June 30, 2022

On June 30, 2022, all K W-APT materials will be removed from the WIDA Secure Portal and support will also no longer be available. Districts may use the K W-APT between July 1, 2022 – January 1, 2023, but must first download the files of K W-APT materials from the WIDA Secure Portal before June 30. Be aware that the K W-APT will only be authorized to screen Massachusetts students until January 1, 2023, after which districts will be required to use the WIDA Screener for Kindergarten for their incoming kindergarten and first-semester grade 1 students.

The WIDA Screener for Kindergarten (i.e., the "K Screener") has been available for use by districts since March 1, and staff must be trained and certified in its administration. Please continue to prepare your staff for the transition to the K Screener. Training modules and certification quizzes are available in the WIDA Secure Portal.

Proficiency "cut scores" for the K Screener (and modified "cut scores" for K MODEL) were announced in the February 16 EL Assessment Update, as well as in the Initial Identification of ELs publication on the Department's English Learner Education web page.

Farewell to Massachusetts EL Educators and Other Friends

I will be retiring from the Department on July 1 after almost 40 years! It has been a pleasure working with you to educate and serve students who are English learners in Massachusetts. We are bouncing back from the past two challenging years and assessed a record number of students on ACCESS this past year (more than 103,000!). I have watched the remarkable growth in the number of our EL students and expect that this upward trend will persist. Please continue to work with Melanie in the coming years and know that I value the time we've spent together. Thank you! (Dan Wiener)

Contact Student Assessment Services with any questions about ACCESS for ELLs testing at access@mass.gov or by phone at 781-338-3625.

Thank you for your attention to this information.