WIDA Assessment Operations
State as of April 2026: two operational items, both routine, both with a longer tail than their briefing suggests.
Reported off-agenda under Session 1 — Using the Smarter Balanced Interim Assessment. The item appears on no agenda line.
WIDA Alternate Screener
For students already identified as having significant cognitive disabilities — a small pool in Michigan.
The screener has been released to districts and OEAA has announced its availability. OEAA has asked users to notify the department when they use it, so that statewide usage can be tracked.
That request is voluntary reporting, which means the resulting usage count is a floor, not a census. For a small population where every case matters, an undercount of unknown size is a real limitation on any later evaluation of the screener.
2026 WIDA ACCESS testing window
2026 provided a 10-week window, and the 10-week window will be used again in 2026-27. The traditional 7-week window returns in following years.
A two-year window extension is a change in testing conditions across the whole EL population. Whether it affects comparability of ACCESS results across that boundary is not addressed in the record.
Why this connects to growth
WIDA ACCESS is one of the assessments carrying growth targets — see Michigan Growth Model — and English Learner progress is a separate accountability index component. The Nearest Grade Average Method proposal explicitly covers WIDA ACCESS in grades 6, 7, 8 for alignment checks and grades 10, 11, 12 for impact evaluation.
The deck’s speaker notes carry the constraint that matters:
By 2026-27 WIDA NGA AGPs would be applied to grades 8-12. However, we are choosing to limit to data post covid (i.e., 2021-22 and forward). Meaning as of 2024-25, the most we can project out is 3 years.
So the EL projection horizon is currently limited by available post-COVID data, and will lengthen toward the five-year EL maximum as that window grows. The expected increase in EL impact follows from this and from nothing else.
History
| Meeting | What moved |
|---|---|
| Session 1 — Using the Smarter Balanced Interim Assessment | Alternate screener released; testing window extension confirmed for a second year |