Work is well underway at the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) consortium to create new assessments of English-language proficiency that will measure the language demands of the common academic standards. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia make up the consortia and will use the new assessments for their ELL students. A $10.5 million federal grant is helping pay for the tests’ development.
For folks who want to better understand the new tests—known as ASSETS—a short primer on its components has just been released by the Center for K-12 Assessment & Performance Management at the ETS, the Princeton, N.J.-based testing group.
This same group has also put out summaries on the tests for the common standards that are being designed by the two big state assessment consortia that won Race to the Top money.