For more than 30 years, English learners in New York have taken the paper-and-pencil New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test to measure their English-language proficiency.
The assessment has long helped teachers determine what language supports students need and when students can exit English-learner programs.
Beginning next school year, that will change. New York’s English learners will instead test with WIDA ACCESS, a digital assessment currently used by 35 states and the District of Columbia, and five federal agencies and territories.
The shift marks a win for data collection of English learners’ language proficiency with more students taking the same assessment, and a win for New York’s multilingual students with disabilities, experts said.
The WIDA consortium, housed within the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Education, offers resources for teaching English learners, including the English-language-proficiency assessment.
While states with some of the largest English-learner populations, such as California and Texas, use their own exams, most states rely on the WIDA ACCESS test to fulfill federal requirements for assessing students’ English-language acquisition process, said Samuel Aguirre, chief consortium and policy officer at WIDA.
New York’s entry into the the WIDA consortium means close to 260,000 more English learners nationally will be taking the same exam next year.
New York’s own language-proficiency test is one of the oldest in the country, said Zachary Warner, the assistant commissioner in the state’s office of state assessment. The state currently doesn’t have an alternate version of the test for students with significant cognitive disabilities who are English learners, Warner said.
WIDA offers one.
“We knew we needed one, and that is just not something that we felt we could provide for students ethically, equitably,” Warner added.
It currently costs about $4.5 million per year to administer New York’s paper-based test and would cost about $9 million per year to make it a digital exam, according to state calculations. The new WIDA contract, announced in October, costs about $9.5 million per year. In return, the state gets a fully established digital exam with available technical assistance, the alternate exam for English learners with significant cognitive disabilities, a screener for these students, and access to research-based publications, webinars, and other professional learning opportunities.
“We think it’s a very worthwhile investment to make sure we’re getting these different things,” Warner said.
What joining WIDA means for New York educators and students
The digital WIDA test assesses language use in an academic context and is adaptive to students’ English-language proficiency, increasing or decreasing levels of difficulty as students answer questions.
That digital, adaptive format is one of the key differences between the WIDA test and New York’s own exam, Warner said. It’s also one of the benefits he sees in switching over to WIDA.
“We think it’s just a better assessment for kids. We think it’ll help teachers get good information that helps them day to day with their instruction towards kids,” Warner said.
The state uses student performance on the exam to help set how many minutes of English-language services a student receives each week, Warner added, making accuracy especially important.
“We want the most accurate information possible to say this is where our student is in the continuum, because we’re going to use that information to determine next year’s programming,” he said.
Still, the transition will require careful implementation, said Leslie Villegas, a senior policy analyst at the research and policy institute New America. She cautioned that the state will need to make sure no issues come up as students switch from a paper to a digital format. It will also need to ensure the students with significant cognitive disabilities truly have access to the alternate test.
For the 2025-26 school year, English learners in New York will continue to take the regular paper exam as state leaders and regional hubs work to help teachers learn more about the WIDA exam, how to proctor it, and get acquainted with WIDA’s resources before officially administering the WIDA test next school year.
Warner added that teachers will see a lot of similarities between the two assessments, such as the same language modalities tested (speaking, reading, etc.). New York is also sticking to its own academic and linguistic demands, not adopting WIDA’s standards since there’s enough overlap to ensure the WIDA test aligns with New York’s standards.
“You don’t need to change your teaching,” Warner said. “Your instruction should continue to be focused on the academic language that students need to be successful in school.”
What New York joining WIDA means for English learners nationally
With the state now officially part of the consortium, existing member states will reap the benefits of New York educators’ unique expertise from years of working with a large, culturally, and linguistically diverse population, WIDA leaders said.
“New York has a long track record of really serving multilingual learners across their state in some really fantastic ways,” said Jenni Monie De Torres, the executive director of WIDA. “[They have] lots of research and information that they’ll be able to also share with the rest of our consortium and vice versa.”
And with more English learners nationally taking the same assessment, better national data can be gathered on the population’s language-proficiency progress, Aguirre added.
