WIDA Consortium | New York State Education Department

At the October 2025 meeting of the Board of Regents, NYSED announced that New York will be joining the WIDA Consortium. WIDA is an educational services organization within the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Education that advances academic language development and achievement for multilingual students. WIDA’s mission is to provide a trusted comprehensive approach to supporting, teaching, and assessing multilingual learners.

We are in the early phase of the transition. Learning opportunities for all WIDA assessments will begin to be offered during the coming months to ensure ample preparation time for educators and students. On demand assessment training resources will be available soon. In the meantime, WIDA provides information on their assessments on their website, under the “Assess” menu option and educators are encouraged to review this general information in advance of future training and resource sharing.

To provide time for training and professional learning, the first administration of the WIDA ACCESS and Alternate ACCESS will be in Spring 2027. The Screener assessments will be implemented in Fall 2027 following the first administration of the WIDA ACCESS. The final administration of the New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSESLAT) will be in Spring 2026. The New York State Identification Test for English Language Learners (NYSITELL) will continue to be offered until being replaced by the WIDA screener in Fall 2027.

For more information, please see the memo from the Office of State Assessment. - WIDA Consortium | New York State Education Department