The District wants all students who are learning English to progress to full proficiency in the language. Students are screened for English proficiency in their schools either early in the school year or upon their arrival in the school and are determined to be an English learner (EL) if they need additional support. OSSE tracks the progress of our ELs by using an annual assessment called the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs (or just ACCESS) which tests students on listening, speaking, reading and writing in English. Once students score at or above a 4.5 on this assessment, they are proficient and exit English learner services. Of course, we hope to see students gaining proficiency, so the data teamtracks their progress closely. We have good news to share! After two years of COVID-related challenges, ELs in DC public schools scored proficient and exited EL status at nearly three times the pre-pandemic rate (2018-19; see Table 1).
Without the opportunity to test in two years (ACCESS must be administered in person), many EL students with high English language proficiency were waiting for the opportunity to be tested and to demonstrate their proficiency. During the 2022-23 school year, ELs continued to exceed pre-pandemic rates of exiting EL status with more than 10 percent of tested students scoring proficient.
ACCESS assesses reading, writing, listening and speaking skills on a scale of 1 to 6. In the2016-17 school year, WIDA changed the test for students in grades 1-12 so substantially that the rate of EL students exiting EL status dropped from 20 percent to less than 10 percent (see Table 1, where the blue line identifies the change in the test). This contributes to a larger number of students who remain ELs long-term, which, taken with the improved data management policies implemented in 2017 and a general influx of residents, helps to explain why the number of EL students has increased over the last six years.
Table 1. Students exiting ACCESS, before and after changes to the assessment
*Data for the 2019-20 school year do not include all ELs due to pandemic-related school closures.
Data for the 2020-21 school year is not included due to very few students taking the ACCESS assessment, as most of the school year was conducted remotely due to the pandemic.
OSSE allowed some time for schools and students to adjust to the new test, but by 2018, it was clear that the old exit criterion was not appropriate for the new version of the test. Using national and local data, analysts at OSSE identified the score threshold at which EL students no longer require services to be successful in the regular classroom and worked with policy makers to change the exit criterion for students in grades 1-12 from 5.0 to 4.5.
Because of this change, 1,464 and 942 students were able to exit EL status in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, respectively. The bars in Figure 1 reflect the number of students in each grade who reached proficiency on the ACCESS test, where the light and dark blue colors distinguish students based on the which exit criterion they reached. If OSSE had not implemented the new exit criterion, only the students in the dark blue would have exited EL status in the 2022-23 school year. The fact that the students in light blue represent a majority of EL exiters at each grade level highlights how the new policy is beneficial and relevant to EL students in all grades in DC public and public charter schools.
We appreciate all the hard work from our ELs and their educators! To learn more about how EL students progress, visit OSSE’s page about EL student outcomes.
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