In 2015-16, Fair Lawn began administration of a new, annual summative assessment, ACCESS for ELLs 2.0. This is an online assessment which has replaced the current paper-based version of ACCESS for ELLs for Grades 1-12.

Like ACCESS for ELLs, the new assessment allows educators, students, and families to monitor students’ progress in acquiring academic English in the domains of speaking, listening, reading, and writing and will be aligned with the WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards.Purpose and Use of ACCESS for ELLs 2.0

• Help students understand their current level of English language proficiency along the developmental continuum.

• Serve as one of multiple measures used to determine those students prepared to exit English language support programs.

• Provide teachers with information they can subsequently use to enhance instruction and learning in programs for their English language learners.

• Provide districts with information that will help them evaluate the effectiveness of their ESL/bilingual programs.

As with ACCESS for ELLs, the tasks on the new summative assessment attempts to replicate the kinds of communicative situations (and the language needed to be processed or produced within them) that might be encountered in different school contexts. Each assessment item and task will target at least one of the five WIDA ELD Standards:

• Social and Instructional Language

• Language of Language Arts

• Language of Mathematics

• Language of Science

• Language of Social Studies

ACCESS for ELLs 2.0 continues to assess each of the four language domains of Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing separately.