WIDA Correspondence Mapping of the Match, Breadth, Consistency, and Depth of Language Opportunities in State K–12 English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies Standards
WCER Working Paper No 2023-3
Lynn Shafer Willner
August 2023, 135 pp.
ABSTRACT: To comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 and related U.S. Department of Education peer review guidance, state education agencies must provide evidence demonstrating clear alignment (technically referred to as correspondence) between their K–12 English language proficiency standards and their academic content standards. This technical paper provides evidence of match, breadth, consistency [balance of representation], and depth of correspondence between WIDA consortium member state academic content standards in English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, as of Fall 2022, and the components of the WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition–specifically the four WIDA Key Language Uses and their grade-level cluster and content area instantiation in the WIDA Language Expectations. It also illustrates the relationship between the grade-level cluster Language Expectations and Proficiency Level 5 of the Proficiency Level Descriptors. State correspondence evidence helps ensure that K–12 students identified as English learners (referred to as multilingual learners by WIDA) have the opportunity to learn the critical elements of language that facilitate access to and achievement of academic content.
keywords: U.S. Department of Education Title I peer review, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), English learners, multilingual learners, K–12 English language proficiency (ELP) standards, English language development (ELD) standards, alignment, correspondence, K–12 academic content standards, WIDA
