BILL ANALYSIS
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 1130|
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 1130
Author: Solorio (D)
Amended: 6/18/09 in Senate
Vote: 21
SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE : 7-0, 7/15/09
AYES: Romero, Huff, Alquist, Hancock, Liu, Simitian,
Wyland
NO VOTE RECORDED: Maldonado, Padilla
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 74-0, 5/14/09 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT : Academic performance
SOURCE : EdVoice
DIGEST : This bill requires that if an existing advisory
committee to the Superintendent of Public Instruction
considers a measure of annual academic achievement growth,
then that measure must not be proprietary, must be
replicable and its results, as well as its statistical
features, must be able to be fully and accurately explained
to the public.
ANALYSIS : Current law requires the Superintendent of
Public Instruction (SPI) to establish a broadly
representative committee to advise the SPI and the State
Board of Education (SBE) on the creation of the Academic
Performance Index (API) and make recommendations on the
feasibility of measuring academic performance utilizing
CONTINUED
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unique pupil identifiers.
The API was established pursuant SB 1 X (Alpert), Chapter
3, Statutes of 1999, First Extraordinary Session. The API
was proposed as a means of combining multiple indicators of
school performance into one easy-to-compare index. A
school's API score is based primarily on the test scores of
pupils on the California Standards Tests of pupils in
grades 2 through 11. The California Standards Tests
measure pupil performance against the statewide standards
adopted by the SBE for each grade level. Although the
standards are considered among the best in the nation, they
were not designed to track pupil performance in specific
skills from one grade to the next. Each grade has a unique
set of standards and the tests for that grade are designed
to measure pupil performance against those standards, but
aligned as they are to the standards at each grade level,
the tests are not "vertically aligned" so that a pupil's
performance on any particular set of skills may be tracked
over time. As a result, this system does not allow an
accurate comparison of a pupil's growth or decline in
performance between grade levels.
The California Department of Education also calculates a
"Growth API" that compares grade level performance from one
year to the next. The Growth API does not measure growth
for a specific group of students and is not based on
information for individual pupils; in other words, that
measure may only be reflecting the differences in two
cohorts of pupils, for example last year's third grade
class versus this year's third grade class. The current
state testing system does not measure the actual growth for
the same students over time.
This bill:
1. Requires that if the advisory committee on API matters
considers a measure of annual academic achievement
growth or growth by cohort, and adopts such a measure
for any of several specified reasons, it must:
A. Utilize a growth model in the public domain that
is not proprietary.
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B. Be able to be replicated by an independent
statistician.
C. Be able to be fully and accurately explained,
including the generation of all results, the
specification of the standard error, and the
stringency of the confidence interval used to
determine whether the annual change in test scores is
statistically significant, in a document available to
the public.
2. Declares legislative findings that, among other things:
A. California's school accountability system compares
snapshots of individual school and school district
performance by grade level thereby comparing the
difference in achievement of different cohorts of
pupils from one year to the next.
B. This accountability system fails to adjust for
beginning levels of achievement, and schools and
districts are often unfairly held accountable for the
low performance of the school the pupils previously
attended.
C. Tracking each age group's (cohort) academic growth
over time will provide better information to identify
pupils who need additional assistance and target
resources to close achievement gaps.
3. Declares legislative intent that, when conducting their
responsibilities, the advisory committee on API matters
consider recommendations of a 2007 Budget Act required
study and federal requirements and guidance from the
federal Department of Education, and waivers for cohort
growth measures approved for other states.
4. Declares legislative intent that the advisory committee
on API matters consider measures already in use by other
states to determine grade level performance benchmarks
that indicate the following with reasonable statistical
confidence:
A. High achievement with a growth rate indicating
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ability to remain at proficiency or to move into the
highest range of achievement.
B. High achievement with a growth rate indicating
ability to remain at least at proficiency.
C. Low achievement with a growth rate indicating
ability to reach proficiency within a specified
timeframe.
D. Low achievement with a growth rate indicating
significant inability to reach proficiency within a
specified timeframe.
5. Requests the advisory committee on API matters, when
making any notice pursuant to the Bagley-Keene Open
Meeting Act, to also notify the chairpersons of the
Committees on Education and Appropriations of any
activities that may be conducted relative to measures of
annual academic achievement growth or growth by cohort.
Related/prior legislation . This bill is one of four bills
that propose changes to the state's accountability system,
specifically to the API measure. Those four bills are AB
173 (Price), AB 429 (Brownley), AB 1130 (Solorio), and AB
1435 (V. Manuel Perez). AB 2776 (Mullin), 2007-08 Session,
held in the Senate Appropriations Committee, would have
required examination of the collection of individual
student data, the state's emerging data systems, the
possibility of making real comparisons of student
performance over time, and the long-term availability of
assessment data related to the acquisition of English
language by English learners with respect to making
potential improvements in the API. SB 219 (Steinberg),
Chapter 731, Statutes of 2007, makes changes in the
calculation of, and in the process for, revising the API.
SB 257 (Alpert), Chapter 782, Statutes of 2003, requires
the advisory committee established to advise the SPI on the
API to make recommendations to the SPI on a methodology for
generating a "gain" score measurement to provide more
accurate measure of a school's growth over time. SB 1X
(Alpert), Chapter 3, Statutes of 1999-2000, First
Extraordinary Session, known as the Public Schools
Accountability Act, authorizes the state's current
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accountability program, including establishment of the
Public Schools Accountability Act Advisory Committee and
development of the API.
FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: No
Local: No
SUPPORT : (Verified 7/20/09)
EdVoice (source)
Association of California School Administrators
California School Boards Association
California Teachers Association
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : According to the author, "AB 1130
is an important step toward a reliable, more accurate and
comprehensive measure of academic achievement. It will also
help inform the development of a longitudinal growth model
in California that will be used for accountability and
policy making purposes at the state, district, and school
level." The author also states that, "Education leaders and
researchers have found that including a growth measure in
accountability determinations produces a catalyst to data
driven decision making from the district to the school site
and even the classroom. In other states, implementation of
growth measures that are understandable to teachers,
parents and policy makers have fostered partnerships,
innovation and collaboration among public education
stakeholders."
ASSEMBLY FLOOR :
AYES: Adams, Anderson, Arambula, Beall, Bill Berryhill,
Tom Berryhill, Blakeslee, Block, Blumenfield, Buchanan,
Caballero, Charles Calderon, Carter, Chesbro, Conway,
Cook, Coto, Davis, De La Torre, De Leon, DeVore, Duvall,
Emmerson, Eng, Evans, Feuer, Fletcher, Fong, Fuller,
Furutani, Galgiani, Garrick, Gilmore, Hagman, Hall,
Harkey, Hayashi, Hernandez, Hill, Huber, Huffman,
Jeffries, Jones, Knight, Krekorian, Lieu, Logue, Bonnie
Lowenthal, Ma, Mendoza, Miller, Monning, Nava, Nestande,
Niello, Nielsen, John A. Perez, V. Manuel Perez,
Portantino, Price, Ruskin, Salas, Silva, Skinner,
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Solorio, Audra Strickland, Swanson, Torlakson, Torres,
Torrico, Tran, Villines, Yamada, Bass
NO VOTE RECORDED: Ammiano, Brownley, Fuentes, Gaines,
Saldana, Smyth
DLW:mw 7/20/09 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE
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