BILL ANALYSIS
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 19|
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Bill No: SB 19
Author: Simitian (D)
Amended: 9/8/09
Vote: 21
SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE : 9-0, 4/22/09
AYES: Romero, Huff, Alquist, Hancock, Liu, Maldonado,
Padilla, Simitian, Wyland
SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE : Senate Rule 28.8
SENATE FLOOR : 35-2, 5/26/09
AYES: Alquist, Ashburn, Benoit, Calderon, Cedillo,
Cogdill, Corbett, Correa, Cox, Denham, DeSaulnier,
Ducheny, Dutton, Florez, Hancock, Harman, Huff, Kehoe,
Leno, Liu, Lowenthal, Maldonado, Negrete McLeod, Oropeza,
Padilla, Pavley, Romero, Simitian, Steinberg, Strickland,
Wiggins, Wolk, Wright, Wyland, Yee
NOES: Aanestad, Hollingsworth
NO VOTE RECORDED: Runner, Walters, Vacancy
ASSEMBLY FLOOR : 53-20, 9/11/09 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT : Education data
SOURCE : Author
DIGEST : This bill makes statutory changes, related to
the collection, reporting and use of data, some of which
may be necessary for California to qualify for specific
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one-time funding programs under the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Assembly Amendments expand the contents of the bill and add
coauthors.
ANALYSIS : Current law establishes the Office of the
State Chief Information Office appointed by the Governor to
advise the Governor on the strategic management of the
state's information technology resources, coordinate the
activities of agency chief information officers and ensure
compliance with information technology policies and
standards, among other duties. The office is the successor
to the office of Technology Review, Oversight, and Security
within the Department of Finance. The office has no
authority over the Legislature, or the Legislative Data
Center or the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
Specifics of the Bill
1. Authorizes the use of federal grant funds, received
pursuant to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
of 2009 (ARRA) and provides for statewide data systems,
to fund activities currently required of the working
group created by the State chief Information Officer
(CIO) related to the creation of a strategic plan to
link education data systems from K-12 and higher
education.
2. Adds an additional issue, to identify specific
procedures and policies that would facilitate the
sharing and transfer of data from one segment to another
and ultimately to include linkages to workforce data, to
the strategic plan being created by the CIO's working
group. Also extends the due date for the delivery of
the strategic plan by the CIO to the Legislature and
Governor from September 1, 2009, to January 1, 2010.
3. Deletes the prohibition against data in the California
Longitudinal Teacher Integrated Data Education System
(CALTIDES) being used, either solely or in conjunction
with data from the California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System (CALPADS), for purposes to pay,
promotion, sanction, or personnel evaluation of an
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individual teacher or groups of teachers, or of any
other employment decisions related to individual
teachers. Also adds language clarifying the state and
federal law protecting the privacy of personally
identifiable data for all individuals applies to the
uses of data that may occur following the elimination of
this requirement.
4. Provides an exception to the prohibition against the
California Department of Education (CDE) requiring state
and federally funded center based child care and
development programs administered by the CDE to
implement or maintain the unique Statewide Student
Identifiers (SSID) being used in CALPADS until an
appropriation for this purpose is provided, by excepting
the extent to which this is required by federal law, or
needed to ensure compliance with federal law.
5. Adds to the authority granted to the Superintendent of
Public Instruction (SPI) to add data elements deemed
necessary to CALPADS, with approval of the State Board
of Education (SBE), to comply with the federal reporting
requirements delineated in ARRA. Requires the SPI to
submit an expenditure plan detailing costs to the
Department of Finance (DOF) prior to data elements being
added, and in turn requires DOF to notify the Joint
Legislative Budget Committee within 10 days of receipt
of that plan.
Comments
According to the author's office, this bill is "intended to
cover the data systems-related changes needed for the
purposes of competing for federal funds." The bill now
proposes to enact those statutory changes, relating to the
collection, reporting and use of data in both CALPADS and
CALTIDES, that are necessary, according to the author'
office, to meet the requirements recently proposed by the
United States Department of Education (USDEO) for funding
under the competitive grant programs of ARRA.
One of those programs for which California may compete is
the Grant Program for Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems
administered by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES
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grant) under ARRA. Funding provided through this
competitive grant program is to be used for statewide data
systems that, in addition to the P-12 data, also include
postsecondary and workforce information. Grants will
support the development and implementation of P-20 systems
that have the capacity to link individual student data
across time and across databases, including matching
teachers to students, promote easy matching and linking of
data across institutions and states, and protect privacy
consistent with applicable privacy protection laws. A
total of $245 million is available nationwide, with average
grant awards estimated at from $2 to $20 million over the
lifetime of the project. The submission deadline for the
Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems Grant is November 19,
209, and grants awards are expected to be announced in May
of 2010. The five proposals made in this bill, if this
bill is enacted, will work to make California's application
for these IES grant funds more competitive.
ARRA also includes other formula-driven and competitive
grants for K-12 education. Approximately $5 billion in
one-time funding will be available nationwide across three
separate competitive Race to the top grants: (1) state
Incentive Grants (herein referred to as RTTT grants),
totaling over $4 billion nationwide; (2) state Standards
and Assessments Grants, totaling approximately $350
million; and (3) district Innovation Grants totaling
approximately $650 million. This bill also deals with some
of the requirements associated with the State Incentive
Grant program; the latter two grant programs are still
under development by the federal government and no guidance
has been released. According to the Legislative Analyst
Office, it is possible that California could qualify for
between $500 million and $1 billion in State Incentive
Grant one-time funding, depending on the number of states
that apply and various other factors; however, since this
grant program is competitive, it is also possible that
California will receive no funding under this program.
On July 29, 2009, the USDEO issued a notice of proposed
priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection
criteria for states applying for RTTT grants. Comments on
this preliminary guidance was due back to the USDOE August
28, 2009, final guidance will be announced at a later date,
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Phase 1 of the application period will open in late
calendar year 2009, and additional states will be allowed
to apply in Phase 2 during the spring of 2010,
respectively. There appears to be little difference in the
requirements applied to Phase 1 versus Phase 2
applications, with one notable exception, concerning a
state's adoption of a nationwide common core of academic
content standards; this requirement is ambiguously stated
in the notice, and should be clarified by USDOE in its
final guidance. There are also no stated penalties or
rewards for application in Phase 1 versus Phase 2.
The USDOE preliminary guidance proposes various
requirements and criteria that will be applied to RTTT
grant applications and applications. This includes two
requirements and one priority necessary for eligibility,
and eight administrative application requirements - all of
which must be met in order for the application to qualify;
this guidance also includes 19 selection criteria that will
bear on an application's competitive score, and four
priorities that serve to enhance an application (only the
first of these four will be reflected in an application's
score).
Authorization of the use of Federal Funds for Activities of
the CIO related to SB 1298 . According to the author's
office, SB 19 addresses one outstanding item from last
year's SB 1298 related to the state's vision for a
comprehensive education data system; specifically, the
requirement of the [CIO] to prepare a technical plan to
link statewide information systems and education data?the
bill authorizes the use of the federal funds to cover the
CIO's costs related to the SB 1298 linkages work group."
This bill merely authorizes such a use, but does not
provide the necessary expenditure authority to allow these
federal funds to be used; additional expenditure authority
would be required to be granted by the Legislature in order
to have the funds available to the CIO for this purpose.
This proposal relates to California's RTTT grant proposal
only in that it may generally further the expansion of the
state's educational data system; this action is not
specifically required to meet the RTTT grant requirements
and criteria.
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Expansion of the Charge Given to the CIO under SB 1298 . SB
1298 requires the CIO to convene a working group,
representing the SPI, the SBE, the three systems of
California public higher education, and any other
governmental entities that collect, report, or use
individual education data that would become part of the
comprehensive educational data system. The CIO, along with
this working group, is required to develop a strategic
plan, to be delivered to the Legislature and the Governor
on or before September 1, 2009, that would provide an
overall structural design for the linked data system,
examine current state education data systems, and examine
the interdepartmental data protocols and procedures to be
used by state agencies in collecting, storing,
manipulating, sharing, retrieving, and releasing data in
order to enable the linking of data systems. This group
began meeting in early May. This bill proposes to add
"identify specific procedures and policies that would
facilitate the sharing and transfer of data from one
segment to another and ultimately to include linkages to
workforce data." This new requirement is consistent with
the charge to the working group and with other strategic
plan requirements placed on the CIO and the working group.
This bill also proposes to extend the date by which the
strategic plan is to be delivered by the CIO to the
Legislature and the Governor from September 1, 2009, to
January 1, 2010. These proposals relate to California's
RTTT grant proposal only in that they may generally further
the expansion of the state's educational data system; these
actions are not specifically required to meet the RTTT
grant requirements and criteria.
Repeal of a Perceived Prohibition on Using Pupil Data to
Evaluate Teachers . California has no effective prohibition
on the use of pupil achievement data in making performance
evaluations of certificated employees. In fact,
subdivision (b) of Section 44662 of the Education Code (EC)
clearly requires the governing board of each school
district to evaluate and assess certificated employee
performance as it reasonably relates, among other items, to
the progress of pupils toward the state adopted academic
content standards as measured by state adopted criterion
referenced assessments. However, the perception has
developed that EC Section 10601.5 prevents LEA from so
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evaluating teachers, since that section prohibits the use
of CALTIDES data, either solely or in conjunction with
CALPADS data, for the purposes of any employment decision
related to individual teachers. This prohibition, of
course, would not prevent a LEA from using data that it
possesses in its own local data systems to make such
evaluations; this local data includes, in fact, the data
that the LEA submits to the state and that populates both
CALTIDES and CALPADS. Thus there would be no reason for a
LEA to use CALTIDES and CALPADS to evaluate its own
teachers; it would simply be administratively easier for a
LEA to use its own data.
According to Legislative Counsel, however, in the context
of the RTTT grant applications, the decision as to whether
California has or does not have a prohibition or firewall
against the use of pupil performance data to evaluate
teachers is at the sole discretion of the U.S. Secretary of
Education, Arne Duncan. Secretary Duncan has been quoted
as saying that California has such a barrier and will
therefore be ineligible to compete for RTTT grant funding
as long as that barrier exists. This bill proposes to
eliminate that prohibition and replace it with explicit
authority to use CALTIDES and CALPADS data to evaluate
individual teachers. According to the LAO, this repeal of
the prohibition on the use of pupil performance data in the
evaluation of teachers is the only statutory change
necessary for California to make in order to meet the
eligibility requirements of the RTTT grant program.
Repeal of the Prohibition on Requiring Pre-K Center Based
Programs to Implement Specific Data Requirements, to the
Extent that Federal Law so Requires such Data Collection .
Current law, as enacted by SB 1298 (Simitian), requires the
CDE to establish a process by which LEAs issue, maintain,
and report information, using the unique SSID being used in
CALPADS, for state and federally funded center based child
care and development programs administered by the CDE, but
current law prohibits requiring those programs to implement
or maintain the SSIDs until an appropriation for this
purpose is provided. This bill softens that prohibition by
allowing the CDE to make this requirement to the extent
that it is necessary to comply with or is otherwise
required by federal law. This change does not increase the
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state's exposure to mandated cost reimbursement claims;
since costs stemming from federal requirements are not
reimbursable, this proposal would continue to limit the
state's liability. This proposal also may make
California's RTTT grant application more competitive under
the enhancement criterion that calls for expansion of state
longitudinal data systems to include pre-K data.
Expansion of the Data Elements Required to be Collected in
CALPADS . This bill proposes to expand the scope of "other
data elements deemed necessary," that may be identified by
the SPI, with approval of the SBE, to be required to be
retained in individual pupil records by LEAs, from only
those data elements necessary for compliance with the
federal No Child Left Behind Act to also include those
necessary for compliance with ARRA. The expansion of
authority for the SPI, with the approval of the SBE, to
require data elements necessary for compliance with ARRA
allows the state to fully adapt to the new requirements
specified in ARRA and thus to include any data elements
necessary to compete for an ARRA grant, including those
under RTTT. The bill also requires the SPI to submit an
expenditure plan, detailing any state operations and local
education agency costs, to DOF prior to any additional data
elements being deemed necessary under this authority, and
in turn requiring DOF to notify the Joint Legislative
Budget Committee within 10 days of receipt of the
expenditure plan; in this way both the administration and
the Legislature will be aware of any cost implications
associated with expansion of the data elements in this
system.
Prior and Related Legislation
SB 1XXXXX (Romero), pending in the Senate, proposes
language repealing the perceived prohibition on using pupil
data to evaluate teachers; that bill also makes additional
proposals. SB 2XXXXX (Simitian), also pending in the
Senate, is substantially similar to this bill. SB 1298
(Simitian), Chapter 561, Statutes of 2008, established
processes by which LEAs and public institutions of higher
education issue, maintain, and report information using the
unique statewide student identifiers required under current
law. SB 1614 (Simitian), Chapter 840, Statutes of 2006,
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required the development of CALTIDES to serve as a central
state repository of information on the teacher workforce.
SB 1453 (Alpert), Chapter 1002, Statutes of 2002,
authorized the longitudinal data system in its current
form, and specifies that the system be known as CALPADS.
FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: No
Local: No
According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee,
potential General Fund Proposition 98 cost pressure, likely
in the hundreds of thousands, to LEAs to collect and
maintain data in CALPADS, as required by ARRA and deemed
necessary by the SPI. The data collection requirements are
a condition of receiving ARRA funds; however, given the
severe reductions LEAs have incurred over the last two
years, the collection and maintenance of additional data
elements may create costs. The Assembly Education
Committee also notes that the state may receive as much as
$500 million in one-time federal funds under RTTT.
SUPPORT : (Verified 9/10/09)
Advancement Project
Bay Area Council
California ACORN
California Public Advocates
California School Boards Association
Californians for Justice
Children Now
Education Trust-West
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
League of Women Voters in California
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
PICO California
Preschool California
Regional Economic Association Leaders Coalition
The Education of Trust-West
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : The Los Angeles Area Chamber of
Commerce states, "SB 19 is needed to enact statutory
changes necessary to create a culture of continuous
improvement through the use of data and the creation of a
comprehensive information system for education, including
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early care and education programs.
"In addition, in order for California to receive $4.87
billion for education from the State Fiscal Stabilization
Fund of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we must
provide an assurance that the 'The State will establish a
longitudinal data system that includes the elements
described in section 6401(e)(2)(D) of the America COMPETES
Act (20 U.S.C.9871.)' Therefore, we urge you to codify
this assurance in SB 19 and ensure that it is consistent
with the early care and education to higher education
provisions you secured in the Education Data and
Information Act of 2008 (SB 1298)."
ASSEMBLY FLOOR :
AYES: Ammiano, Arambula, Beall, Block, Blumenfield,
Bradford, Brownley, Buchanan, Caballero, Charles
Calderon, Carter, Chesbro, Coto, Davis, De La Torre, De
Leon, Eng, Evans, Feuer, Fletcher, Fong, Fuentes,
Furutani, Galgiani, Hall, Hayashi, Hernandez, Hill,
Huber, Huffman, Krekorian, Lieu, Bonnie Lowenthal, Ma,
Mendoza, Monning, Nava, Niello, John A. Perez, V. Manuel
Perez, Portantino, Ruskin, Salas, Saldana, Skinner,
Solorio, Audra Strickland, Swanson, Torlakson, Torres,
Torrico, Yamada, Bass
NOES: Adams, Anderson, Bill Berryhill, Tom Berryhill,
Conway, DeVore, Emmerson, Gaines, Garrick, Gilmore,
Hagman, Harkey, Jeffries, Knight, Logue, Nestande,
Nielsen, Smyth, Tran, Villines
NO VOTE RECORDED: Blakeslee, Cook, Fuller, Jones, Miller,
Silva, Vacancy
DLW:cm 9/17/09 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE
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