BILL NUMBER: SB 1357 AMENDED
BILL TEXT
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY AUGUST 16, 2010
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 23, 2010
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 10, 2010
AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 5, 2010
INTRODUCED BY Senators Steinberg and Alquist
(Principal coauthor: Senator Romero)
(Principal coauthor: Assembly Member Brownley)
FEBRUARY 19, 2010
An act to amend Section 48070.6 of, and to add Section 60901 to,
the Education Code, relating to pupil data.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
SB 1357, as amended, Steinberg. California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System.
Existing law establishes the California Education Information
System, which consists of the California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System (CALPADS) and the California Longitudinal
Teacher Integrated Data Education System. Existing law requires the
State Department of Education under CALPADS to contract for the
development of proposals that will provide for the retention and
analysis of longitudinal pupil achievement data. Existing law
requires local educational agencies to retain individual pupil
records for each test taker, including other data elements deemed
necessary by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with approval
of the State Board of Education, to comply with federal reporting
requirements delineated in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of
2001.
This bill would require the department, contingent on federal
funding for this purpose, to prepare CALPADS to include data on a
quarterly rate of pupil attendance. The bill would require that
CALPADS be capable of issuing to local educational agencies periodic
reports on district, school, class, and individual pupil rates of
absence and chronic absentees, as defined. The bill would state the
intent of the Legislature to support the development of early warning
systems to identify and support individual pupils who are at risk of
academic failure or of dropping out of school.
Existing law requires the Superintendent annually to submit to the
Governor, the Legislature, and the State Board of Education a report
on dropouts using the data produced by CALPADS.
This bill would require the report to include chronic absentee
rates when that data is available. The bill would make the
operation of the provisions regarding the report contingent upon the
appropriation of federal funds specifically for the
purposes of the report provisions.
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes.
State-mandated local program: no.
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1. (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:
(1) The number of pupils dropping out of California middle and
high schools is unacceptably high and has negative consequences for
those dropouts, their communities, and the health of the California
economy.
(2) Research suggests that before they abandon school, many pupils
who drop out display clear early warning signs including chronic
absenteeism, failing grades, and behavior problems.
(3) States and school districts across the country employ early
warning systems to accurately identify pupils who are at risk of
dropping out and provide timely dropout prevention.
(4) Chronic absence, defined as missing 10 percent or more of
schooldays for any reason over the course of the academic year, even
in the earliest of grades, is one of the best indicators of dropout
risk and is a critical element in any early warning system.
(5) California is one of only seven states that do not collect
pupil level data on attendance according to the Data Quality
Campaign, a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support
state policymakers to improve the availability and use of
high-quality education data to improve pupil achievement.
(6) Existing state law clearly recognizes the importance of
attendance for pupils by making education compulsory for children
between 6 and 18 years of age, with few exceptions. State law also
encourages local educational agencies to adopt pupil attendance
policies, to notify parents when pupils are absent, to establish
alternative programs for pupils in special circumstances, and to work
with law enforcement agencies to address truancy.
(7) Existing state law also requires 8th and 9th grade dropout
rates and cohort graduation rates to be included as factors in the
Academic Performance Index (API), the state's accountability measure
for public schools. As these factors are incorporated into the API,
and as local educational agencies attend more closely to them, the
state's education data system must be improved to support schools and
districts to identify pupils at risk of dropping out and prevent
that outcome.
(b) (1) It is therefore the intent of the Legislature to improve
the state's ability to support local educational agencies in their
efforts to increase academic achievement and prevent dropouts by
making the state's education data system capable of collecting pupil
level data on chronic absenteeism.
(2) It is further the intent of the Legislature to support the
development of early warning systems that will better enable schools
and communities to identify pupils who signal clearly that they are
at risk of dropping out and to develop interventions to improve pupil
attendance, retention, and achievement.
SEC. 2. Section 48070.6 of the Education Code is amended to read:
48070.6. (a) On or before August 1, 2011, and annually
thereafter, utilizing data produced by the California Longitudinal
Pupil Achievement Data System pursuant to Section 60900 and other
available data, the Superintendent shall submit to the Governor, the
Legislature, and the state board, a report that shall be called the
Annual Report on Dropouts in California. The report shall include,
but not be limited to, all of the following:
(1) One-year dropout rates for each of grades 7 to 12, inclusive.
(2) Four-year cohort dropout rates for grades 9 to 12, inclusive.
(3) Two- or three-year cohort dropout rates, as appropriate, for
middle schools.
(4) Grade 9 to grade 10 promotion rates.
(5) Percentage of high school pupils for each of grades 9 to 12,
inclusive, who are on track to earn sufficient credits to graduate.
(6) The average number of nonpromotional school moves that pupils
make between grades 6 to 12, inclusive.
(7) "Full-year" dropout rates for alternative schools, including
dropout recovery high schools, calculated using a methodology
developed by the Superintendent to appropriately reflect dropout
rates in each type of alternative school.
(8) An explanation of the methodology or methodologies used to
calculate "full-year" dropout rates for alternative schools pursuant
to paragraph (7).
(9) Passage rates on the high school exit examination adopted
pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 60850.
(10) Other available data relating to dropout or graduation rates
or pupil progress toward high school graduation.
(b) When cohort dropout rates can be calculated accurately using
longitudinal data, the rates described in paragraph (3) of
subdivision (a) shall be replaced by dropout rates for cohorts of
pupils entering middle school.
(c) When data are is available, the
report shall also include all of the following:
(1) Rates at which pupils graduate in four, five, and six years,
pursuant to subparagraph (A) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (a) of
Section 52052.
(2) Percentage of high school graduates and dropouts who completed
courses that are certified by the University of California as
meeting admission requirement criteria for the University of
California and California State University systems.
(3) Percentage of high school graduates and dropouts who completed
two or more classes in career technical education.
(4) Percentage of high school graduates and dropouts who completed
both course sequences described in paragraphs (2) and (3).
(5) Behavioral data by school and district, including suspensions
and expulsions.
(6) Truancy rates.
(7) GED earning rates.
(8) Chronic absentee rates, as defined in Section 60901.
(d) If possible, the data listed in subdivisions (a) and (b) shall
be presented in the report, organized as follows:
(1) By state.
(2) By county.
(3) By district, both including and excluding charter schools.
(4) By school.
(e) The report shall include data from alternative middle and high
schools, including continuation high schools, community day schools,
juvenile court schools, special schools, opportunity schools, and
schools attended by wards of the Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation, Division of Juvenile Justice.
(f) The report may include relevant data on school climate and
pupil engagement from the California Healthy Kids Survey.
(g) If possible, the data listed in subdivisions (a) and (b) shall
be presented for the following subgroups, if the subgroup consists
of at least 50 pupils, and the subgroup constitutes at least 15
percent of the total population of pupils at a school:
(1) Grade level.
(2) Ethnicity.
(3) Gender.
(4) Low socioeconomic status.
(5) English learners.
(6) Special education status.
(h) The first Annual Report on Dropouts in California shall
include data from the most recent year. Subsequent annual reports
shall include data from the most recent year and, at a minimum, the
two prior years, so that comparisons can be made easily.
(i) The Superintendent or his or her designee shall make an oral
presentation of the contents of the report to the state board at a
regularly scheduled meeting of the board.
(j) The Superintendent shall make the contents of the report
available on the department's Internet Web site in a format that is
easy for the public to access and understand.
(k) If inclusion of school-level data would render the written
report unwieldy, the data may be omitted from the written report and
posted on the department's Internet Web site.
(l) It is the intent of the Legislature that the report prepared
by the Superintendent be usable by schools, districts, policymakers,
researchers, parents, and the public, for purposes of identifying and
understanding trends, causal relations, early warning indicators,
and potential points of intervention to address the high rate of
dropouts in California.
(m) It is further the intent of the Legislature that the report be
used to foster the development of effective supports and
interventions that include health, dental, and mental health
services, case management, social services, and after school programs
to improve school attendance and prevent pupils from dropping out of
school.
(n) For purposes of this section, dropouts shall be defined using
the exit/withdrawal codes developed by the department.
(o) For purposes of this section, "dropout recovery high school"
has the same meaning as defined in subparagraph (C) of paragraph (4)
of subdivision (a) of Section 52052.
SEC. 3. Section 60901 is added to the Education Code, to read:
60901. (a) Contingent upon the receipt of federal funds for this
purpose, the department shall prepare the California Longitudinal
Pupil Achievement Data System established pursuant to Section 60900
to include data on a quarterly rate of pupil attendance. Preparation
shall include all of the following:
(1) The addition of fields to facilitate the transfer of data.
(2) System development activities including any business rules and
definitions that would be needed to improve the quality and
consistency of the data.
(3) Processes for the transfer of data from local educational
agencies.
(4) Consultation with organizations representing school, district,
and county education administrators, classified and certified staff,
and parents in order to develop the criteria and frequency of
reports on pupil attendance data and other indicators as may be
submitted by local educational agencies.
(b) The system shall support local educational agencies in their
efforts to identify and support pupils at risk of dropping out and
shall be capable of issuing
to local educational agencies periodic reports that include, but
may not be limited to, district, school, class, and individual pupil
reports on both of the following:
(1) Rates of absence.
(2) Chronic absentees.
(c) (1) For purposes of this section, "chronic absentee" means a
pupil who is absent on 10 percent or more of the schooldays in the
school year when the total number of days a pupil is absent is
divided by the total number of days the pupil is enrolled and school
was actually taught in the regular day schools of the district,
exclusive of Saturdays and Sundays.
(2) Once available, chronic absentee rates shall be incorporated
into the annual report on dropouts required pursuant to Section
48070.6.
(d) It is the intent of the Legislature to support the development
of early warning systems to enable the identification and support of
individual pupils who are at risk of academic failure or dropping
out of school. The systems shall encompass the following
characteristics:
(1) The utilization of highly predictive indicators, including
attendance, course grades or completion, performance on assessments
of pupil achievement, suspensions, and expulsions.
(2) A thorough validation process to ensure the predictive
reliability of the systems.
(3) Periodic reports that inform principals, teachers, and parents
in a manner that enables timely identification and support of
individual pupils who are at risk of academic failure or dropping
out.
(e) When the system established pursuant to Section 60900 is
prepared to accept data on a quarterly rate of pupil attendance, a
local educational agency may submit data to the department on a
quarterly rate of pupil attendance and other indicators as identified
by the department. It is the intent of the Legislature that schools
identified on the list of persistently lowest-achieving schools will
fully utilize the early warning systems described in subdivision (d).
(f) A local educational agency that reports attendance data for
pupils to the system established pursuant to Section 60900 may
request, and the department shall provide, the early warning report
described in subdivision (d) up to four times each school year.
(g) The department shall notify local educational agencies that
reporting pupil attendance and chronic absentee data pursuant to this
section is voluntary. The notice shall include a description of the
benefits of reporting pupil attendance and chronic absentee data in
fostering the development of effective supports and interventions for
at-risk pupils.
(h) This section shall not become operative unless federal funds
are appropriated specifically for the purposes of this section.