BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ó




                   Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
                           Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair


          AB 1521 (Brownley) - Standardized Testing.
          
          Amended: June 6, 2012           Policy Vote: Education 6-0
          Urgency: No                     Mandate: No
          Hearing Date: June 25, 2012                                 
          Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez                       
          
          This bill may meet the criteria for referral to the Suspense 
          File. 

          
          Bill Summary: AB 1521 authorizes the administration of a primary 
          language assessment to pupils enrolled in dual immersion 
          programs who are not limited English proficient, and authorizes 
          the state Department of Education (CDE) to make a primary 
          language assessment available to those schools, as specified. 
          This bill also eliminates several high school level standardized 
          tests.  

          Fiscal Impact: 
              Primary language assessment: Significant General Fund cost 
              pressure, which may be offset by fees, if the CDE elects to 
              make tests available.
              End-of-course (EOC) exam elimination: $880,000 in annual 
              General Fund and federal funds savings resulting from the 
              elimination of contracts related to developing end-of-course 
              exams.

          Background: 
           Primary language assessment:   Existing law requires the CDE to 
          develop and adopt primary language assessments that are aligned 
          to the state academic content standards for reading/language 
          arts and mathematics. The primary language assessments developed 
          pursuant to this statute are the Standards-Based Tests in 
          Spanish (STS).  (EC § 60640 (f)(3))

          Dual immersion programs, which are operated by both school 
          districts and charter schools throughout California, integrate 
          language minority students (English learners) and language 
          majority students (English speakers) to develop bilingualism and 
          biliteracy in English and another language. These programs are 
          optional; students are not automatically enrolled in a dual 








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          immersion program or school as a "neighborhood school". Parents 
          of English learners must sign yearly waivers of consent prior to 
          placement of their child in a dual immersion program. The two 
          most common program models are the 50/50 and the 90/10 models. 
          Both English and the target language are used 50 percent of the 
          time during the entire program in a 50/50 model. English is used 
          for a minimum of ten percent of the time beginning in 
          kindergarten, and the percentage increases annually until both 
          English and the target language are used equally in a 90/10 
          model. In both models, instruction is delivered in the two 
          languages; however, only one language at a time is used for 
          instruction. 

          Consistent with existing law requiring pupils in grades 2-11 to 
          be part of the 
          Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program, English 
          speakers in dual immersion programs participate in the STAR. The 
          STAR Program requires pupils to be tested in English language 
          arts, math, science and history-social science at specific grade 
          levels. The STAR Program includes the California Standards Tests 
          (CSTs), the California Alternate Performance Assessment and the 
          California Modified Assessment administered to certain pupils 
          with disabilities, and a primary language assessment.  

          Existing law requires the CDE to develop and adopt primary 
          language assessments that are aligned to the state academic 
          content standards for reading/language arts and mathematics. The 
          primary language assessments developed pursuant to this statute 
          are the Standards-Based Tests in Spanish (STS). Consistent with 
          existing law, requiring a pupil who is limited English 
          proficient and receives instruction in his or her primary 
          language or has been enrolled in a school in the United States 
          for less than 12 months to take the primary language assessment, 
          English learners in dual immersion programs whose primary 
          language is Spanish take the STS. These pupils must also take 
          the CSTs or the CMA appropriate to the pupil's grade level. (EC 
          § 60640 (g))

           EOC exams:  The STAR program also includes end-of-course and 
          integrated assessments. EOC assessments are administered to 
          pupils in specific grade levels and subject areas, including 
          math and science.  Integrated assessments are administered to 
          pupils enrolled in integrated math and/or science courses. 









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          Beginning with the 2002 Base API, the State Board of Education 
          (SBE) adopted a methodology to account for students who do not 
          take EOC CSTs; the "assignment of 200," assigned the lowest 
          value (called the performance level weighting factor) of 200 
          points when calculating a school's API in instances where the 
          student did not take one of these tests. This methodology 
          addressed the fact that the tests are EOC exams and not 
          universally-administered to all students within a grade level. 
          The policy goal of the SBE was to provide an incentive for high 
          schools to encourage students to enroll in rigorous, 
          standards-based mathematics and science courses and 
          correspondingly to reduce incentives for high schools to 
          discourage low-performing students from enrolling in these 
          courses. In 2007, the State Board opted to maintain the policy 
          of assigning 200 points but to reduce its impact by lowering the 
          test weights of the EOC CSTs. 

          Proposed Law: AB 1521 authorizes the CDE, subject to the 
          approval of the State Board of Education (SBE), to make 
          available to school districts and charter schools a primary 
          language assessment that allows school districts and charter 
          schools to assess pupils who are enrolled in a dual language 
          immersion program, as specified. This bill requires that a 
          school district or charter school that chooses to administer the 
          primary language assessment do so at its own expense, and pay a 
          fee for the test to CDE. This bill also eliminates the EOC 
          assessments in math 1-3 and integrated/coordinated assessments 
          in science 1-4.
          
          Related Legislation: AB 409 (Alejo) 2011 contained very similar 
          provisions to those in this bill authorizing the administration 
          of a primary language assessment to pupils enrolled in dual 
          immersion programs. The bill was held under submission in this 
          Committee.

          Staff Comments: This bill contains two provisions which address 
          two distinct areas of standardized testing; neither provision is 
          dependent upon the other. Because either provision could be 
          eliminated or amended without impacting the fiscal effect of the 
          other, the cost savings associated with eliminating certain 
          end-of-course exams are not offsetting savings to the cost of 
          making primary language assessments available.

           Primary language assessment : English speaker pupils enrolled in 








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          English-Spanish dual immersion programs, who may be receiving up 
          to 90% of their instruction in Spanish, are not allowed to take 
          the STS. This bill authorizes the CDE to make available to the 
          school primary language assessments for assessing their English 
          speaker pupils. This would not replace the STAR for state 
          accountability, but would be an additional tool available to the 
          school for assessing its students' progress.

          This bill is permissive both for the CDE to make the assessments 
          available, and for the school to administer the assessment. The 
          CDE would have to elect to make tests available before any costs 
          identified would be incurred. If the CDE makes specified 
          assessments available, it could incur costs beyond what it could 
          recover in fees. 

          The intent of this bill seems to be to allow the CDE to recover 
          costs for making tests available, but the language presents some 
          ambiguity. The bill specifies that costs charged to requesting 
          schools cannot exceed the "marginal cost of the assessment", 
          which is not defined.  It is not clear whether "the assessment" 
          is the physical exam being made available or whether it includes 
          activities related to the exam (e.g. distribution, scoring, 
          reports) which are components of the current STS assessment for 
          English learners. Thus, while it is clear that the CDE could 
          recover costs for the physical exams, it is not clear whether 
          CDE's projected "marginal cost" in the estimates it provided to 
          the Committee would, in fact, be recoverable under this bill. 

          This bill does not specify that the STS, which is the state's 
          sole primary language assessment, be made available, but rather 
          that "a primary language assessment" may be made available that 
          is developed pursuant to EC § 60640 (f). The code referenced 
          refers to using federal Title VI funds appropriated in the 
          Budget Act to develop any current or future primary language 
          assessments, in general. While English-Spanish dual immersion 
          programs are the most common, dual immersion programs exist in a 
          variety of languages and serve approximately 50,000 students 
          statewide in several languages. Glendale Unified School 
          District, in Los Angeles County, offers dual immersion programs 
          in (English and) Italian, German, Armenian, Japanese and Korean, 
          as well as Spanish. By allowing the CDE to make tests available, 
          which it does not yet have, to an increasing number and variety 
          of dual immersion programs, this bill could create cost pressure 
          to develop those tests, though the bill does not require the 








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          development of additional tests. 

           EOC exams  : The CDE estimates that eliminating the specified EOC 
          exams will result in savings for development and production 
          contracts, as well as the administration of exams. The 
          department estimates approximately $880,000 in annual savings, 
          based on current contracted rates. By those rates, eliminating 
          the general mathematics EOC would save $250,000, the integrated 
          math tests would save $61,000, and the integrated/coordinated 
          science tests would save $569,000. Future contracts for STAR 
          tests would reflect a reduced amount because there would be 
          fewer tests provided. 
          
          Recommended Amendments: Staff recommends that the CDE be 
          explicitly authorized to charge fees that fully cover the costs 
          related to the production and administration of all additional 
          assessments requested under the provisions of this bill, if the 
          CDE elects to make them available.