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 AB 1521 (Brownley) Page 1 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. AB 1521 (Brownley) Page 2 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 AB 1521 (Brownley) Page 3 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 AB 1521 (Brownley) Page 4 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.