BILL ANALYSIS Ó Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair SB 753 (Padilla) Hearing Date: 05/26/2011 Amended: 05/24/2011 Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 9-0 _________________________________________________________________ ____ BILL SUMMARY: SB 753 would require that the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) be administered annually during a three-month test period commencing with the day upon which 65 percent of the instructional year is completed, beginning after the current CELDT test contract expires. This bill would require the California Department of Education (CDE) to provide the score a pupil achieves on the CELDT to the parent or guardian of the pupil in English and, if available, in the language reported on the home language survey, as specified. _________________________________________________________________ ____ Fiscal Impact (in thousands) Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 Fund Screening test implementation $3,000-$6,000 annually, beginning in 2013-14 General _________________________________________________________________ ____ STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE. AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED. Under existing law, a pupil whose primary language is not English must have his or her English language development assessed within 30 days of enrolling in a California public school and annually thereafter until the pupil is redesignated as fluent English proficient. The assessment tool used by the state is the CELDT. Currently, authority for setting the annual timeframe for administration of the CELDT is determined by the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) and the State Board of Education (SBE). The SPI and SBE have established the testing window as beginning on July 1 and ending on October 31. Existing law further requires that the assessment be conducted upon initial enrollment and annually thereafter during a period of time determined by the SPI and the SBE, until the pupil is redesignated as English proficient. This bill would require the annual assessment (the CELDT) to be conducted during a 3-month test period commencing with the day upon which 65% of the instructional year is completed, and would provide that these provisions, as well as the provisions SB 753 (Padilla) Page 3 requiring an initial and annual assessment, would not be implemented until 2015, after the current test publisher's contract expires. Because federal law requires that English learners' language development be tested within 30 days of enrolling in a California school, and the majority of new students enroll at the beginning of a school year, the CDE would need to provide schools a test for initial screening of pupils, separate from the spring CELDT. This bill requires that the CDE use an existing, prior CEDLT exam as a screening test. This bill will also incur additional costs to administer the initial screening test, which will presumably be modeled after the CELDT. The CELDT is a labor-intensive test to administer because portions of it are done one-on-one (verbally) with an administrator and each single student test taker. Test administrators receive significant training to administer the CELDT. Costs to administer the CELDT in 2009-10 were over $21.9 million, of which $11.4 million was General Fund. There are 1.5 - 2 million test takers, annually, and the vast majority of them are tested as part of the annual assessment, which indicates that most English learners either first enrolled in California schools in Kindergarten or enroll in the fall. Students who currently enroll after the CELDT test has been completed are tested separately within 30 days of enrolling in a California school. It is unclear how many new English learner students will need to be given the initial screening test in a given year, under this bill. Costs will be driven by the number of out-of-cycle test takers. Amend per author to require implementation commence in the 2013-14 school year, and to specify the prior year's CELDT test be used as a pupil's initial screening assessment. SB 753 (Padilla) Page 4