BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de León, Chair
AB 123 (Bonta) - Curriculum on Farm Labor Movement: Role of
Filipinos
Amended: May 24, 2013 Policy Vote: Education 9-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: July 1, 2013 Consultant: Jacqueline
Wong-Hernandez
This bill may meet the criteria for referral to the Suspense
File.
Bill Summary: AB 123 requires the State Board of Education (SBE)
to ensure that the existing state curriculum, framework and
textbook evaluation criteria on Cesar Chavez and the history of
the farm labor movement in the United States include information
on the role of immigrants, including Filipino Americans, in that
movement.
Fiscal Impact: The exact costs of this bill will depend on the
extent to which the California Department of Education (CDE)
reopens and revises existing curricula, frameworks, and textbook
selection criteria to ensure that the role of immigrants,
including Filipino Americans, is included pursuant to this bill.
The CDE's activities will, in turn, be determined by the amount
of money appropriated by the Legislature for this purpose. See
staff comments.
Background: Academic content standards define the knowledge,
concepts and skills that pupils should learn at each grade
level. Curricular frameworks serve as a blueprint for how to
implement the standards and provide guidance to publishers,
along with evaluation criteria, for the development of
instructional materials. (EC § 60200.7)
The role of the IQC is to recommend curriculum frameworks to the
State Board of Education (SBE), develop criteria for evaluating
instructional materials, study, evaluate and recommend to the
SBE instructional materials for adoption, and make
recommendations to the SBE regarding the use of frameworks and
model curriculum and alignment with the academic content
standards. (EC § 60204)
AB 123 (Bonta)
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The processes for reviewing frameworks and adopting
instructional materials have been suspended since July 28, 2009.
The SBE is specifically prohibited from reviewing frameworks and
adopting instructional materials until the 2015-16 school year,
except as provided below. (Education Code § 60200.7)
Notwithstanding the suspension, current law requires the SBE to
adopt revised frameworks that are aligned to the common core
standards in: a) Mathematics by November 30, 2013; and, b)
English language arts by May 30, 2014. (EC § 60207)
Current law also authorizes the SBE to adopt a revised framework
for history social science, but only after the CDE has completed
work related to the frameworks for the Common Core standards.
(EC § 60200.8)
Existing law requires the SBE and the CDE to request that the
IQC review and revise, as necessary, the course requirements in
the history-social science framework to ensure that minimum
standards for courses in American government and civics include
sufficient attention to teaching students how to interact, in a
practical manner, with state and local governmental agencies and
representatives to solve problems and to petition for changes in
laws and procedures. When the history-social science framework
is revised, the IQC must ensure that the following historical
documents are incorporated into the framework, as appropriate:
1) The Declaration of Independence; 2) the United States
Constitution, including the Bill of Rights; 3) the Federalist
Papers; 4) the Emancipation Proclamation; 5) the Gettysburg
Address; and, 6) George Washington's Farewell Address. (EC §
33540)
Proposed Law: AB 123 requires the SBE to ensure that the
existing state curriculum, framework and textbook evaluation
criteria on Cesar Chavez and the history of the farm labor
movement in the United States, and the state criteria for
selecting textbooks, include information on the role of
immigrants, including Filipino Americans, in that movement. This
bill further provides that these requirements are to be
implemented only if funds are appropriated in the annual Budget
Act or another statute.
Staff Comments: This bill specifies an outcome, and requires the
AB 123 (Bonta)
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SBE to achieve that outcome, rather than prescribing a series of
staff actions for the CDE to take on behalf of the SBE. This
bill requires the CDE (as staff to the SBE) to ensure that the
existing state curriculum, framework and textbook evaluation
criteria on Cesar Chavez and the history of the farm labor
movement in the United States include information on the role of
immigrants, including Filipino Americans, in that movement. It
further specifies that this act shall not be implemented unless
funds are appropriated by the Legislature for its
implementation.
The extent to which the CDE reviews and revises all the possible
areas where the required content could be included will largely
be determined by the amount of money the Legislature
appropriates for that purpose. As part of a regular update of
the history-social science framework, the CDE could include the
new content for very minor costs; likely low thousands of
dollars to research, write, and edit this content. The textbook
evaluation criteria would reflect that change to the framework.
It is probably appropriate to update the state's model
curriculum on Cesar Chavez, to implement the intent of this bill
(which specifies "state curriculum"). The Cesar Chavez
curriculum, while not required to be taught in schools, is
aligned to the standards and frameworks, and is available to all
schools to utilize. Updating that model curriculum (which cost
approximately $2 million to develop) would drive more extensive
costs to the CDE. The CDE estimates costs of $16,000-$91,000,
depending upon whether or not an advisory committee is convened
to assist the SBE in the development of the new content, as it
was during the model curriculum development. If the CDE were to
receive $91,000 for this purpose, it would do so; if the
Legislature provided less funding, but a direction to implement
this bill, it would conduct a less extensive review to meet the
bill's minimum requirements.