BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 275
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Date of Hearing: May 1, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Joan Buchanan, Chair
AB 275 (Alejo) - As Amended: April 25, 2013
SUBJECT : Migrant Education
SUMMARY : This bill makes changes to the federally funded
Migrant Education Program (MEP) by increasing data collection,
state oversight and monitoring, and reporting obligations.
Specifically, this bill :
1) Makes legislative findings and declarations related to
Migrant Education.
2) Specifies the purpose of the State Master Plan (also
referred to in federal law as the State Service Delivery
Plan for Migrant Education) adopted pursuant to this
chapter is to assist migratory children in meeting the same
academic content and achievement standards that all
children are expected to meet.
3) Requires the State Master Plan to include specified
data.
4) Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to
provide support services and technical assistance to the
State Parent Advisory Council (SPAC) and the local and
regional parent advisory councils to enable them to fulfill
their statutory duties pursuant to this chapter.
5) Requires the CDE and regional MEPs to collect and make
accessible to specified entities data relating to migratory
pupils.
6) Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI)
to develop a monitoring instrument and procedures that
addresses the components of both federal and state
requirements and specifies that those procedures shall
include onsite monitoring of each LEA that receives MEP
funds pursuant to the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act (ESEA) at least once every three years.
7) Identifies the primary objectives of the SPI's
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monitoring activities.
8) Requires the SPI to periodically sponsor or conduct
workshops and seminars for personnel assigned to and
responsible for the evaluation of MEPs.
9) Requires the SPI to submit to the State Board of
Education (SBE), the Legislature, and the Governor, a
triennial performance report of the MEP.
10) Requires the SPI to develop a process to ensure that all
migratory pupils enrolled in juvenile court schools and
other alternative education placements, are properly
identified and are being provided the migrant education
services and programs to which they are entitled.
11) Requires each MEP to provide an individual learning plan
to each migratory pupil when that pupil experiences a
change in school placement or educational program.
12) Requires a regional service center, when applying to the
SPI to become an approved service region, to include in its
application a written evaluation plan that describes how
the center will measure pupil progress and the overall
success of its program.
13) Establishes the Statewide Migrant Education Directors
Council (council) with the requirement that this council
advise the CDE on all matters relating to the MEP.
14) Requires all local educational agencies (LEAs) and
regional service centers applying to the SPI for MEP
funding, to include in its application an evaluation of its
overall program effectiveness that includes specified
information.
15) Increase the minimum number of times the SPAC must meet
from six times per calendar year to nine.
16) Requires all parent advisory councils, as a part of
their annual reports, to include a review of the aggregate
data relating to migratory pupils collected by the district
and regional parent advisory councils.
17) Requires the SPI, each LEA, and each regional service
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center to provide specified documents in a language
understandable to each member of the local and state parent
advisory councils.
18) Eliminates the following requirements from a Title I MEP
summer school program for migrant students:
a) Established by the prior written approval
of the SPI based on the program's application;
b) Contains coursework which is of the same
level of difficulty in each subject that is provided
to pupils enrolled in regular classes of
instruction;
c) Taught by staff with cultural training or
background in understanding the special needs of
migrant children;
d) Supplements existing summer school
programs of the school district;
e) Requirement that LEAs and community
colleges make suitable facilities available for this
purpose;
f) Ability of the SPI to reduce an LEA's
funding if an MEP's request for facilities was
unjustly denied.
1) Renames "migrant pupils" as "migratory pupils." It is
unclear whether this is a substantive change.
2) Makes technical non-substantive changes to this chapter.
EXISTING LAW
1)Requires the SPAC to participate in the planning, operation,
and evaluation of the state MEP and provides that the
membership of the SPAC shall be comprised of individuals who
are knowledgeable of the needs of migrant children and are
nominated and elected by the parents of migrant children
enrolled in the operating agencies.
2)Requires at least two-thirds of the members of the SPAC to be
parents of migrant children and requires the SPAC to meet a
minimum of six times a calendar year to provide input to the
SPI on issues relating to the operation of the MEP.
3)Provides that each operating agency that receives MEP funds or
services shall establish a parent advisory council to actively
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solicit parent involvement in the planning, operation, and
evaluation of its programs.
4)Requires the SPI to sponsor an annual SPAC conference and
requires the SPAC, within 120 days from the conclusion of the
conference, to prepare and submit a report to the Legislature,
the SBE, the SPI, and the Governor that includes an evaluation
of the MEP, a review of annual needs, a year-end assessment,
and policy recommendations.
Existing Federal Law :
1)Authorizes the allocation of grants to state educational
agencies to establish or improve, directly or through local
operating agencies, programs and educational opportunities for
migratory children to help them succeed in the regular school
program, meet the state academic content standards that all
children are expected to meet, and graduate from high school.
2)Requires each state that receives MEP funding to ensure that
the state and its local operating agencies identify and
address the special educational needs of migratory children in
accordance with a comprehensive statewide plan, as specified.
3)Requires each state that receives funding to give priority for
services to migratory children who are failing, or who are at
most at risk of failing, and whose education has been
interrupted during the regular school year. Continued
services are allowed for:
a) A child who ceases to be a migratory child during a
school term is eligible for services until the end of such
term;
b) A child who is no longer a migratory child may continue
to receive services for one additional year, but only if
comparable services are not available through other
programs; and,
c) Students who were eligible for services in secondary
school may continue to be served through credit accrual
programs until graduation.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
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COMMENTS : The MEP is a federally funded program, authorized
under Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and
reauthorized by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA). The MEP is designed to provide supplemental education
services to migrant children to help reduce the educational
disruption and other challenges that result from repeated moves.
Children can receive migrant program services if they, or their
parents or guardians are migrant workers in the agriculture or
fishing industries and their families have moved in the last
three years for the purpose of finding temporary or seasonal
employment. According to the CDE, the California MEP is the
largest in the nation and one out of every three migrant
students in the United States (U.S.) lives in California.
Currently, there are over 176,000 migrant students in California
that are eligible for services in 565 school districts
throughout the state. The CDE receives over $130 million each
year to carry out the MEP.
As a part of its duties as the State Educational Agency under
the MEP, the SBE must adopt a State Service Delivery Plan for
Migrant Education that serves as the guidance document for
program planning and development, monitoring and evaluation of
the MEP. It shares the goals of the CDE for all students in
the core content areas, and provides measurable outcomes that
will help target and prioritize resources. This plan also
outlines strategies to address the needs of migrant students
that often create obstacles to academic achievement.
The MEP is administered by the CDE via regional centers. In
1981, AB 1382 (Vasconcellos) established the regional centers
as the primary method for the delivery of migrant educational
services.
Background
This bill is in response to a recent audit conducted by the
Bureau of State Audits and published in a report dated February
2013, titled California Department of Education: Despite Some
Improvements, Oversight of the Migrant Education Program Remains
Inadequate (audit). The audit found that the CDE's evaluation
and oversight of the MEP was significantly deficient and
identified the need for additional oversight of expenditures and
the need for comprehensive data regarding student achievement as
measures of success for these MEPs. Generally, the audit made
the following recommendations to remedy the deficiencies it
identified:
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1) The CDE should, in an effort to better address
inaccurate and unallowable administrative costs, do all of
the following:
a) Review the regional services centers' current
use of accounting codes to identify the areas in which
regions differ in accounting for similar migrant
program costs;
b) Provide regions with more specific criteria
about how to charge these expenses and include these
criteria in the Migrant Program Fiscal Handbook the
CDE provides to the regional service centers; and
c) Revise its list of accounting codes that it
considers administrative in light of its review of
regional coding.
1) To determine if the migrant program is effective, the CDE
should finalize its current evaluation of the program and
begin developing the capacity to annually produce a more
robust evaluation of the program.
2) To address a lack of detailed migrant program service
and outcome data, the CDE should either expand the
capabilities of its existing statewide databases or
implement additional systems that would allow regions to
capture more detailed data about migrant students.
While a catalyst for this bill, the codification of the audit is
unnecessary. Therefore, the committee recommends deleting the
statutory reference to the audit.
In response to this audit as well as findings made by the U.S.
Department of Education's Office of Migrant Education (OME) in
2011, the CDE has undertaken efforts to address these
deficiencies as identified and has implemented much of the
suggested remediation.
1) In response to the audit recommendation that calls for
the CDE to ensure that it minimizes the potential for
disagreement over allowable program costs, by better
defining the criteria by which it will consider migrant
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program costs allowable and include those criteria in the
fiscal handbook it provides to the regions, the CDE has
taken the following actions:
a) currently identifying specific types of
expenditures for which it needs to better define
criteria for approval;
b) committed to update the Migrant Education
Fiscal Handbook;
c) is issuing policies on allowable expenditures
on a flow basis.
1) In response to the audit recommendation that the CDE
should use the detailed expenditure reports to select a
sample of expenditures, request supporting documentation
from the regions, and then review the expenditures to
determine if they meet applicable federal and state
criteria, the CDE has created a new District Service
Agreement and Regional Application that includes specific
guidance and direction. The revised applications require
more specific details from regions on their proposed
services as they are directly related specific budget line
items and provides clear breakdowns to more accurately
determine specific administrative costs (e.g.,
administrative salaries, support staff, materials), direct
services (e.g., instructional program, pre-school services)
and state required activities (e.g. Identification and
Recruitment). Additionally, the CDE has committed to
develop an expenditure review process in which regions will
be selected on a rotating basis to ensure applicable
federal and state criteria are being met, in addition to
the required Federal Program Monitoring process. CDE will
review 25 percent of the regions each fiscal year using the
revised expenditure reports.
With this in mind, the committee may wish to consider whether
this bill is premature in proposing a legislative solution to
what is largely an administrative problem.
The Need for Comprehensive Data
The audit concluded that while the CDE "currently has access to
some migrant student data, the depth and breadth of detail fall
short of the amount of information necessary for the statewide
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evaluation currently being prepared to meet the federal
guidance." Therefore, this bill recommends the data requirement
being substantially increased to better ascertain the
effectiveness of the MEP. The bill identifies specific data
points to be collected, ranging from the identification and
recruitment of migratory pupils to enrollment of migratory
pupils in postsecondary education and vocational programs.
Currently, in the absence of strong reporting requirements by
the CDE, regional service centers and parent advisory councils
have developed their own data collection systems. Such a
fragmented collection system has led to inaccurate data
collection at the state level and discrepancies among measures
between the districts and regional service centers. This bill
addresses these deficiencies and discrepancies by requiring the
collection of significant amounts of data. However, the data
collection requirements set forth in this bill are unclear as to
which of the entities must collect this data, suggest
duplicative data be collected and reported by multiple entities,
and is unclear to whom it must be reported. For example,
section 54442(i) requires the CDE to collect and report
specified data; section 54443.1(h) requires all MEPs to collect
the same data at both the individual and aggregate levels, and
requires these MEPs to present the data to parents, teacher, and
community representatives, but does not require the data be
reported to the CDE; and section 54444.15 requires any LEA or
regional center receiving MEP funds to use the data specified in
the previously mentioned sections as well as additional data
points to evaluate the program's effectiveness with no mention
of reporting these data to regional centers or the CDE.
Therefore, the committee recommends clarification throughout the
bill to ensure a single entity is charged with each data
collection requirement and the single entity to which it shall
be reported. Additionally, the committee recommends amending
the bill to ensure that all data collection protects the
personally identifiable pupil information and that all data
collection complies with state and federal pupil privacy laws.
The committee may also wish to consider whether the CDE has the
capability to collect the specified data and similarly, whether
the reporting entities can accurately provide such data. While
this bill identifies a number of interesting data points that
would undoubtedly shed tremendous light on the effectiveness of
California's MEPs, the overwhelming volume of data may be
counterproductive to the success of the programs if so many of
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its limited resources are spent on the collection and reporting
of difficult data points.
Increased Oversight and Monitoring by the SPI
In addition to increased data requirements, this bill increases
the oversight and monitoring duties of the SPI with regard to
MEPs. This bill requires the SPI to annually monitor each LEA
and regional service center that receives MEP funding for
compliance with all of the state and federal requirements
associated with migratory pupils. Such monitoring also requires
onsite monitoring at least once every three years. The audit
identifies a "gap" in CDE's oversight of the fiscal activities
of the regions due, in part, to a lack of visits to the program
sites, and suggests a detailed expenditure review of the regions
would close this gap. It is worth noting that neither audit,
neither the audit, nor the author contemplates the effect
increased guidance and clear processes for expenditures and
reviews, also required by this bill and already underway by the
CDE, may have towards this same end. Again, in light of these
efforts, the committee may wish to weigh the use of limited
resources on costly site visits against an evaluation that can
be done by using revised and more robust monitoring instruments.
Therefore, the committee recommends the requirement for onsite
visits be amended to include discretion on the part of the SPI
to establish the frequency and methodology for conducting these
visits.
Reporting Requirements
In addition to the requirement that the SPAC annually report on
the status of the MEP and the requirement that each LEA and
regional center, as a condition of funding, provide an annual
evaluation of its MEP, this bill requires the SPI to similarly
submit a triennial report on the MEP to the same entities. Such
a duplication of efforts is seen not only in formal reports as
required by statute, but in the State Master Plan adopted by the
SBE. In this plan, the CDE has committed to providing the OME
with the following data that measures school readiness: literacy
skills that are measured by performance on English-Language Arts
assessments, performance on mathematics assessments as an
indicator of readiness for higher education, the number of
migrant students who graduate from high school, measuring a
pupil's access to health services as an indicator of a pupil's
ability to connect with their school, the number of students who
drop out of school for the purpose of providing targeted
interventions to prevent drop outs or re-enroll migrant pupils
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in school, and finally, a measure of parent involvement in an
effort to positively impact pupil success. Again, because the
CDE, with the approval of the SBE, has already committed to
providing much of this data to the OME, the committee may wish
to consider eliminating duplicative reporting requirements in an
effort to more effectively use the limited funding that
accompanies this program. The more resources that are spent on
administrative tasks, the fewer funds will be available to
directly serve the needs of migratory pupils.
Establishment of a Statewide Migrant Education Directors Council
This bill allows the SPI to establish a Statewide Migrant
Education Directors Council (council) comprised of appointments
made by each county office of education and school district
responsible for administering the MEP. This bill specifies only
that the duty of this new council is to advise the CDE on all
matters relating to the MEP.
This section fails to provide sufficient clarity as to how this
new council will interact with the existing parent advisory
councils and how this council will function. Currently, the
bill only specifies that each county office of education and
school district shall appoint one representative but does not
discuss who will provide the support services to this council,
how often it shall meet, or the manner in which it shall provide
its advice to the CDE (e.g. an annual report, in consultation
with the CDE, etc...) Finally, there is no need for the
Legislature to permit the establishment and use of an advisory
council when the SPI has this authority under existing law.
Therefore, the committee recommends deleting the establishment
of the council.
Statewide Parent Advisory Council (SPAC)
Federal and state laws identify the SPAC as an advisory body in
the planning and operation of programs and projects at the state
and local levels. The audit addresses the failure of the SPAC to
complete its statutory obligations and identifies a lack of
coordinated communication between the CDE and the SPAC as one
factor that may have contributed to this failure. The audit
points to the failure of the SPAC, with the exception of a
published report in 2011, to produce an annual report since
1991. In response, this bill calls for the CDE to provide
support services and technical assistance to the SPAC and
requires the SPAC to meet nine times per year, rather than the
six times per year currently in statute. However, there is
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nothing in the audit or in past practices to suggest an
increased frequency in the meetings will resolve these
deficiencies. The committee may wish to consider that, according
to the CDE, the increased time between SPAC meetings has had the
beneficial consequences of allowing the CDE to better respond to
the various requests for information from the SPAC members and
has better positioned the SPAC to meaningfully dialogue with the
regions as to the content of those SPAC meetings. Therefore,
the committee recommends deleting the requirement that the SPAC
meet at least nine times per year and instead permit additional
meetings as mutually agreed upon the SPI and the SPAC's state
director. Further, the audit seems to suggest clarifications
that the responsibility to establish agendas and enforce the
obligation to evaluate California's MEP rests with the CDE
rather than the SPAC. Therefore, the committee may wish to
consider whether imposing vaguely defined services and
assistance is a solution for what may be an issue, as the audit
suggests, resistance of SPAC members to work collaboratively
with the CDE rather than a lack of support or assistance to the
SPAC. Instead, the committee recommends the SPAC meetings be
noticed and conducted in accordance with the Bagley-Keene Open
Meeting Act.
The committee recommends correcting a drafting error by
reinserting the deleting language of Section 12 (section
54444.3).
Previous Legislation
SB 331 (Romero), Chapter 274, Statutes of 2010 requires the SPI,
in collaboration with the SPAC, to develop and revise, as
necessary, the state services delivery plan and makes various
changes to the MEP.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Jill Rice / ED. / (916) 319-2087
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