BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 548
Page 1
CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 548 (Salas)
As Amended May 21, 2014
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |76-0 |(January 30, |SENATE: |35-0 |(July 3, 2014) |
| | |2014) | | | |
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Original Committee Reference: HIGHER ED.
SUMMARY : Extends the sunset on the California Community College
(CCC) districts' associate degree nursing (ADN) programs
admissions process until January 1, 2020; and, requires the CCC
Chancellor to submit a report on or before March 1, 2015, and
annually thereafter to the Governor and the Legislature that
examines and includes, but is not necessarily limited to,
specified information on nursing students admitted through the
multicriteria screening process.
The Senate amendments :
1)Add a sunset of January 1, 2020, to the ADN programs
admissions process.
2)Require the CCC Chancellor to submit a report on or before
March 1, 2015, and on or before each March 1 thereafter, to
the Governor and the Legislature that examines and includes,
but is not necessarily limited to, both of the following:
a) The participation, retention, and completion rates in
community college ADN programs of students admitted through
a multicriteria screening process, as specified,
disaggregated by the age, gender, ethnicity, and the
language spoken at the home of those students; and,
b) Information on the annual impact, if any, the
Seymour-Campbell Student Success Act had on the
matriculation services for students admitted through the
multicriteria screening process.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Allows CCC districts to use any diagnostic assessment tools
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that are commonly used in registered nursing programs and
approved by the CCC Chancellor and, if, after using an
approved diagnostic tool, the CCC registered nursing program
determines that the number of applicants to the program
exceeds its capacity, the program is authorized to use
additional multicriteria screening measures. Current law also
allows a CCC district to: a) exclude an applicant to a
registered nursing program if the applicant is not a resident
of that district or has not completed prerequisite courses in
that district; and, b) implement policies, procedures, and
systems, including, but not limited to, priority registration
systems, that have the effect of excluding an applicant or
student who is not a resident of that district from a
registered nursing program of that district (Education Code
(EC) Section 78261.3).
2)Requires CCC districts to adopt and implement merit-based
admissions policies for nursing programs if, for any academic
term, there are more applicants seeking enrollment in that
program than may reasonably be accommodated (EC Section
78261.5).
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs.
COMMENTS : Need for the bill. According to the author,
California continues to suffer from a serious nursing shortage.
The author states, "There are many individuals seeking admission
to our [CCC] nursing programs and yet, approximately 12,000
applicants are turned away every year due to a lack of space."
CCC ADN program admissions. In the early 1990s, a controversy
arose over merit-based or competitive admissions to ADN
programs. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
(MALDEF) threatened a lawsuit because students of color were
being disproportionately denied admission to impacted programs.
In the negotiations that ensued, MALDEF agreed not to bring
suit, and the CCC Board of Governors (BOG) agreed to develop
program admissions criteria that would be validated as relevant
to future performance. BOG regulations in the mid-1990s
prohibited ADN programs from using evaluative mechanisms -
usually grade point average (GPA) - unless the district could
validate its practices in a complex research initiative, a
requirement that proved too difficult for colleges without
sufficient research staff. CCC districts were told to undertake
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the research or rely on lottery or other non-evaluative
mechanisms. Lotteries and wait lists were instituted;
completion rates fell.
The CCC Chancellor's Office (CCCCO) then began a project (as a
district grant) to research a full range of variables, seeking
those that would be statistically correlated with nursing
program student success in the hopes of finding six colleges for
which validation could be achieved. In 2002, the CCCCO
announced results, finding that four factors best predict
student success in completing nursing programs: overall college
GPA, English GPA, Core Biology GPA (Anatomy, Physiology,
Microbiology), and Core Biology course repetitions. (Students
with fewer repetitions have a higher probability of success.)
CCC districts were then advised in an October 2002 memo that
they could begin using these criteria, but in order to do so,
local research must first be performed, "If the decision is made
to adopt the measures as a prerequisite, and to set cut scores
that will result in defined program completion rates, then
districts must analyze and monitor the possibility of
disproportionate impact on particular groups of students defined
in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, age, or disability."
The districts were also warned, "It is appropriate to consider
potential risks of implementing this research. The adoption of
the prerequisite measures and the implementation of the
composite formula could result in rationing access. Unless the
implementation of these measures is done carefully according to
the guidelines discussed later in this memo, it could conflict
with the requirement for open access."
At that time, the CCCCO acknowledged the severity of the nursing
shortage and asserted to its ADN program directors, "The biggest
part of the solution is in increasing the number of spaces; the
lesser part of the solution is in improving success rates."
AB 1559 (Berryhill). Assembly Member Berryhill introduced AB
1559 (Chapter 712, Statutes of 2007), 15 years after the
controversy first erupted. AB 1559 sought to address the fact
that some CCC districts had been left with "non-evaluative"
mechanisms, that is, a lottery or a waiting list because they
simply had not found the resources to comply with the
resource-intensive rules promulgated by the CCCCO (as described
above).
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The provisions implemented by AB 1559 contain a sunset clause
that EC Section 78261.5 (as described above in the current law
section of this analysis) shall remain in effect only until
January 1, 2016, and as of that date will be repealed, unless a
later enacted statute, that is enacted before January 1, 2016,
deletes or extends that date.
Nursing shortage. The United States Department of Health and
Human Services has projected that by 2015, 400,000 new nurses
will be needed just to fill the vacancies left by retirees.
Additionally, by 2020, the United States Bureau of Labor
Statistics predicts that it will be short between 800,000 and
one million new and replacement nurses, including being short
close to 117,000 in California alone.
According to a recent study by the University of California, San
Francisco, the supply and demand for nurses in California varies
by region. The report found that the Inland Empire region is
experiencing the hardest difficulties in their ability to hire
trained nurses. However, the San Francisco Bay region is
expected to have the largest regional decrease in overall hiring
of trained nurses. Additionally, the report found that many new
nurses in California are finding it more and more challenging to
find hospital nursing jobs.
Based on a 2011 presentation to the Legislature by the
Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO), it was recommended that the
Legislature should implement additional measures to reduce CCC
attrition rates. During this same presentation, the LAO also
opined that despite recent efforts to expand access to nursing
programs, the number of applicants to CCC nursing programs far
exceeds available slots. To note, the LAO found that the CCC is
able to accommodate less than 30% of their applications.
Prior and related legislation:
1)AB 1559 (Berryhill), see above for description.
2)SB 1309 (Scott), Chapter 837, Statutes of 2006, enacted a wide
range of responses to the nursing shortage, including
authorizing grants to CCC districts to expand enrollment,
provide diagnostic assessments, developing and offering
pre-entry coursework to prospective nursing students, and
requiring colleges with attrition rates above 15% to use
nationally validated assessment tools that determine the
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likelihood of success in order to qualify for funds.
3)AB 2177 (Jackson) of 2004, which required CCC ADN programs to
implement merit-based admissions and incorporated the four
validated factors in the CCCCO study, stalled in the Assembly.
Analysis Prepared by : Jeanice Warden / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960
FN: 0004080