BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 210
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Date of Hearing: August 19, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Jimmy Gomez, Chair
SB 210
(Galgiani) - As Amended July 16, 2015
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Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program: YesReimbursable:
Yes
SUMMARY:
This bill requires the California Department of Education (CDE)
to select benchmarks for tracking the progress of deaf and hard
of hearing students in language and literacy development,
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establishes an advisory committee to recommend benchmarks, and
requires CDE to annually produce a report on language and
literacy development for deaf and hard of hearing students as
specified, starting July 31, 2017. Specifically, this bill:
1)Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) Deaf and
Hard of Hearing unit, and the California School for the Deaf,
to jointly select language developmental milestones from
existing standardized norms, pursuant to an advisory committee
process, for the purposes of developing a parent resource to
monitor and track deaf and hard-of-hearing children's
expressive and receptive language acquisition and
developmental stages toward English literacy.
2)Requires CDE to develop a version of an existing tool for
educators that can be used to assess the language and literacy
development of deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Requires
this educator tool to be developed in a standardized format
that shows stages of language development for use by educators
to track the development of deaf and hard-of-hearing
children's expressive and receptive language acquisition and
developmental stages toward English literacy. Further requires
the instrument to measure the development of children with
disabilities from birth to five year of age, inclusive and
present language and literacy development in terms of
age-referenced readiness zones.
3)Authorizes the educator tool, which may reflect advisory
committee recommendations, to be used in addition to the
assessment required by federal law, by the child's
individualized family service plan (IFSP) or Individualized
Education Program (IEP) team to progress and to establish or
modify IFSP or IEP plans. Further requires the IFSP or IEP
teams, if the child does not demonstrate progress as measured
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by these assessments, to explain in detail the reasons why the
child is not meeting the language developmental milestones or
progressing towards them and recommend specific strategies,
services, and programs that shall be provided to assist the
child's success toward English literacy.
4)Requires CDE to disseminate the parent resource to parents and
guardians of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, and, pursuant
to federal law, disseminate the educator tool to local
educational agencies for use in the development and
modification of IFSP and IEP plans. Further, requires CDE to
provide materials and training on use of the educator tool, to
assist deaf and hard-of-hearing children in becoming
linguistically ready for kindergarten using both or one of the
languages of ASL and English.
5)Requires the CDE, on or before March 1, 2016, to provide the
advisory committee with a list of existing language
developmental milestones from existing standardized norms,
along with any relevant information held by the department
regarding those language developmental milestones for possible
inclusion in the parent resource.
6)Sets forth the process and requirements for establishing the
ad hoc advisory committee. Requires the advisory committee to
recommend language developmental milestones on or before June
1, 2016. Requires CDE, on or before June 30, 2016, to inform
the advisory committee of which language developmental
milestones were selected.
7)Requires the CDE, on or before July 31, 2017, and on or before
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each July 31 thereafter, to annually produce a report that is
specific to language and literacy development of deaf and
hard-of-hearing children from birth to five years of age. The
department is required to make this report available on its
Internet Web site.
8)Requires the CDE to develop a specific action plan and
regulations to fully implement the bill on or before January
1, 2018.
9)Specifies that implementation of this bill is subject to an
appropriation in the annual Budget Act or another statute.
FISCAL EFFECT:
2 General Fund administrative costs to the California Department
of Education (CDE), in the range of $250,000 to tens of
millions of dollars. Costs to the CDE are dependent upon the
approach to implementation and are contingent upon an
appropriation for this purpose in the annual Budget Act or
another statute.
Costs to staff the stakeholder group, develop the parent
resource and complete reporting requirements are in the range
of $250,000. Costs increase dramatically depending upon CDE
implementation of the educator tool requirement. The bill
states CDE shall "develop a version of an existing tool for
educators" to use to access language and literacy of deaf and
hard-of-hearing children. If CDE is able use an existing
assessment instrument with little modification, costs will be
minimal and subsumed in the $250,000 range. However, if CDE
must create a new tool or if the department is prohibited from
using existing models due to copy write issues for example,
costs to develop this new assessment could be in the millions
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of dollars. The Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP)
that is currently used to assess children, for example, cost
$20 million to develop.
2 Unknown Proposition 98/GF cost pressure to local education
agencies, potentially in the hundreds of thousands, for
individualized family service plan (IFSP) or Individualized
Education Program (IEP) teams to recommend strategies,
services and programs to assist the child towards English
literacy. This requirement is contingent upon an
appropriation in the annual budget act or another statute.
This requirement may constitute a state reimbursable mandate
to the extent these requirements are found to be in excess of
federal law.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose. According the CDE, in California there are
approximately 17,000 students, ages birth to 22, who are deaf
or hard of hearing. According to the author, current
statistics show that many children who are deaf and hard of
hearing arrive at Kindergarten with severe language delays and
in many cases, language deprivation. These children begin
Kindergarten without the necessary language skills to acquire
the knowledge and academic competences, which will allow them
to be successful in school and life. Currently, there are no
requirements to assess the language development of children
birth to five who are deaf and hard of hearing, or to monitor
their progress, in the languages most commonly used by
individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing in the United
States: American Sign Language and English. Recognizing the
importance of early intervention, as well as the vital role of
parents, this bill is intended to provide parents, educators,
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and policy makers tools for addressing language deprivation
among deaf and hard of hearing children during the children's
early years.
Currently, data collected on the progress of students with
disabilities in English language arts in grades 3 - 8 and 11
is not disaggregated by disability. The state also collects
data on language development of children with disabilities
ages 0-5 at state funded child care/development and preschool
programs but it is also not disaggregated by disability. This
bill addresses this issue by adding reporting requirements,
disaggregated by disability, using existing data reported for
purposes of federal law.
2)Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP). To meet federal
requirements to monitor the educational and developmental
progress of children with disabilities, the CDE has developed
the Desired Results Developmental Profile instrument (DRDP).
The DRDP is an assessment instrument based on a developmental
continuum from early infancy to kindergarten entry. The DRDP
is administered twice every year to children in state funded
child care/development and preschool programs, and provides an
individual profile of a child's developmental and school
readiness skills. Children's development is presented along
a continuum using levels labeled responding, exploring,
building, and integrating.
The DRDP is an evidence-based, valid and reliable assessment.
DRDP statewide data can be disaggregated by disability and, as
required by this bill, reports can be created for deaf and
hard of hearing students' performance relative to their
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non-deaf and hard of hearing peers.
Supporters of the bill have found the DRDP to be cumbersome
and inaccessible. Supporters envision development of an
educator tool similar to Hawaii's HELP chart because,
according to supporters, it is in alignment with federal law,
is user friendly in terms of assessing deaf and hard of
hearing children ages 0-5 and shows ages and stages of
language development expanded. Ultimately, the advisory
committee can assist in determining the approach for
development of the tool.
3)Timing issues. This bill specifies that implementation is
subject to an appropriation in the annual Budget Act or
another statute. The 2015-16 Budget Act does not provide an
appropriation for this purpose and no other statute contains
an appropriation at this time. The committee may wish to
consider whether the deadlines in the bill are appropriate
given that no funding for implementation has been identified.
The bill requires the CDE to develop an action plan and
regulations to implement the bill by January 1, 2018, however,
the bill requires the ad hoc advisory committee to be
established by 2016. Further, it is not clear if regulations
are necessary. Staff recommends striking this requirement or
modifying the dates to align with the other requirements of
this bill.
Analysis Prepared by:Misty Feusahrens / APPR. / (916)
319-2081
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