BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 1145 (Hueso) - Language arts: reading: diagnostic tools and
plans
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|Version: April 5, 2016 |Policy Vote: ED. 5 - 1 |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: Yes |
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|Hearing Date: April 25, 2016 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill
Summary: This bill requires public schools with less than 50
percent of 4th grade students demonstrating proficiency on
English language arts standards to ensure that each student's
reading proficiency is measured throughout the school year using
a formative reading diagnostic tool. This bill also requires a
reading plan, as specified, to be created for a student in
grades 1-3 who is not at the appropriate developmental reading
level for his or her grade.
Fiscal
Impact:
Mandate costs: Unknown costs, but the requirement to measure
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certain students' reading proficiency; to create, update, and
implement a reading plan for specified students; and to
furnish the plan to their parents could drive reimbursable
state mandate costs in the hundreds of millions. See staff
comments. (Proposition 98)
Administrative costs: Potential costs in the high hundreds of
thousands. The California Department of Education (CDE) cites
the need for additional staff related to developing a Request
for Information to gather information about currently
available diagnostic tests and formative tools with estimated
costs of $293,000 initially and a like amount if the list is
to be updated in the future. Additional costs to implement a
special study in which educators would review and evaluate
diagnostic assessment and tools submitted would drive costs of
$686,000, according to the CDE. (General Fund)
Background: Existing law:
1) Establishes the State's assessment system as the
California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress
and includes, beginning with the 2013-14 school year, a
summative assessment in English language arts for grades
3-8 and 11 that measures content standards adopted by the
State Board of Education (SBE). (Education Code § 60640)
2) Requires, by November 1, 2014, the CDE to identify and
make available to school districts information regarding
existing assessments in language arts and mathematics that
are aligned to the common core academic standards and
appropriate for students in grade 2 for diagnostic use by
classroom teachers. Existing law requires the CDE to
ensure that the selected diagnostic assessments are valid
for purposes of identifying particular knowledge or skills
a student has or has not acquired in order to inform
instruction and make educational decisions. (EC § 60644)
3) Requires the governing board of each school district to
adopt a local control and accountability plan (LCAP) using
a template adopted by the SBE. Existing law requires each
LCAP to include, for the school district and each school
within the school district, a description of goals to be
achieved for students in each of the state priorities and a
description of the actions the school district will take to
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achieve those goals. (EC § 52060)
The Budget Act of 2013 established a new formula which currently
allocates 90 percent of K-12 education funding to local
educational agencies. The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF)
consolidated most of the state's numerous separate funding
streams for prescribed purposes and removed most of the former
funding restrictions. The LCFF instead allocates funding
according to base rates tied to four grade spans and additional
funding based on the number and concentration of English
learners, low income students, and foster youth.
Proposed Law:
This bill requires, by the 2018-19 school year, a public
school that enrolls students in grades 1-4, in which less than
50 percent of 4th grade students demonstrate proficiency on
English language arts standards on the statewide assessment
administered in the prior year, must ensure that each student's
reading proficiency is measured throughout the school year using
at least one of the formative reading diagnostic tools
identified by the State Board of Education (Board) to determine
if a student has an appropriate developmental reading level for
the student's grade level.
This bill requires the Board to identify a list, and post it on
the CDE's website, of formative reading diagnostic tools that
can be used by the schools, as referenced above, to assess a
student's developmental level of reading proficiency in grades
1-3 and define what it means for a student to have an
appropriate "developmental reading level," such that the student
is on track to reading proficiency by the end of grade 3, as
determined by the formative reading diagnostic tools.
This bill also requires a reading plan to be created for a
student in grades 1-3 who is not at the appropriate
developmental reading level for the student's grade level as
defined by the Board. The plan must include specified
components, among which are the goals and benchmarks for the
student's growth in attaining reading proficiency by the end of
3rd grade and the type of additional instructional services and
interventions the student will receive in reading. The plan
must be provided to the student's parent along with certain
specific statements pertaining to the importance of reading
competency among children, the risks to students not achieving
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reading competency by 4th grade, and the role of the parent with
regard to the child achieving reading competency as well as
implementing a child's reading plan.
Staff
Comments: This bill creates several state-level mandates for
schools. A school district could submit a test claim to the
Commission on State Mandates for the requirements included in
this bill to obtain a decision on whether these costs are
required to be reimbursed by the state. The activities included
in this bill are likely to be determined a reimbursable state
mandate even if schools are already implementing the
requirements of this bill. Those schools that may be doing
similar work would have to make refinements in their programs to
come into full compliance with this bill if it were to be
enacted, and those costs, as well as ongoing costs would be
reimbursable.
First, it requires certain schools to ensure that each student's
reading proficiency is measured using at least one of the
formative reading diagnostic tools identified by the Board to
determine if the student is at an appropriate reading level.
The schools that are subject to this requirement are those that
enroll students in grades 1 through 4, at which less than 50
percent of 4th grade students demonstrate proficiency on English
language arts standards on the statewide assessment. Though the
state does not use "proficiency" to indicate performance on
statewide assessments, this term could be interpreted to mean a
student meeting or exceeding the content standard.
According to results of the 2015 Smarter Balanced English
language arts assessment, 4,058 out of 6,035, or 67.2 percent of
schools would be affected by this requirement. Assuming a like
percentage of students in grades 1 through 3 whose reading
proficiency would have to be measured, this could affect about
954,000 students, regardless of their reading capabilities.
This bill also requires that each student's reading proficiency
is measured throughout the school year. Assuming affected
schools purchase a diagnostic assessment tool for 67.2 percent
of teachers in grades 1 through 3 (about 61,000) and administer
it twice per year for one hour, statewide costs could be in the
low tens of millions. Actual costs would be dependent upon the
cost of the diagnostic assessment tool used by the school, the
time it takes to administer the assessments, and the time it
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takes and frequency in which the assessments are administered.
Second, this bill requires a reading plan to be created for a
student in grades 1 through 3 who is not at the appropriate
developmental reading level, as defined by the Board. Assuming
the definition of this term yields a similar percentage of
students in grade 3 that did not meet the standard on the 2015
Smarter Balanced English language arts assessment (41 percent),
582,000 students would be required to have a reading plan. A
school could claim costs related to staff time to develop the
plan, update the plan as necessary, review the plan at least
annually by the school, and implement the "additional
instructional services and interventions the student will
receive in reading." Statewide costs for these activities could
be in the mid hundreds of millions.
The author's office indicates that the intent for the plan
requirement is to only apply to students not at the appropriate
reading level for the subset of schools described above. In
this case, statewide costs for these activities would be in the
low hundreds of millions, affecting about 130,000 students.
Actual costs would depend on a number of factors, including the
definition developed by the Board, the time spent on developing
and implementing each plan, and the types of services provided
to each student. For example, requiring a parent to read at
home with their child would not be a reimbursable cost to the
school district but if the plan required additional tutoring
time by a teacher or other school employee, this cost could be
reimbursable. This estimate assumes services of two hours per
month per student with a reading specialist. The bill requires
a student's reading plan to continue to be implemented until the
student demonstrates reading proficiency, so these costs would
be ongoing assuming the services required did not change.
The final mandated activity is related to the requirement that
parents are to be provided a copy of their child's reading plan
along with specified statements. This activity could also be
reimbursable and could drive statewide costs in the tens of
thousands.
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Finally, this bill provides legislative intent to increase the
LCFF base rate for students in kindergarten and grades 1 through
3 only at those schools in which 50 percent or more of students
in grade 4 score below reading proficiency on a statewide
assessment. A separate provision provides legislative intent to
increase the LCFF base rate for grades 1 through 3 to fund the
requirements of this bill. To the extent the state provides
funding for these activities, this will likely offset some or
all of the mandated activity costs, as determined by the
Commission on State Mandates. It is likely that if funding is
provided through LCFF base rates, this will create an
administrative burden to adjust the rates to certain school
districts to reflect student reading proficiency.
Recommended
Amendments: Clarify that of the students measured for reading
proficiency in certain schools (those with less than 50 percent
of 4th grade students demonstrating proficiency on the English
language arts standards statewide assessment), only those who
are not at the appropriate reading level would be required to
have a plan created. This would reflect the intent of bill
according to the author's office.
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