BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 1156
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SENATE THIRD READING
SB
1156 (Huff)
As Amended June 30, 2016
Majority vote
SENATE VOTE: 39-0
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|Committee |Votes|Ayes |Noes |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------|
|Education |7-0 |O'Donnell, Olsen, | |
| | |Kim, McCarty, | |
| | |Santiago, Thurmond, | |
| | |Weber | |
| | | | |
|----------------+-----+----------------------+--------------------|
|Appropriations |20-0 |Gonzalez, Bigelow, | |
| | |Bloom, Bonilla, | |
| | |Bonta, Calderon, | |
| | |Chang, Daly, Eggman, | |
| | |Gallagher, Eduardo | |
| | |Garcia, Holden, | |
| | |Jones, Obernolte, | |
| | |Quirk, Santiago, | |
| | |Wagner, Weber, Wood, | |
| | |McCarty | |
| | | | |
SB 1156
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| | | | |
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SUMMARY: Makes changes to the Open Enrollment Act by replacing
the Academic Performance Index with new eligibility criteria for
identifying low-achieving schools. Specifically, this bill:
1)Deletes the existing definition of "low-achieving school" and
instead establishes the definition of low-achieving school to
mean either of the following, effective July 1, 2018, for
purposes of the Open Enrollment Act:
a) A school that is identified by the Superintendent of
Public Instruction (SPI) or the State Board of Education
for comprehensive support and improvement pursuant to the
accountability system requirements of the federal
Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended
by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (Public Law
114-95), including all of the following:
i) A school identified as being in the lowest
performing 5% of all Title I schools.
ii) A high school that fails to graduate one-third or
more of its pupils.
iii) A school subject to a mandatory targeted support and
improvement plan.
b) A school receiving mandatory assistance from the
California Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE),
as directed by the SPI.
2)Provides that a low-achieving school shall not include court,
community or community day schools.
3)Specifies that the list of low achieving schools not exceed
1,000 schools; and, specifies that no more than 10% of schools
in a local education agency shall be identified on the list of
low achieving schools.
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4)Provides that a school district of enrollment shall ensure
that pupils enrolled are enrolled in a school that is not
identified as being a low-achieving school and are selected
through a random, unbiased process that prohibits an
evaluation of whether or not the pupil should be enrolled
based on his or her individual academic or athletic
performance, or any of the other characteristics, except that
pupils applying for a transfer shall be assigned priority for
approval, as follows:
a) First priority for the siblings of children who already
attend the desired school.
b) Second priority for unduplicated pupils, as specified,
transferring from a low-achieving school.
c) If the number of pupils who request a particular school
exceeds the number of spaces available at that school, a
lottery shall be conducted in the group priority order to
select pupils at random until all of the available spaces
are filled.
5)Requires communications to parents by school districts of
enrollment to be factually accurate and not target individual
parents or residential neighborhoods on the basis of a child's
actual or perceived academic or athletic performance or any
other personal characteristic; and requires all communications
from the school district of enrollment regarding the transfer
opportunities pursuant to this article shall be available in
all languages required for the school district of residence.
6)Specifies that a school district of enrollment shall not
prohibit a transfer of a pupil based upon a determination by
the governing board of that school district that the
additional cost of educating the pupil would exceed the amount
of additional state aid received as a result of the transfer.
A school district of enrollment shall not reject the transfer
of a special needs pupil, including an individual with
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exceptional needs, as defined, or an English learner.
7)On July 1, 2018, authorizes a school district of residence,
upon notification of the pupil's acceptance to the school
district of enrollment, to prohibit the transfer of a pupil or
limit the number of pupils so transferred if the governing
board of the school district of residence determines that the
transfer would negatively impact any of the following:
a) The court-ordered desegregation plan of the school
district of residence.
b) The voluntary desegregation plan of the school district
of residence, consistent with the provisions of Proposition
209, an initiative measure adopted by the voters at the
November 5, 1996, General Election.
c) The racial and ethnic balance of the school district of
residence, consistent with the provisions of Proposition
209, an initiative measure adopted by the voters at the
November 5, 1996, General Election.
8)Requires each school district of enrollment to keep an
accounting of all requests made for alternative attendance and
records of all disposition of those requests; requires the
data to be reported to the school board, the school boards of
adjacent school districts, the county board of education and
the Superintendent of Public Instruction; and, requires this
data to be reported annually to the Legislature and Governor,
as specified.
9)Requires the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) to complete an
evaluation of the open enrollment program, as specified, and
to make recommendations on any additional or revised
eligibility criteria based on the state's new accountability
system adopted for purposes of complying with federal law,
including the use of local control funding formula
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unduplicated subgroup criteria. Provides that the LAO may
also include recommendations on whether other open enrollment
program provisions should be altered, expanded, or deleted.
Requires the final evaluation report to be submitted to the
Legislature, Governor, and State Board of Education on or
before December 1, 2021, and for the SPI to provide the data
necessary to complete the report to the LAO by December 1,
2020, or on an otherwise agreed upon date between the SPI and
the LAO.
10)Extends the sunset date to July 1, 2022 and repeal date to
January 1, 2023.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Establishes the Open Enrollment Act as follows:
a) Allows the parent of a pupil attending a school
identified by the SPI as "low-achieving" to submit an
application for the pupil to attend another school within
the same district or transfer to another school district
(school district of enrollment). A list of 1,000
"low-achieving schools" ranked by increasing Academic
Performance Index (API) is identified by the SPI each year.
b) Provides that a school district of enrollment may adopt
specific written standards for acceptance and rejection of
transfer applications, including consideration of the
capacity of a program, class, grade level, or school
building, or adverse fiscal impact.
c) Prohibits a school district of enrollment from
considering a pupil's previous academic achievement,
physical condition, and proficiency in the English
language, family income or any of the individual
characteristics set forth in Education Code Section 200,
and shall ensure that pupils are enrolled in a school with
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a higher API than the school in which the pupil was
previously enrolled.
d) Requires that pupils are selected through a random,
unbiased process, except that pupils applying for transfer
are assigned specific priorities, with the first priority
given to siblings of children who already attend the
desired school and second priority for pupils transferring
from a program improvement school ranked in decile 1 on the
API. (Education Code (EC) 48350, et seq.)
2)Establishes the CCEE for the purpose of advising and assisting
school districts, county superintendent of schools, and
charter schools in achieving the goals set forth in a local
control and accountability plan (LCAP). (EC 52074)
3)Authorizes the SPI to direct the CCEE to advise and assist a
school district, county superintendent of schools, or charter
school in any of the following circumstances:
a) If the governing board of a school district, county
board of education, or governing body or a charter school
requests the advice and assistance of the CCEE.
b) If the county superintendent of schools determines,
following the provision of technical assistance, that the
advice and assistance of the CCEE is necessary to help the
district or charter school accomplish the goals described
in the LCAP.
c) If the SPI determines that the advice and assistance of
the CCEE is necessary to help the school district, county
superintendent of schools, or charter school accomplish the
goals set forth in the LCAP. (EC 52074)
FISCAL EFFECT: According to the Assembly Appropriations
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Committee, administrative costs to the California Department of
Education (CDE) of approximately $230,000, starting July 1,
2018, to maintain a list of open enrollment schools, develop a
template to assist districts with the collection and maintenance
of data on transfers, and to comply with reporting requirements
to the Legislature, Governor and LAO. Unknown, potentially
reimbursable, state mandated costs for school districts of
enrollment to track and report data on transfer requests and
report information to their school board, county office of
education and the SPI. Unknown costs to the LAO, likely in the
tens of thousands, however, for existing staff to produce an
evaluation and recommendation of the Open Enrollment program.
COMMENTS: The Open Enrollment Act was created during a time
when the State was competing for Federal funding called Race to
the Top. Despite making several changes to state law,
California was not awarded Race to the Top funding. The
statutory changes made at the time have continued despite the
State's lack of participation in the Race to the Top program.
The Open Enrollment program requires the SPI to create a list of
the 1,000 lowest achieving schools based on the API and requires
that parents at those schools be notified that their child
attends a school on this list. Students that attend the 1,000
lowest achieving schools are then authorized to transfer to
higher achieving schools. The State has replaced the API with a
new assessment system and the API is now outdated. The Open
Enrollment program has largely been duplicative of federal law
which, until the recent reauthorization of the Every Student
Succeeds Act (ESSA), allowed students who attend schools in
program improvement to transfer to higher achieving schools.
Federal law no longer specifies that students in low achieving
schools must be allowed to transfer, therefore this program is
no longer a requirement of federal law.
This bill changes the calculation of how the schools are
identified to participate in the Open Enrollment program.
Specifically, this bill provides that a low-achieving school is
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a school that is identified in the lowest 5% of Title 1 schools,
has high dropout rates, is identified by the Superintendent of
Public Instruction or the State Board of Education for
comprehensive support and improvement, as specified, or a school
that is receiving mandatory assistance by the California
Collaborative for Educational Excellence (CCEE).
According to the author, "the Academic Performance Index (API),
along with a specified sometimes confusing legislatively
mandated calculation has been the previous method for
identifying the 1,000 low achieving schools whose enrollment
assignment would trigger a student's eligibility for Open
Enrollment. The last published list of 1,000 is out dated with
no new APIs being produced in the last two years. And, some
schools objected to the current formula, which resulted in some
of the lowest performing schools in California not being on the
list at all. With the state adoption of a new assessment system
called the California Assessment of Student Performance and
Progress (CAASPP), and the temporary and possibly permanent
hiatus on the publication of a new API, there is an interest in
using updated definitions and information more accurately
reflecting the concept of persistently low school performance.
The API is no longer being updated and the last published list
is based on the old STAR Program instead of the CAASPP scores.
SB 1156 updates the eligibility for additional public school
options for students enrolled in persistently low performing
schools by maintaining the Open Enrollment Act, and referencing
definitions of persistently low performance in the newly enacted
federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and state Local
Control Funding Formula statutes as the criteria for defining
low performing schools. The Open Enrollment Act provides
students who are otherwise zip-code assigned to the lowest
performing schools a choice to attend a higher performing public
school even if the neighborhood school is persistently low
performing. Accordingly, SB 1156 helps the state protect
students' constitutional guarantee to equitable opportunity for
a quality public education in California."
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Racial Segregation in Schools. According to an April 2016,
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled, Better
Use of Information Could Help Agencies Identify Disparities and
Address Racial Discrimination, "The percentage of K-12 public
schools in the United States with students who are poor and are
mostly Black or Hispanic is growing and these schools share a
number of challenging characteristics. From school years
2000-01 to 2013-14 (the most recent data available), the
percentage of all K-12 public schools that had high percentages
of poor and Black or Hispanic students grew from 9 to 16%,
according to GAO's analysis of data from the Department of
Education. These schools were the most racially and
economically concentrated: 75 to 100% of the students were
Black or Hispanic and eligible for free or reduced-price lunch-a
commonly used indicator of poverty. GAO's analysis of Education
data also found that compared with other schools, these schools
offered disproportionately fewer math, science, and college
preparatory courses and had disproportionately higher rates of
students who were held back in 9th grade, suspended, or
expelled."
The Assembly should consider whether the Open Enrollment program
will exacerbate racial segregation in California schools as
limited evidence shows is happening with the similar District of
Choice program.
Analysis Prepared by:
Chelsea Kelley / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN:
0004094
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