BILL ANALYSIS
SB 232
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Date of Hearing: August 22, 2007
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Mark Leno, Chair
SB 232 (Ducheny) - As Amended: June 4, 2007
Policy Committee: EducationVote:10-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable: No
SUMMARY
This bill extends the sunset date for the California Subject
Matter Projects (CSMPs) from June 30, 2007 until June 30, 2014.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)GF cost pressure of $9 million to maintain the same level of
service for the nine CSMPs beyond 2007. While six CSMPs are
only authorized in statute, the UC provides currently operates
three: arts, foreign language and physical education/health
projects, within existing resources. The six projects
authorized in statute receive between $730,000 and $1.4
million per project. Specifically, the three other projects
receive a total of $1.9 million: (a) the California Arts
Project: $892,815, (b) the California Foreign Language
Project: $824,164, and (c) the Physical Education/Health
Project: $272,000.
2)The 2007-08 Budget Conference Committee Report provides $9
million in state and federal funding to support six CSMPs. Of
this amount, $4.35 million in federal No Child Left Behind
Act, Title II: Preparing, Training, and Recruiting High
Quality Teachers funding and $5 million is state GF.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . The CSMPs, administered by the University of
California (UC), are an alliance of nine statewide networks
that support K-12 standards-aligned professional development
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for teachers, administrators, and other school leaders in the
arts, foreign language, history-social science, international
studies, mathematics, physical education-health, science,
writing, reading, and literature.
There are approximately 109 CSMP regional sites and nine
statewide offices that serve 870 school districts and provide
professional development training to over 40,000 people,
including K-12 teachers, administrators, and university
faculty.
Current statute sunsetted the authorization for these projects
on June 30. According to the UC, however, the projects are
currently operating as normal for the summer. This bill
extends the authorization for these projects until 2014.
2)Why a seven year sunset extension ? AB 2950 (Strom-Martin),
Chapter 463, Statutes of 2002, extended the sunset date of
CSMPs from January 1, 2003 to June 30, 2007 (with the repeal
date as January 1, 2008). This was a five year sunset
extension.
Chapter 463 also required an independent evaluation of the
CSMPs to be submitted to the Legislature, the State Board of
Education, and the governor by February 2006. The evaluation
was conducted by SRI International in December 2005 and
concluded that overall the CSMPs have provided teachers with
quality professional development that has impacted student
achievement. Specifically, SRI states, "Teachers believed
that their participation in CSMP professional development led
to improvements in student achievement. The vast majority of
teachers reported that their participation in the CSMP
benefited students' conceptual understanding, engagement in
activities, and ability to explain their reasoning. Teachers
also reported beneficial outcomes for English learners or
students who need to improve their literacy skills."
However, the evaluation identified three major challenges
related to maintaining high quality professional development
with decreased funding, meeting the needs of an increasingly
set of diverse teaching participants, and managing the
differential impact of accountability policies on the project.
According to SRI, "So far the CSMP have adapted to the new
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environment and made progress in meeting these challenges-as
evidenced by the teachers they are reaching, the partnerships
formed, and the quality of their work. But these challenges
will only intensify in the future. Even with a reasonably
stable base of funding, the CSMP will continue to grapple with
the balance between their traditional delivery of high-quality
professional development and the short-term demands of
districts and schools. They will have to find a way to meet
the needs of a wide array of teacher participants without
watering down their professional development to the point that
it becomes indistinguishable from that of other providers."
The committee may wish to consider whether or not it is more
appropriate to extend the CSMPs for five years and require the
projects to report specified information on an annual basis to
the Legislature and the governor in order to inform policy and
fiscal decisions.
3)Previous legislation . SB 1073 (Simitian) authorized three
additional CSMPs in arts, foreign language, and physical
education/health. This bill was held on this committee's
suspense file in August 2006.
Analysis Prepared by : Kimberly Rodriguez / APPR. / (916)
319-2081