BILL ANALYSIS
AB 683
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 29, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 683 (Chesbro) - As Introduced: February 26, 2009
SUBJECT : Local educational agencies: program improvement
SUMMARY : Creates an urgency statute that provides a one-year,
non-renewable federal improvement grant to local education
agencies (LEAs) that are identified for corrective action and
sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, but
that have no schools in Program Improvement (PI) status; also
requires that the amount of the grant for such a LEA be based on
the median grant award for LEAs in the least severe of the
categories defined by California Department of Education (CDE)
and the State Board of Education (SBE) developed objective
criteria.
EXISTING FEDERAL LAW , under NCLB:
1)Requires all states to implement statewide accountability
systems based on state standards in reading and mathematics,
annual testing for all students in grades 3-8, and annual
statewide progress objectives ensuring that all groups of
students reach proficiency within 12 years.
2)Requires the state to annually review the performance of each
LEA receiving funding under Title I, and identify any LEA that
has not met its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) criteria for
two consecutive years for PI.
3)Requires an LEA not meeting AYP criteria beyond those two
consecutive years, to provide certain types of required
services and/or corrective actions during each subsequent year
it is identified as PI.
4)Allows an LEA to exit PI, if it meets AYP for two consecutive
years.
EXISTING STATE LAW :
1)Authorizes the CDE and SBE to develop objective criteria by
which a LEA identified for corrective action and subject to a
sanction is to be evaluated to determine the pervasiveness and
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severity of its problems, and thus type of sanction to be
imposed and the level of federal improvement funding to be
provided.
2)Subjects a LEA that is identified for corrective action under
NCLB to one or more sanctions, as recommended by the SPI and
approved by the SBE.
3)Allows the SPI and SBE to require, in addition to any approved
corrective action, an LEA to contract with a DAIT to provide
support for the LEA's instructional reform efforts.
4)Authorizes a LEA identified for corrective action to apply for
a one-year, nonrenewable grant of federal improvement funding
to assist in its improvement process.
5)Requires that the amount of the one-year, nonrenewable
improvement grant be based on whether the agency has extensive
and severe, moderate or minor performance problems, and the
number of schools in the LEA identified for PI.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown increased allocations of available
federal funds to LEAs that are identified for corrective action
but have no schools in PI, and are thus currently not receiving
these funds.
COMMENTS : NCLB establishes specific annual targets for both
participation in state testing and for academic achievement.
Any school or LEA not meeting those targets, either as a whole
or for any numerically significant subgroup, is deemed to not
have met AYP and enters PI status. A school or LEA not meeting
AYP criteria beyond two consecutive years (i.e., in PI Year 3)
is required to provide certain types of services to pupils
and/or to implement corrective actions specified by the SPI and
SBE during each subsequent year it is identified as PI. A
school or LEA is allowed to exit PI if it subsequently meets AYP
for two consecutive years. Currently LEAs that advance to PI
Year 3 are is subject to one or more of the following sanctions
as recommended by the SPI and approved by the SBE:
1)Replacing district personnel who are relevant to the
district's failure to make AYP.
2)Removing schools from the district's jurisdiction and
establishing alternative arrangements for governing and
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supervising those schools.
3)Appointing, by SBE, a receiver or trustee to administer the
district's affairs in place of the county superintendent of
schools and the governing board.
4)Restructuring or abolishing the district.
5)In conjunction with another sanction, authorizing pupils to
transfer from a school operated by the district to a higher
performing school operated by another district and providing
them with transportation to those schools.
6)Instituting and fully implementing a new curriculum that is
based on state academic content standards.
7)Deferring programmatic funds or reducing administrative funds.
In addition to these sanctions the SPI may recommend, and the
SBE may approve, the requirement that an LEA contract with a
DAIT.
Ninety-seven California LEAs, ninety-six school districts and
one county office of education, reached the point in early 2008,
where corrective actions were applied. At its March 2008
meeting the SBE approved the SPI's recommendations with respect
to those LEAs, which provided an approach that used specific
criteria, based on the severity of the problems or reason for
failing to meet AYP, to categorize these LEAs into severe,
moderate or minor groupings. This approach was intended to tie
the strength or approach of the corrective actions to the need
faced by the LEA; sanctions applied to those 97 LEAs ranged from
assignment of a DAIT and appointment of a trustee (severe) to
the requirement that the LEA plan be amended to target those
issues that led to the AYP failure (minor). The CDE estimates
that an additional 50 LEAs in 2008-09 and 35 LEAs in 2010-11
will require corrective actions, and that more than half of all
LEAs will do so by 2012-13. CDE also estimates that for the
current year there are 250 LEAs in PI status.
The SPI's recommendations were grounded in a March 2007 CDE
report to the SBE entitled, "Proposal for the Reauthorization of
the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001". The CDE reported that
California had identified numerous districts under PI and
subject to corrective action, and that many more were in the
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immediate pipeline. The proposal went on to make a number of
recommendations related to dealing with these districts and
related to the future reauthorization of NCLB. Those
recommendations included the following:
1)Given the large number of schools and districts in California
identified as in need of improvement, California needs
explicit flexibility within NCLB to develop a tiered system of
help (fiscal resources and technical assistance) based on
level of need. Schools and districts showing insufficient
growth over time should be the first focus of intervention and
corrective action.
2)California has begun to provide innovative district level
support to build district capacity for improving schools. The
state needs greater and more explicit flexibility to devise
its own corrective actions to supplement the NCLB district
level corrective actions to implement these support structures
while still holding districts accountable for results.
Consistent with the actions taken with respect to the 97 LEAs
earlier in 2008, the Legislature enacted AB 519 (Assembly
Committee on Budget), Chapter 757, Statutes of 2008, a trailer
bill to the Budget Act of 2008, which provided the authority to
allocate $112.7 million in federal funds through the
establishment of a funding formula for state intervention for
LEAs, who are in the third year of PI and facing corrective
actions under NCLB. This bill authorized the CDE and SBE to
develop objective criteria by which a LEA identified for
corrective action and subject to a sanction is to be evaluated
to determine the pervasiveness and severity of its problems and
thus the type of sanction or sanctions to be imposed; it also
authorized that LEA to apply for a one-year, nonrenewable grant
of federal improvement funding to assist in its improvement
process and to expend that grant funding over the time period
allowable under federal law. The grants are funded by federal
monies available for this purpose, including Title I set-aside
and school improvement grants. AB 519 established three levels
of grant, corresponding to the severe, moderate and minor
categories, and specified that a per school identified for PI
grant amount would be paid to LEAs identified for corrective
actions. Thus the LEA would receive a total grant equal to the
appropriate per school grant amount multiplied by the number of
PI schools in the LEA.
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Soon after the enactment of AB 519, an unintended consequence
was recognized in that eight LEAs in the state that are in
corrective action status have no schools that are in PI status;
this situation is an anomaly that is generally related to the
numbers of pupils in a subgroup that must exist before a school
or LEA is held accountable for that subgroup under NCLB. LEAs
in this situation would thus receive no one-year, non-renewable
improvement grant funding, despite carrying the same
responsibilities as any other LEA in corrective action.
The purpose of this bill is to correct this situation by
specifying a grant amount and providing the one-year improvement
grant to LEAs in corrective action, when that LEA has no schools
in PI status. The bill specifies that this grant be based on
the median grant award for LEAs in the least severe of the
categories. According to the author, "By adjusting the funding
formula to allow districts to be allocated a reasonable amount
of federal dollars for purposes of addressing PI corrective
action, the state can ensure that all districts facing these
sanctions receive federal funding to meet federal NCLB
accountability requirements." The impact of allowing this
situation to remain, the author states, is that "Without these
federal funds, districts would have to utilize limited local
funds to implement their corrective action at a time when they
are facing budget shortfalls due to a declining economy."
Committee amendments: This bill sets the grant award for LEAs
identified under the provisions of the bill at the median level
for LEAs with "minor of isolated performance problems", the
lowest category of severity identified by the objective criteria
developed by the CDE and SBE. This presents two problems:
1)The LEA in question may, in fact, not be in the lowest
category of severity, but in one of the two higher categories,
and thus has more serious problems to deal with, more rigorous
corrective actions to be applied, and more need of improvement
funding than LEAs in the minor category.
2)Since the level of total grant to an LEA is associated mainly
with the number of PI schools in the district, the median
grant level is only appropriate if the district in question
lies somewhere in the middle of the distribution of the number
of schools in a district (i.e., small districts will receive a
windfall and large districts will be shorted of funding under
this proposal).
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Since the author's intent is to establish a grant amount that
will ensure that LEAs in this situation receive an improvement
grant, Committee staff instead recommends that in each of the
three severity categories the SPI calculate the statewide
proportion of schools identified as PI, multiply the proportion
(for the appropriate category) times the number of schools for
each LEA identified under the provisions of this bill, and round
that product to the nearest whole number of schools; each LEA so
identified would then receive the appropriate per school grant
times that calculated number of schools. In this way each
identified LEA will receive the per school grant amount
associated with the severity category in which the LEA has been
placed, and the resulting grant amounts will not be distorted as
to district size.
Related legislation: AB 518 (Mendoza), pending in Assembly
Appropriations, requires a school assistance and intervention
team (SAIT) and a district assistance and intervention team
(DAIT) to possess a high degree of knowledge, skills, and
expertise in meeting the curriculum and instructional needs of
prescribed pupil groups. AB 451 (DeLeon), pending in Assembly
Education, provides federal funding to LEAs with PI schools in
year four and five in order to allow them to reassess their
schoolsite plans and make recommendations to improve academic
achievement; also establishes a structure for each LEAs to work
collaboratively with its PI schools in this process.
Previous legislation: AB 519 (Assembly Committee on Budget),
Chapter 757, Statutes of 2008, a trailer bill to the Budget Act
of 2008, provides statutory authority to allocate $112.7 million
in federal funds through the establishment of a funding formula
for LEAs PI Year 3 status and facing corrective actions under
NCLB; also authorizes the CDE and SBE to develop objective
criteria by which a LEA identified for corrective action and
subject to a sanction is to be evaluated to determine the
pervasiveness and severity of its problems, the type of sanction
to be imposed, and the level of grant to be funded. AB 2531
(Mendoza), held in the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2008,
was substantially similar to AB 518 (Mendoza), currently pending
in the Assembly. SB 606 (Perata), failed Senate concurrence
with Assembly amendments in 2008, would have made changes to the
process whereby California local education agencies (LEAs) are
identified for Program Improvement (PI) corrective actions under
the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), and appropriated
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$47 million in federal funds for purposes of the bill. SB 1074
(Senate Committee on Budget), died on the Assembly Floor in
2008, was substantially similar to AB 519 with respect to the PI
provision.
AB 953 (Coto), Chapter 513, Statutes of 2005, amends the State
program to support LEAs and schools in PI. AB 2066 (Steinberg),
Chapter 579, Statutes of 2004, establishes a federally required
assessment and intervention process to assist school districts,
county offices of education and certain charter schools that are
in need of program improvement under NCLB.
AB 2066 (Steinberg), Chapter 579, Statutes of 2004, provides
additional funding to school districts for schools identified
for PI and revises the provisions required for a school to exit
the High Priority Schools Grant Program for Low Performing
Schools. AB 312 (Strom-Martin), Chapter 1020, Statutes of
2002, establishes the School System of School Support (S4) and
allocates federal and state funding for the purposes of school
sanctions related to the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming
Schools Program (II/USP) and federal law.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Association of California School Administrators
Jack O'Connell, Superintendent of Public Instruction (Sponsor)
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087