BILL ANALYSIS
AB 1435
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Date of Hearing: May 13, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Kevin De Leon, Chair
AB 1435 (V. Manuel Perez) - As Amended: April 29, 2009
Policy Committee: Education
Vote:10-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable: No
SUMMARY
This bill requires the Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA)
advisory committee, by July 1, 2010, to make recommendations to
the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) regarding the
inclusion of the results of the English language development
(ELD) test and the feasibility of including English language
proficiency as part of the Academic Performance Index (API).
Specifically, this bill:
Requires the SPI, with approval of the State Board of Education
(SBE), to include the results of the ELD test and English
language proficiency levels and growth of those levels in API.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)GF/98 costs, of approximately $200,000, to the State
Department of Education (SDE) to include the California
English Language Development Test (CELDT) results in the API.
2)The 2009 Budget allocates $12.1 million in state and federal
funds for the development and administration of the CELDT. Of
this amount, $1.6 million is GF/98 and $10.5 million is
federal funds. The GF allocation provides incentive funding
of $5 per pupil for school district apportionments for the
CELDT. As a condition of receiving these funds, districts must
agree to provide information determined to be necessary to
comply with the data collection and reporting requirements of
the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 regarding ELL
pupils by the SDE.
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As part of the February 2008 budget process, GF allocations
for statewide assessments were reduced by a total of 19.8%
from the enacted 2008 Budget. Each assessment, including the
CELDT, received a proportional reduction.
COMMENTS
1)Purpose . SB 1X (Alpert), Chapter 3, Statutes of 1999,
established the PSAA, which required the development of the
state academic performance index (API). The API is used to
measure performance of schools and districts over time. An API
score is calculated based on students' performance on the
following standardized tests: the California Standards Tests
in English language arts, mathematics, and history-social
science, and science (where applicable) and the California
High School Exit Exam.
Current state and federal law requires local education
agencies to assess all English language learners (ELLs) in
grades K-12 to determine their proficiency in English. The
CELDT, administered from July 1 to October 31 every year, is
the assessment instrument utilized to meet this requirement.
The CELDT is used to (a) identify pupils as limited English
proficient; (b) determine the level of English language
proficiency; and (c) assess the progress of ELL pupils in
acquiring the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and
writing in English. In 2008-09, 1.33 million ELL pupils were
assessed by the CELDT. The CELDT is designed to measure true
year to year growth because the performance level means the
same thing at each grade level.
This bill requires the PSAA advisory committee to, by July
2010, to make recommendations for the inclusion of the CELDT
in the API, as specified.
2)EL pupils in California . According to the SDE, there were 1.6
million ELL pupils (25%) enrolled in public schools in
2007-08. Of these children, 1.3 million (85%) speak Spanish
and 34,712 (2.2%) speak Vietnamese. Of these pupils, 1.55
million (68%) are enrolled in grades K-6.
3)Similar legislation .
a) AB 173 (Price), pending in this committee, requires the
SDE to contract for the development of a new measure to
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replace the API and requires SDE to convene a new advisory
board to provide general guidance and make recommendations
in achieving this requirement.
b) AB 429 (Brownley), pending in this committee, requires
the PSAA advisory committee, by July 1, 2011, to make
recommendations to the SPI for the development of a
longitudinally valid assessment system in which annual
academic growth can be measured for a school and a pupil
over time.
c) AB 1130 (Solorio), pending on the Assembly floor,
expresses legislative intent to examine the methods for
making and reporting comparisons of school and district
academic achievement over time, as specified.
d) AB 2776 (Mullin), similar to this measure, was held on
the Senate Appropriation Committee's suspense file in 2008.
Analysis Prepared by : Kimberly Rodriguez / APPR. / (916)
319-2081