BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2265
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 7, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 2265 (Salas) - As Introduced: February 18, 2010
SUBJECT : Pupil achievement: California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System
SUMMARY : Establishes grant program to support local data
management activities required of local educational agencies
(LEAs) and direct-funded charter schools (DFCS) as part of the
California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS).
Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes legislative findings and declarations as to the
importance of the state's education data systems, and of the
use, quality, and accuracy of the data in those systems.
2)States legislative intent to support local educational agency
data management activities in order to enhance the quality of
that data and its use.
3)Authorizes, subject to an appropriation of funds for this
purpose, local data management support program annual grants
to LEAs and DFCS:
a) In the amount of $5,000 for recipients with a California
Basic Education Data System certified enrollment of 1,000
or fewer pupils.
b) In the amount of $5 per pupil enrolled for recipients
with a California Basic Education Data System (CBEDS)
certified enrollment greater than 1,000 pupils.
c) In an amount prorated by the California Department of
Education (CDE) if insufficient funds are available to make
full grant awards.
4)Requires the CDE to allocate this funding annually to LEAs and
DFCS that:
a) Resolve anomalies related to the statewide student
identifier (SSID) used in CALPADS so as to maintain a
validity rate specified by the Superintendent of Public
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Instruction (SPI).
b) Include the statewide pupil identifier on the transcript
of each pupil.
c) Maintain a generic electronic mail address for local
data management personnel in order to facilitate
communication between the CDE and the appropriate personnel
of the LEA.
5)Requires recipients of the grant funds to use those funds to
support staff, hardware and software acquisitions, training,
and other activities related to meeting CALPADS data
management requirements.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the CDE to develop CALPADS in order to provide the
state and LEAs with the data necessary for compliance with the
federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a means for
evaluating educational programs and progress, information
needed to improve student achievement, and a common means for
maintaining longitudinal pupil-level data.
2)Establishes the California School Information Services (CSIS)
program for the purpose of developing and implementing an
electronic statewide school information system, including the
assignment of non-personally identifiable SSIDs to all public
K-12 students in California, so as to facilitate the exchange
of student data between LEAs and with the CDE.
3)Requires LEAs to retain individual pupil records including
demographic and pupil achievement data collected for state
assessment programs, use the SSID to ensure the accuracy of
information on state tests, retain all data necessary to
compile reports required by NCLB (including dropout and
graduation rates), and provide other data elements deemed
necessary by the SPI.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to an Assembly Appropriations
Committee of a substantially similar bill in 2007, annual
General Fund Proposition 98 costs of $32.5 million to augment
the $0.25 per pupil that was and is provided to LEAs and DFCS to
support CALPADS data activities, to the proposed $5 per pupil.
That estimate was based on assumptions provided by the SPI, the
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sponsor of this bill, that approximately 5.9 million students in
2007 were enrolled in LEAs with more than 1,000 students, that
785 LEAs and DFCS with 1,000 students or less, and that all LEAs
and DFCS met the eligibility requirements.
COMMENTS : According to the CDE, CALPADS will be the foundation
of California's education data system. CALPADS will collect
student level data on demographics, program participation, and
course completion. Teacher level data will include course
assignments. It will eventually replace a number of the CDE's
current aggregate collections, including CBEDS, the Language
Census, Student National Origin Report, and portions of the
Consolidated Application. CALPADS will also reduce the amount of
data collected on the answer documents of statewide assessments.
When fully implemented, CALPADS will provide the state and LEAs
with the data necessary for compliance with the federal
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (currently NCLB), with a
means for evaluating educational programs and progress, with
information needed to improve student achievement, and with a
common means for maintaining longitudinal pupil-level data.
In September 2006 the CDE released a request for proposals and
initiated a competitive procurement for a contractor to develop
software for CALPADS. That contract was awarded to IBM, and
development work began in November 2007. The first software
release for the system occurred in August 2009 and included only
administrative functions of the system; a second release in
October 2009 included those parts of the system involved in the
collection of data from local educational agencies.
The 2006-07 Budget provided $828,000 to support LEAs not
participating in the CSIS State Reporting program to acquire new
SSIDs and maintain their existing SSIDs. This funding was
allocated to LEAs on a $.25 per enrolled student basis. In
addition, the 2006-07 Budget provided a total of $29.5 million
in one time local assistance funding to support approximately
1,000 LEAs and independently reporting charter schools that have
not participated in the CSIS program to establish the hardware,
software, and management processes necessary to ensure that
those districts were technology-ready for CALPADS
implementation. The annual Budget Act has continued the
$828,000 in local assistance funding for CALPADS implementation
in each budget since 2006-07; these funds were proposed again in
the Governor's Budget for 2010-11.
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The author states that this measure would establish an ongoing
grant program to provide LEAs and DFCS with the funding
necessary to ensure that student-level data collected via
CALPADS is maintained and submitted accurately. The author also
states that, "The availability of quality data is intrinsic to
the statewide policy decisions being made to improve
California's public education system. Without proper support
and resources for LEAs to produce, maintain and report that
quality data, the accuracy of student achievement data and the
integrity of CALPADS is undermined."
Opponents would question the justification behind the $5 per
pupil cost estimate upon which the grant is based, as well as
the advisability of implementing a new operational grant in the
state's current budget circumstances.
Additional background on problems with CALPADS system software:
The initial 2009 releases of CALPADS system software generated
concerns over the stability of the system. These concerns led
the CDE to temporarily halt further development on additional
CALPADS software functions, to suspend an additional procurement
for the development of the California Longitudinal Teacher
Integrated Data System (CALTIDES), and to a decision in December
2009 to ask the project's independent verification and
validation contractor, Sabot Technologies, to conduct an
assessment of the CALPADS system architecture and technical
processes. That assessment exposed system stability problems
that Sabot Technologies reported to CDE as including: "Outages-
where the system is unavailable to all or a significant segment
of the user base; Crashes - where users who are logged into the
system are kicked out or the system 'locks up' stopping the
users' workflow; Slow performance - where the system is slow to
respond or 'times out' for one or more users performing a
variety of functions with the system; Defects - where the system
does not provide the functionality or return the results as
expected." Sabot Technologies also made recommendations for the
improvement of the system, and concluded that the system's
stability could be recovered.
During January 2010, IBM and CDE reacted to the independent
verification and validation contractor's assessment, and CDE
communicated their intention to hold IBM accountable for
remedying the system's stability and getting the project back on
track. CDE also asked IBM to develop a plan to stabilize the
system; IBM responded by developing such a plan to stabilize the
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system by March 29, 2010. According to a follow-up report by
Sabot Technologies, the stabilization effort has shown positive
results. That report reconfirms Sabot Technologies' position
that the system is recoverable, but also suggests that overall
progress has been slower than expected, that the reaction from
IBM was slower and less rigorous than required, that there is an
ongoing requirement to track to IBM's action plan, that there is
significant risk that the effort will not meet the criteria set
for the March 29 stabilization deadline, and that there is
significant risk in the area of operational control of the
technical environment that must be addressed. This Committee is
planning an oversight hearing in the near future to hear
testimony on these issues and to receive an update on efforts to
improve the stability of the CALPADS system software.
Committee amendments: If the Committee chooses to pass this
bill, then Committee staff recommends the following amendments:
1)In order to be consistent with other requirements in the bill,
clarify that DFCS are included in the requirement that a LEA
maintain a generic electronic mail address to facilitate
communication with the CDE on CALPADS-related issues.
2)Define enrollment for the purposes of calculating grant
amounts to be enrollment certified in the CBEDS , or any
successor data system designated by the Superintendent , in
order to account for the future transition from CBEDS to
CALPADS.
3)Uncodify the findings and declarations in Sec. 1 of the bill,
uncodify the legislative intent language in Sec. 2, and
renumber and consolidate the codified sections of the bill.
Previous legislation: Provisions of early versions of AB 1656
(Feuer), introduced in 2007, were substantially similar to the
provisions of this bill. AB 1656 was passed by this Committee
and House, but was subsequently amended to delete these
provisions, include content outside of this Committee's
jurisdiction and change the author; that bill was vetoed in
2008. SB 1298 (Simitian), Chapter 561, Statutes of 2008,
establishes processes by which local education agencies and
public institutions of higher education issue, maintain, and
report information using the unique SSIDs required under current
law. SB 1614 (Simitian), Chapter 840, Statutes of 2006,
requires the development of CALTIDES to serve as a central state
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repository of information on the teacher workforce, and
specifies that the existing California Education Information
System include CALTIDES, CALPADS, and CBEDS. SB 1453 (Alpert),
Chapter 1002, Statutes of 2002, authorizes the longitudinal data
system in its current form, and specifies that the system be
known as CALPADS.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment
Association of California School Administrators
California Chamber of Commerce
California Federation of Teachers
California Teachers Association
Children Now
Fight Crime Invest in Kids California
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell (Sponsor)
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087