BILL ANALYSIS
AB 2307
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Date of Hearing: April 21, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
AB 2307 (Carter) - As Amended: April 5, 2010
SUBJECT : Education: academic performance
SUMMARY : Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction
(SPI) and the State Board of Education (SBE) to allow a dropout
recovery high school to use an individual pupil growth model,
meeting specified criteria, as part of the alternative
accountability model. Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes Legislative findings and declarations concerning the
benefits of dropout recovery high schools and of reducing
school dropouts, the challenges that dropout recovery high
schools face, the characteristics of successful dropout
recovery schools, and the difficulty in assessing dropouts
using standardized testing.
2)Requires the SPI and SBE, as part of the existing alternative
accountability system, to allow a dropout recovery high school
to use an individual pupil growth model that meets specified
criteria.
3)Requires the SPI to certify that the individual pupil growth
model:
a) Is based on valid and reliable nationally normed reading
and mathematics performance tests.
b) Measures instruction of skills and knowledge aligned
with state standards.
c) Measures a pupil's score against expected growth over
time.
d) Demonstrates the extent to which a school accelerates
annual learning.
4)Defines a "dropout recovery high school" to be a school where
at least 50% of the enrollees are dropouts pursuant to
California Department of Education (CDE) designations, and
where the school provides instruction under the federal
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Workforce Investment Act, federal Youthbuild programs, federal
job corps, or the California Conservation Corps.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the SPI, with the approval of the SBE, to develop and
implement the Academic Performance Index (API) to measure the
performance of schools, and to include a variety of
indicators, including achievement test results, attendance
rates, and graduation rates in that measure.
2)Requires the SPI to establish an advisory committee to provide
advice on all appropriate matters relative to the creation of
the API.
3)Directs the advisory committee by July 1, 2005, to make
recommendations to the SPI on the appropriateness and
feasibility of a methodology for generating a measurement of
academic performance by using unique pupil identifiers and
annual academic achievement growth to provide a more accurate
measure of a school's growth over time.
4)Requires the SPI, with the approval of the state board, to
develop an alternative accountability system that may be used
for schools under the jurisdiction of a county board of
education or a county superintendent of schools, community day
schools, nonpublic, nonsectarian schools, and alternative
schools serving high-risk pupils, including continuation high
schools and opportunity schools.
5)Authorizes schools in the alternative accountability system to
receive an API score, but prohibits the inclusion of those
schools in API rankings.
6)Defines dropout recovery high schools, for the purposes of
prohibiting the inclusion of graduation rates in the API and
for calculating "full year" dropout rates, to mean a high
school in which 50% or more of its pupils have been designated
as dropouts pursuant to the exit/withdrawal codes developed by
the CDE.
7)Establishes the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR)
Program to test academic skills in grades 2-11, and to report
individual and aggregate results.
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FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Current law requires the SPI to develop and
administer the school accountability system which assigns each
school a score on the API that is based on measures of
performance that are aggregated for all students in that school.
Only achievement test results are currently incorporated into
the API; however, having an API that focuses solely on
achievement test results is overly narrow and does not reflect
information about student outcomes (e.g., dropout and graduation
rates, college readiness, preparation for the workplace) that is
important in measuring the performance of districts, schools and
subgroups. As a perverse example of this shortcoming, decreases
in a school's graduation rate due to increases in dropouts could
easily lead to an increase in test scores (based on the
remaining students) and an increase in the API for a given
school or district; clearly this API increase would not be
reflective of an increase in the performance of that school or
district. The Legislature foresaw this issue when it authorized
the API in 1999 to be a broad-based measure of school and
district performance based on a variety of indicators,
including, but not limited to, achievement test results,
attendance rates, and graduation rates.
Opponents of including anything other than results on the
state's achievement test results in the API argue that including
data on other assessments, dropouts, graduation rates, and other
non-testing dimensions of educational performance will both
dilute the meaning of the API and skew its emphasis toward high
schools, resulting in the focusing of more resources at that
level to the detriment of elementary and middle schools. The
dilution argument assumes that state achievement test results
incorporate and reflect all aspects of school performance, or at
least the only important aspect; the increasing incidence of
high achieving pupils dropping out of high school is a counter
example to the claim that test scores alone show how well a
school is serving its pupils.
Since the reliability of an API score based on small numbers of
pupil test scores is questionable, current law instructs the SPI
to compute an API score for schools with less than 100 pupil
scores, but not include the school's API in state rankings.
Similarly, the API scores of community schools, continuation
high schools and non-public schools that serve special education
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pupils are not considered reliable due to both small numbers of
scores and the fact that most pupils are placed in the schools
for less than a year. Accordingly, the SPI is directed in
current law to develop an alternative accountability system for
these schools under which schools may receive an API score, but
are not included in API rankings. The Alternative Schools
Accountability Model (ASAM) is the alternative system developed
by the SPI for this purpose.
According to the author, this bill "authorizes the use of an
individual student growth model as an alternative accountability
measure for dropout recovery programs in order to better align
ASAM with the needs of the students served. Dropout recovery
high schools exclusively serve students who are far below grade
level standards, re-enter school for much less than a four year
period, and enter and exit high school on an irregular schedule.
For these reasons, an open entry - open exit education does not
align with once a year testing. As a result, an individual
student growth measure is a significantly more meaningful
accountability mechanism for dropout recovery high schools."
The author also states that fewer "than 8,000 recovered dropout
students enrolled in Federal or State job training programs are
estimated to be [enrolled in dropout recovery high schools]
eligible for this alternative."
The dropout recovery high schools targeted in this bill are
small in number and have a student population (effectively
dropouts who are re-enrolling in an alternative school and jobs
program) that is relatively unique, even among alternative
school populations. For example, rapid turnover of pupil
populations and short stays by students are common across many
alternative programs, but dropout recovery high schools
typically have students who will enroll or disenroll during the
school year; the instructional program is also individually
tailored to help speed-up the pupil's progress toward completion
of the program in the short time that they may be enrolled.
Between small populations, enrollment cycling and tailored
instruction any measure that either provides a point-in-time
snapshot of student performance or that is aggregated across a
cohort may have absolutely no meaning with respect to the
school's student population at the time that the results of that
measure are reported, since those results will not apply to any
of the pupils in the school at that time. In those cases
measuring the growth of individual pupils without aggregating
those results and building an accountability model that is
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individually based and tailored to that school, rather than
based on the aggregate performance of a cohort of pupils, may be
needed to appropriately judge the progress that a dropout
recovery high school is making.
Since the state does not have such a tailored individual growth
model for each school and building such models at the state
level would not be cost effective, a reasonable solution is to
authorize this small group of schools with developing their own
individual pupil-based accountability model. According to the
bill's sponsor, this bill will strengthen ASAM by allowing that
alternative model to address the accountability needs of the
small community of dropout recovery high schools. The bill
specifies certain conditions that the model must meet, but then
requires the SPI to certify that the individual pupil growth
model to be used by the dropout recovery high school meets those
conditions. The Committee may wish to consider whether
authorizing a dropout recovery high school, as noted in the
staff-recommended amendments, to use such an accountability
model if it is certified by the SPI to meet the specified
conditions is a more appropriate approach.
It should be noted that the Department of Finance, in its April
Budget Letters to the Legislature, has proposed the elimination
of all federal funding supporting ASAM "in favor of folding
alternative schools into existing federal accountability
reporting" It does not appear that this proposal would result
in appropriate accountability measures being applied to
alternative schools in California, and thus can be seen as
contrary to the Legislature's earlier action to require the SPI
to develop and implement an alternative accountability system
for those schools.
It should also be noted that the CDE has begun a process for
revising the current ASAM so as to make it more rigorous,
academically-based and comparable across sites. The SBE approved
a conceptual framework for redesigning the ASAM that recommends
the use of the following three types of indicators:
1)Learning readiness indicators to provide a measure of student
engagement and preparedness to benefit from school-based
instruction.
2)Academic achievement indicators to provide a measure of
student achievement and academic progress using statewide
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assessments.
3)Transition indicators to provide a measure of whether a
student graduated or remained in school.
According to CDE the revised ASAM will start operating in the
2010-11 school year. The revised ASAM will include the use of
statewide assessments for purposes of measuring academic
achievement, as well as learning readiness indicators and
transition indicators; it is unclear whether these revisions
will reduce the need for the flexibility offered by this bill,
or whether it will increase the need for the authority to
explore more individualized accountability models for this small
number of pupils.
Committee amendments: Committee staff recommends the following
amendments:
1)Rather than requiring the SPI to certify that the individual
pupil growth model meets the specified conditions, allow a
dropout recovery high school to use such a model if the SPI
certifies that the model meets the required conditions. The
SPI would then be required to review proposed models prior to
certifying if the model meets those conditions.
2)Allow the model to measure learning using valid and reliable
nationally normed or criterion referenced reading and
mathematics tests.
3)Clarify that the model is to measure skills and knowledge
aligned with state standards, rather than instruction of
skills and knowledge.
Related legislation: AB 2013 (Arambula), pending in the
Assembly Education Committee, includes independent study
programs in the alternative accountability system established by
the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), requires all
alternative schools serving high-risk pupils to participate in
the alternative accountability system, regardless of the
percentage of high-risk pupils enrolled, and requires the
alternative accountability system to meet various specified
components.
Previous legislation: AB 1130 (Solorio), Chapter 273, Statutes
of 2009, states legislative intent regarding the examination of
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methods for making and reporting comparisons of school and
district academic achievement over time based on a cohort growth
measure. AB 429 (Brownley), vetoed in 2009, would have required
examination of methods for making and reporting valid
comparisons of individual academic performance over time and for
making potential improvements in the Academic Performance Index
(API), so as to be able to measure and report both a student's
and a school's academic growth over time. SB 219 (Steinberg),
Chapter 731, Statutes of 2007, makes changes in the calculation
of and in the process for revising the API. AB 400 (Nunez),
vetoed in 2007, would have required the incorporation of
additional measures of performance into the API, including the
rate at which pupils are offered a course of study that fulfills
University of California and California State University
admission requirements. AB 2167 (Arambula), Chapter 743,
Statutes of 2006, establishes a specific methodology for
including graduation rates, as previously required, in the API;
also requires the SPI to report annually to the Legislature on
graduation and dropout rates in the state. SB 1448 (Alpert),
Chapter 233, Statutes of 2004, reauthorized the STAR Program.
SB 257 (Alpert), Chapter 782, Statutes of 2003, requires the
advisory committee established to advise the SPI on the API to
make recommendations to the SPI on a methodology for generating
a "gain" score measurement to provide more accurate measure of a
school's growth over time. AB 1295 (Thomson), Chapter 887,
Statutes of 2001, makes changes to the API to allow small school
districts to receive an API score, receive growth targets, and
performance awards. SB 1 X1 (Alpert), Chapter 3, Statutes of
1999-2000 First Extraordinary Session, known as the Public
Schools Accountability Act (PSAA), authorizes the state's
current accountability program, including establishment of the
PSAA Advisory Committee and development of the API. SB 376
(Alpert), Chapter 828, Statutes of 1997, authorized development
and implementation of the STAR Program.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
School for Integrated Academics & Technologies-SIATech (Sponsor)
Opposition
None on file
AB 2307
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Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087