BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
521 (Romero)
Hearing Date: 05/11/2009 Amended: 04/20/2009
Consultant: Dan Troy Policy Vote: ED 7-0
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BILL SUMMARY: SB 521 would require that the California English
Language Development Test be administered at least 65 percent of
the way into the school year and that a pupil's scores be
reported to his or her parent in their home language.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 Fund
Standard setting $525 General
Test development $1,100 General
Programming $500 General
2nd exam $5,600 $5,600 General
Reporting $3,500 $3,500 General
Staffing $65 $65 General
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STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
Under current law, a pupil whose primary language is not English
must have their English language development assessed within 30
days of enrolling in a California public school and annually
thereafter until the pupil is redesignated as fluent English
proficient. The assessment tool used by the state is the
California English Language Development Test (CELDT).
Currently, authority for setting the annual timeframe for
administration of the CELDT is determined by the Superintendent
of Public Instruction (SPI) and the State Board of Education
(SBE). The SPI and SBE have established the testing window as
beginning on July 1 and ending on October 31. Budgeted 2009-10
costs related to the CELDT is over $21.9 million, of which $11.4
million is General Fund and the remaining $10.5 million is
funded with federal resources. In the 2007-08 fiscal year,
there were approximately 1.7 million test takers, of which 1.3
million were tested as part of the annual assessment.
The bill's sponsors suggest that a later test administration
would allow for better placement and instructional decisions to
be made at the start of the subsequent school year. Currently,
results are often reported in February, which is late in the
year to adjust the instructional approach. The author's office
also suggests that English learners would perform better on the
CELDT if it were administered later in the year, because the
content of the test would be fresher in the test taker's mind
(as opposed to an early administration where, summer
intersession intervenes). This would possibly result in
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SB 521 (Romero)
more students being reclassified as fluent English proficient.
The Department of Education (CDE) believes this result is not
likely because a later administration would result in rescaling
the cut scores to reflect the increased age of the student.
Also, CDE notes that reclassification is only partly determined
by the CELDT. Districts have discretion to use local standards
for redesignation and notes that there were 38,000 test takers
in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2007-08 that met
CELDT standards for redesignation but are still not classified
as fluent English proficient. Presumably, they were not
redesignated due to local standards.
The bill's requirement to move the testing window to at least 65
percent of the way into the school year would result in one-time
costs for standard setting (essentially, this means adjusting
"cut scores" to account for the increased age of test takers) of
$525,000. The bill would also likely result in significant
ongoing costs, as moving the test window deeper into the school
year would result in the need to develop and administer a second
test to avoid circumstances in which pupils would take the same
test twice (pupils new to the district would take the exam in
the beginning of the year as a new enrollee and then again later
in the year as part of the annual administration). One-time
costs for the development of a second exam are estimated at $1.1
million, with total ongoing costs of $5.6 million. Further, the
bill's requirement to report results of the CELDT to parents in
their "home" language, combined with the need to report on two
exams annually instead of one, would cost up to $3,500,000 per
year, though this figure would depend on the level of detail
required. Additionally, one-time costs of $500,000 would be
incurred for one-time for programming changes and the Department
of Education would need one half of a position and $65,000, at a
minimum, for translation and item development.