BILL ANALYSIS
SB 651
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Date of Hearing: July 8, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
SB 651 (Romero and Steinberg) - As Amended: July 1, 2009
SENATE VOTE : 37-1
SUBJECT : Pupil retention
SUMMARY : Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction
(SPI), on or before August 1, 2011, and annually thereafter, to
submit an Annual Report on Dropouts in California, as specified,
to the Governor, Legislature, and State Board of Education
(SBE); also deletes a conditional operative date in existing law
relating to changes in the Academic Performance Index (API).
Specifically, this bill :
1)Requires the report to utilize data from the California
Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) and other
available data.
2)Requires that the report include, but not be limited to:
a) Specified drop out rates for each of grades 7 through
12, grades 9 through 12 and middle schools, and promotion
rates from grade 9 to grade 10.
b) The percentage of high school students at each grade
level on track to graduate in four years and the average
number of non-promotional school moves made by pupils
between grades 6 and 12, inclusive.
c) "Full year" dropout rates for alternative schools.
d) California High School Exit Exam passage rates, as
well as other data relating to dropout or graduation
rates, or progress toward graduation.
3)Requires the report to include, when data is available:
a) Four, five, and six year graduation rates.
b) The percentage of high school graduates and dropouts
who completed courses that are certified by the
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University of California as meeting admission requirement
criteria for the University of California and California
State University systems.
c) The percentage of high school graduates and dropouts
who completed two or more classes in career technical
education.
d) The percentage of high school graduates and dropouts
who completed both course sequences described in (b) and
(c) above.
e) Behavioral data including suspension and expulsions,
truancy rates, and GED earning rates.
4)Requires, if possible, that dropout data be presented in the
report organized by state, county, district and school.
5)Authorizes the report to include relevant data on school
climate and pupil engagement from the California Health Kids
Survey.
6)Requires the report to include data from alternative middle
and high schools, as specified.
7)Requires, if possible, the data to be presented for
subgroups, grade level, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic
status, limited English proficiency and disability if a
subgroup has at least 50 pupils and constitutes at least 15
percent of the total population of pupils at a school.
8)Requires the first annual report to include data from the
most recent year, and subsequent reports to include data
from the most recent year and, at minimum, data from two
prior years.
9)Requires the SPI to comply with additional requirements,
including making an oral presentation of the report to the SBE
at a regularly scheduled meeting, and making the contents of
the report available on the California Department of Education
(CDE) website as specified.
10)Authorizes the omission of school-level data from the
written report, if this data renders the written report
unwieldy and if the data is posted on the CDE website.
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11)States Legislative intent that the report be useable by
schools, districts, policymakers, researchers, parents, and
the public, for purposes of identifying and understanding
trends, causal relations, early warning indicators, and
potential points of intervention to address the high rate of
dropouts in California.
12)Deletes a conditional operative date in existing law related
to changes in the API, required by SB 219 (Steinberg), Chapter
731, Statutes of 2007, regarding the addition of grade 8 and 9
dropout rates and the linking of accountability data for
alternative school students back to their high school of
origin.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the SPI, with the approval of the SBE, to develop and
implement the 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)Defines a four-year, five-year, and six-year high school
graduation rate, and adds partial credit for pupils who
graduate from high school in five or six years to the
calculation of the API for each high school.
4)Requires in the calculation of the API that the test scores of
pupils referred to alternative programs be attributed to their
school and district of residence.
5)Requires school districts to provide specific intensive
instruction and services for up to two additional years to
pupils who have not met the high school exit examination
requirement for graduation and have failed one of both parts
of that examination by the end of 12th grade.
6)Requires the SPI to provide an annual report to the
Legislature on the graduation and dropout rates in California
and to make the same report available to the public.
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FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee,
in order to compile appropriate data and complete an annual
report, the Department of Education (CDE) would need two
positions and assorted other costs for printing and posting.
These costs are estimated at between $300,000 and $400,000 per
year.
COMMENTS : In February of 2008, the California Dropout Research
Project (CDRP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara
issued a Policy Committee Report entitled, Solving California's
Dropout Crisis. CDRP reported that the estimated average
graduation rate in a school district in California in 2003-04
was 71 percent, and that nearly 80,000 students had dropped out
of the graduating class of 2006. The report also estimated that
the economic loss to the state from the dropouts in one grade
cohort of students over their lifetime is greater than $46
billion.
In its report CDRP made a number of recommendations aimed at
moving the state, local school districts, and schools to focus
and implement change with respect to school dropouts; these
recommendations included:
1)Fix the accountability system in order to maintain pressure
and to allow sufficient time to address the problem.
2)Collect and report more useful data on dropouts and the
state's progress in improving graduation rates.
3)Use the data to issue an annual California High School
Graduation Report that documents trends in dropout, promotion,
and graduation rates and statewide efforts to address the
problem and the effectiveness of those efforts.
This bill can be viewed as the third in a series of bills that
move to implement these recommendations. SB 219 (Steinberg),
Chapter 731, Statutes of 2007, makes changes in the calculation
of and in the process for revising the API, especially with
respect to dropout and graduation rates, and the treatment of
data for pupils in alternative schools; effectively this bill
was designed to make changes in the accountability system and to
curtail the ability of school districts to mask dropout problems
by moving pupils to alternative programs. SB 1251 (Steinberg),
Chapter 710, Statutes of 2008, defines a four-year, five-year,
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and six-year high school graduation rate, adds partial credit
for pupils who graduate from high school in five or six years to
the calculation of the API for each high school, and otherwise
leads to more useful data on dropouts and graduation rates.
This bill requires the production of the Annual Report on
Dropouts in California, and specifies the content of that
report.
According to the author, "SB 651 would make smarter use of
existing student data to shine a spotlight on one of our most
pressing education and economic challenges [the high school
dropout crisis]. The bill requires the Superintendent of Public
Instruction to provide an annual written report on dropouts";
the author also points out that, "the report would include:
early warning indicators of students at high risk of dropping
out, such as ninth-grade promotion rates, middle school dropout
rates, course credit earning rates, and CAHSEE passage rates;
more accurate dropout rates for alternative schools with highly
mobile populations; and, when the data is available, the report
would also include behavioral data about students, such as
suspension and expulsions, truancy rates; and relevant data
about student engagement and school climate from the Healthy
Kids Survey and the California School Climate Survey."
This bill also deletes a conditional operative date in existing
law related to changes in the API required by SB 219
(Steinberg). SB 219 addresses issues related to tracking the
progress of at-risk students and holding schools and districts
accountable for that progress; the bill makes changes in three
areas: 1) adding grade 8 and 9 dropout rates as factors in the
API; 2) asking the API advisory committee to examine issues
related to the bill's revisions in the API; and 3) assigning
data of each student enrolled in an alternative program to the
API of that student's school and district of residence. The CDE
was working to make these changes and was planning to take this
item to the SBE for approval in December of this year. However,
CDE was advised by its counsel that these changes to the API
could not be made until conditional language included in SB 219
was satisfied, making the statute operative. That language
reads that, "This section shall become operative only if local
educational agencies receive a per pupil allocation prior to the
2010-11 fiscal year for implementation of the California
Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System established pursuant
to Section 609000." The local agency funding for the
implementation of CALPADS was never made available. The data in
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CALPADS, however, is now available and the author's office
believes it is time to use that data to move forward with the
implementation of the changes to the API enacted by SB 219. The
deletion (of the conditional operative date) proposed by this
bill will allow this implementation to move forward.
Committee amendments:
1)A "Full-year" dropout rate for alternative schools is not a
term of art nor is it a calculation that is defined in code.
Committee staff recommends that the SPI be directed to develop
a methodology or methodologies to calculate "full-year"
dropout rates in alternative schools, including dropout
recovery high schools, and to provide an explanation of this
methodology or methodologies in the annual report.
2)Current practice is to calculate school district dropout rates
that include the results in all charter schools located in a
given district. Since all charter schools in a district are
not operated by or even authorized by that district, this
practice may assign a district pupil results over which the
district has no control. In the interest of full information,
Committee staff recommends that dropout rates be calculated
for a district both including (per current practice) and
excluding charter schools in the district.
3)Committee staff recommends that the bill be amended to correct
a drafting error resulting in a misspelling.
Previous legislation: SB 1251 (Steinberg), Chapter 710, Statutes
of 2008, defines a four-year, five-year, and six-year high
school graduation rate, adds partial credit for pupils who
graduate from high school in five or six years to the
calculation of the API for each high school. SB 219
(Steinberg), Chapter 731, Statutes of 2007, makes changes in the
calculation of and in the process for revising the API,
especially with respect to dropout and graduation rates, and the
treatment of data for pupils in alternative schools. 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
Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to report annually to
the Legislature on graduation and dropout rates in the state.
SB 1 X1 (Alpert), Chapter 3, Statutes of 1999-2000 First
Extraordinary Session, known as the Public Schools
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Accountability Act (PSAA), authorizes the state's current
accountability program, including establishment of the PSAA
Advisory Committee and development of the API.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Aspiranet
Association of California School Administrators (if amended)
California ACORN
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California
PICO California
Public Advocates
School for Integrated Academics & Technologies (with amendments)
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087