BILL ANALYSIS
SB 651
Page 1
SENATE THIRD READING
SB 651 (Romero and Steinberg)
As Amended July 15, 2009
Majority vote
SENATE VOTE :37-1
EDUCATION 10-0 APPROPRIATIONS 17-0
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|Ayes:|Brownley, Nestande, |Ayes:|De Leon, Conway, Ammiano, |
| |Ammiano, Arambula, | | |
| |Carter, Eng, Garrick, | |Charles Calderon, Coto, |
| |Miller, Solorio, | |Davis, |
| |Torlakson | |Fuentes, Hall, Harkey, |
| | | |Miller, |
| | | |Nielsen, John A. Perez, |
| | | |Skinner, |
| | | |Solorio, Audra |
| | | |Strickland, Torlakson, |
| | | |Hill |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
| | | | |
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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); and 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
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number of non-promotional school moves made by pupils
between grades 6 and 12, inclusive;
c) "Full year" dropout rates for alternative schools,
including dropout recovery high schools, using an
appropriate methodology or methodologies developed by the
SPI, along with an explanation of any methodologies used;
and,
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, and
behavioral data including suspension and expulsions,
truancy rates and GED earning rates; and,
b) The percentage of high school graduates and dropouts
who completed the admission requirements for California's
public university systems, two or more classes in career
technical education, or both.
4)Requires, if possible, that dropout data be presented in the
report organized by state, county, district (both including
and excluding charter schools) and school, and 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.
5)Authorizes the report to include relevant data on school
climate and pupil engagement from the California Health Kids
Survey.
6)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; also requires the report to include data from
alternative middle and high schools.
7)Requires the SPI to comply with additional requirements,
including making an oral presentation of the report to the SBE
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at a regularly scheduled meeting, and making the contents of
the report available on the California Department of Education
(CDE) Web site as specified; and, 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 Web site.
8)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.
9)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)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, and requires that
the test scores of pupils referred to alternative programs be
attributed to their school and district of residence in that
API calculation.
3)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.
4)Requires the SPI to provide an annual report to the
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Legislature on the graduation and dropout rates in California
and to make the same report available to the public.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, General Fund administrative costs of approximately
$150,000 to complete the Annual Report on Dropouts in
California, as specified.
COMMENTS : This bill can be viewed as the third in a series of
bills that move to implement the recommendations made by the
California Dropout Research Project at the University of
California, Santa Barbara in a report entitled, Solving
California's Dropout Crisis. SB 219 made 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, defined a
four-year, five-year, and six-year high school graduation rate,
added 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. The current 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."
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This bill also deletes a conditional operative date in existing
law related to changes in the API required by SB 219. 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) adds grade
8 and 9 dropout rates as factors in the API; 2) asks the API
advisory committee to examine issues related to the bill's
revisions in the API; and, 3) assigns data of each student
enrolled in an alternative program to the API of that student's
school and district of residence. 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, counsel advised CDE
that these changes could not be made until conditional language
included in SB 219 was satisfied. That language states that
these provisions become operative only if local educational
agencies receive funding prior to fiscal year 2010-11 for
implementation of CALPADS. Local agency funding for this
implementation was never made available. The required data,
however, is now available and the author's office believes it is
time to move forward with the changes to the API enacted by SB
219. The deletion of the conditional operative date, as
proposed by this bill, will allow this move forward.
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0002567