BILL ANALYSIS
SB 742
Page 1
Date of Hearing: July 8, 2009
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
SB 742 (Romero) - As Amended: June 1, 2009
SENATE VOTE : 35-2
SUBJECT : School accountability: low-performing schools
SUMMARY : Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI)
and the State Board of Education (SBE) to identify 10
historically low-performing public schools in the state, to
ensure that those schools' districts are complying with federal
notification requirements, and to direct the local educational
agency (LEA) responsible for each of those schools to approve at
least one of three school restructuring alternatives specified
in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).
Specifically, this bill :
1)Creates an advisory committee (Committee), comprised of twelve
members; four members are appointed by the Governor, SPI,
President Pro Tempore of the Senate and Speaker of the
Assembly, respectively, while the remaining members are
appointed by the SPI from a list of nominees created by the
initial four members.
2)Requires the SPI to ensure that the Committee includes persons
who have published findings or who are actively engaged in
research on successful school renewal efforts.
3)Requires the Committee to:
a) Make recommendations to the SPI, by July 1, 2010, on the
criteria the SPI and the SBE should use to jointly identify
ten historically low-performing schools (identified
schools) in the state, as well as the conditions that must
exist for a school to be removed from the list.
b) Consider only schools currently or likely to be subject
to restructuring under NCLB in the subsequent school year,
and authorizes the Committee to consider other objective
data such as the California Standards Test, the Academic
Performance Index, and dropout and graduation rates.
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4)Requires the SPI to make recommendations on these criteria and
conditions to the SBE by August 15, 2010, and requires the SPI
and SBE to jointly approve the criteria and conditions by
October 1, 2010.
5)Requires, by November 1, 2010, that the SPI and SBE use their
approved criteria and conditions to jointly designate the
identified schools, requires at least three of the identified
schools to be comprehensive high schools with dropout rates of
25 percent or higher in 2007-2008, and requires the SPI to
notify each LEA responsible for an identified school within 30
days of that school's designation.
6)Requires the SPI to ensure that the governing board of each
LEA responsible for oversight of an identified school has
provided each employee, and parent or guardian of a child
enrolled or requesting to be enrolled in the school specified
notices relating to corrective action, failure to make
adequate yearly progress, and possible school restructuring,
as required under NCLB.
7)Requires the SPI and SBE to direct the LEA responsible for
each identified school to evaluate the reasons for the
school's designation, and to approve at a public hearing at
least one of three alternative governance restructuring
approaches (renewal efforts) specified for schools in
corrective action under NCLB.
8)Requires that the renewal efforts focus primarily on annual
increases toward a four-year graduation rate goal of 90
percent, as calculated pursuant to current law.
9)Requires the SPI to recommend revocation of the school's
charter to the SBE, if an identified school is a charter
school, and requires the SBE, within 90 days upon receiving
the recommendation, hold a public hearing to consider the
revocation.
10)Requires the Director of Finance, if he or she determines
that sufficient federal funds are not available to implement
the renewal efforts required by this bill, to notify the SPI
and SBE within 45 days, and requires that the SPI and SBE:
a) Determine if other federal funds are available, and if
so, determine how that funding could be best allocated to
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facilitate the ongoing renewal efforts.
b) After making the above determination, to notify each
LEA responsible for an identified school regarding those
schools that are subject to the requirements of the bill
for the subsequent school year and those schools for
which the renewal plans are recommended, but not
required.
11)Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to
contract for an independent evaluation of the program that
determines whether this program has been effective in
improving pupil achievement, identifies components of
successful school renewal, and, for high schools, includes an
assessment of the efficacy of strategies employed to increase
graduation rates at each of the identified schools.
12)Requires the evaluation to be funded with federal funds
appropriated to CDE, and to be submitted to the policy and
budget committees of both houses of the Legislature, the
Governor, and DOF no later than March 1, 2015.
13)Makes provisions of this bill inoperative on July 1, 2016,
and repeals them as of January 1, 2017.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires all states to implement statewide accountability
systems based on state standards in reading and mathematics,
annual testing for all students in grades 3-8 and grade 10 in
reading and mathematics, annual testing for all students in
grades 5, 8 and 10 in science, and annual statewide progress
objectives ensuring that all groups of students reach
proficiency within 12 years.
2)Requires the state to annually review the performance of each
school receiving funding under Title I, and identify any
school that has not met its Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)
criteria in two consecutive years for Program Improvement (PI)
status.
3)Requires a school not meeting AYP criteria beyond those two
consecutive years, to provide certain types of required
services and/or corrective actions during each subsequent year
it is identified for PI.
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4)Requires a school in Year 4 of PI to prepare a plan for
alternative governance or restructuring of the school, and in
Year 5 to implement this plan. NCLB requires the LEA
responsible for the school to select one of five restructuring
alternatives: reopen as a charter school; replace all or most
staff, including the principal; contract with an outside
entity to manage the school; have the state takeover the
school; or any other major restructuring plan consistent with
federal guidance.
5)Allows a school to exit PI, if the school meets AYP for two
consecutive years.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, CDE indicates initial costs in the range of $400,000,
with ongoing costs depending on the number of schools in need of
monitoring and assistance. Further, costs for the evaluation
would likely be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Senate Appropriations Committee notes that there would also
be local costs. These costs would include the analysis of the
reasons for the school's poor performance, specified
notification of parents and employees, and the costs of the
interventions. Considering the costs of other intervention
programs, it would be reasonable to assume that the cost per
school would be at least $100,000, for a total annual cost of $1
million. To the extent federal funding is insufficient to fund
the interventions, there would be general fund pressure to cover
the costs, as made explicit in the bill by requiring the SBE and
SPI to request funding from in the budget in that instance.
COMMENTS : NCLB establishes specific annual targets for both
participation in state testing and for academic achievement.
Any school or LEA not meeting those targets (either as a whole
or for any numerically significant subgroup) is deemed to not
have met AYP. A school or LEA not meeting AYP criteria for two
consecutive years is deemed to have entered PI status, and is
required to provide certain types of services to pupils and/or
to implement specified corrective actions during each subsequent
year it is identified as PI. A school or LEA is allowed to exit
PI if it subsequently meets AYP for two consecutive years.
Currently a school that advances to PI Year 1 status and the LEA
responsible for that school are subject to a sequence of
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requirements, sanctions, and interventions over a 5 year period
(see Table 1); a school that advances to PI Year 5 and remains
in PI status, as well as its LEA, continue to have the PI Year 5
requirements placed on them in any following year, unless or
until the school exits PI status.
----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------
CDE reports that in 2008-09, 2253 schools (slightly more than 22
percent of the schools in the state) were at some stage in PI,
including 266 schools that were new to PI status in that year;
of these 2253 schools, 1182 were in Year 4 or 5 of PI status.
112 schools exited PI in that same year. Information on
California schools in PI status is provided in Table 2 by PI
Year; this table also shows schools that failed to meet AYP and
advanced one year from the prior year, schools that met AYP and
remained in a PI Year (and thus could potentially exit PI status
next year), and schools that did exit PI status in 2008-09.
-------------------------------------------------
|Table 2: 2008-09 Statewide Summary of PI Schools |
-------------------------------------------------
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Year | Advance | Remain | Total | Exit |
| | in PI | in PI | in PI | PI |
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Year 1 | 266 | 49 | 315 | 60 |
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Year 2 | 287 | 78 | 365 | 11 |
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Year 3 | 361 | 30 | 391 | 21 |
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Year 4 | 217 | 41 | 258 | 12 |
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Year 5 | 355 | 569 | 924 | 8 |
|---------+---------+---------+---------+---------|
| Total | 1486 | 767 | 2253 |112 |
| | | | | |
-------------------------------------------------
According to the author, large concentrations of poor and
English learner students "are found in the state's consistently
lowest-performing schools, and suffer under the weight of an
achievement gap that does not bode well for them or for the
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future economy of the state. Drastic action is needed to close
the gap and improve their achievement." The author also states
that, "Currently, the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act
requires specific corrective actions for low-performing schools
that persist in "Program Improvement" status. California has
also had its own set of sanctions and assistance for schools
that have been unable to improve student performance over
periods of up to 10 years, but with negligible results. Recent
evaluations of current school district intervention programs
raise serious questions about their inability to raise
performance in these schools through "assistance" funding
primarily." The high proportion of California schools currently
in PI status, as shown in Table 2, could be used as evidence
supporting the author's statements.
It should be noted that the state has implemented programs in
the last ten years that have attempted to bring about
accountability driven school reform. SB 1 X1 (Alpert), Chapter
3, 1st 1999 Extraordinary Session, the Public Schools
Accountability Act of 1999, created the Academic Performance
Index (API) and established the Immediate Intervention/
Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP) to offer voluntary
assistance to low-performing schools. In 2001, the High Priority
Schools Program (HPSP) was established to provide additional
assistance to the lowest-performing schools, taking the place of
the II/USP. In 2005, the Department of Education (CDE)
contracted with the American Institutes for Research to examine
the implementation, impact, costs, and benefits of HPSP. It was
found that, on average, HPSP schools showed gains in student
performance during the period of program implementation;
however, the effect of HPSP itself was found to be negligible.
Schools that participated in II/USP or HPSP, and failed to show
significant API growth, may be designated for state monitoring.
Once a school is placed under state monitoring, a number of
interventions are possible, including, but not limited to,
closing or reorganizing the school or allowing parents to apply
to the SBE to become a charter school. The most common
intervention, however, has been to require the district to enter
into a contract with a School Assistance Intervention Team
(SAIT) on behalf of the school. The SAIT provider is responsible
for assessing the school and assisting the school with
implementing a corrective action plan. A 2008 evaluation found
that "the SAIT program is effective in helping low-performing
schools improve classroom instruction and student achievement.
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Longitudinal analysis of API and STAR data over a seven-year
period showed that student achievement in SAIT schools
improved." A SAIT is often the outside entity selected by an
LEA to manage the school in order to meet PI Year 5
restructuring requirements.
In remarks made to the National Alliance for Public Charter
Schools Conference in late June of this year, U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan said that, "I want to focus on the
challenge of turning around our chronically low-achieving
schools. These schools have failed to make progress year after
year." He went on to provide a litany of "horrific" situations
in schools that he has seen in different areas around the
country. He also noted that, "States and districts have a legal
obligation to hold administrators and teachers accountable,
demand change and, where necessary, compel it. They have a moral
obligation to do the right thing for those children - no matter
how painful and unpleasant. Yet, few districts in America have
risen to the challenge." The Secretary said, "At a minimum, for
a turnaround to succeed you have to change the school culture.
In most cases, simply replacing the principal is not enough. We
want transformation - not tinkering. We have four basic models
in mind.", and went on to identify his four models of school
restructuring - two of which are consistent with the
restructuring options that identified schools would be required
to implement under this bill.
This bill makes four major proposals; the bill:
1)Establishes a new advisory committee and a process that
results in the SPI and SBE jointly designating ten identified
schools
2)Reinforces federal requirements on the SPI and SBE with
respect to ensuring that the LEAs responsible for the
oversight of an identified school, since those schools are by
definition in PI status, are meeting federal NCLB notification
requirements associated with schools in that status.
3)Requires the SPI and SBE to direct each of the LEAs
responsible for the oversight of an identified school to
evaluate the reasons for the designation of its identified
school, and to direct those LEAs to approve at least one of
three restructuring options (taken from the five alternatives
allowed under NCLB) to be implemented in that school. The
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three options include: i) reopen the school as a charter
school, ii) replace all or most of the school staff, or iii)
enter into a contract with a private management company to
operate the school.
4)Requires the CDE to contract for an independent evaluation of
the program, and sunsets these provisions on July 1, 2016.
Of the four, the most substantive proposal is 3). This proposal
will require restructuring of the identified school using an
alternative chosen from options that are more limited than those
available under the NCLB restructuring requirements placed on PI
Year 5 schools This bill will also require the implementation
of that restructuring plan to occur at the same time that it
would have under NCLB, in a year that is earlier than what would
have been required under NCLB, or in a year sometime after the
district has already implemented a PI Year 5 restructuring plan
- this timing will depend on what PI Year a school is in when it
is designated as an identified school and whether that school
remains in the same PI Year in the subsequent school year. It
is also possible that an identified school is required under
this bill to implement a restructuring plan, even though it
exits PI status in a subsequent year.
While the basic premise of the bill, that failing schools need
to be reformed, is incontrovertible, specific proposals in this
bill do raise some concerns.
1)Previous programs of school reform that have been enacted by
the Legislature have set the criteria and conditions under
which schools or districts would be eligible or required to
participate. These criteria and conditions have generally
revolved around API (test) scores or proxies for the level of
poverty among families with children in the school (e.g.,
Title I, or National School Lunch Program eligibility. This
bill does not set those criteria and conditions, but instead
establishes a more open-ended selection process where a new
advisory committee makes recommendations to the SPI, who in
turn makes recommendations to the SBE; the SPI and SBE
ultimately have joint approval authority over setting these
criteria and conditions. The only constraints on this
decision are that the schools are required to currently or
likely be subject to restructuring under NCLB in the next
school year, and that identification of schools may otherwise
be based on "other objective data."
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2)Consistent criticism from both researchers and education
practitioners over the past fifteen years has been aimed at
the perpetually changing nature of both the state's testing
program and its accountability programs. These critics
suggest that reform efforts are difficult to sustain when the
targets, as well as the requirements and restrictions on what
actions may be taken to work toward those targets, are
constantly being moved by policy changes. The proposals in
this bill may be viewed as another set of mid-stream policy
changes. This may be particularly problematic given the
upheaval in schools and districts brought on by the state's
fiscal situation.
3)This bill proposes state requirements that, in a number of
ways, either exceed or limit requirements specified in the
federal accountability program defined under NCLB. The bill:
a) Potentially requires schools to undertake restructuring
earlier than would be the case under federal law, since
schools that are "likely be subject to restructuring" under
NCLB "in the subsequent school year" may become identified
schools, and other identified schools may be directed to
approve a restructuring plan a year prior to that
requirement under federal law.
b) Potentially places an identified school that is beyond
PI Year 5 in the position of being required to implement a
second, and possibly different, restructuring plan than was
implemented at the school when the school reached PI Year
5. This creates a sort of "double jeopardy" for the school
that may be confusing or otherwise conflict with ongoing
reform efforts.
c) Limits the choices that identified schools have, with
respect to locally determining a restructuring plan, to a
narrower set of options than is defined by federal law.
Current federal law allows schools in PI Year 5 to select
one of five governance alternatives in order to satisfy the
NCLB's restructuring requirement, this bill requires
identified schools to implement at least one of three of
those options: i) reopen the school as a charter school,
ii) replace all or most of the school staff, or iii) enter
into a contract with a private management company to
operate the school; the bill removes the local choice for
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state takeover, or "any other major restructuring" (the
most often selected option for PI Year 5 schools, according
to the CDE).
4)Any proposal in this bill that creates LEA requirements that
exceed or differ from federal law (see particularly 3) above)
creates the potential for state mandated local costs that
would be required to be reimbursed by the state. Legislative
Counsel has keyed this bill as fiscal and as creating state
mandated local costs.
5)The bill also creates costs at the state level by creating a
new advisory committee and imposing new activities on the SPI,
CDE, and SBE. In this time of serious fiscal issues facing
the state and given the likely fiscal impact of this bill, it
is not clear that the benefits of the policy changes proposed
outweigh the fiscal problems facing the state in the near
term.
Upon passage in this Committee, this bill will be re-referred to
the Assembly Committee on Appropriations; fiscal concerns, such
as those raised in 4) and 5) above, would be examined in that
committee. Opponents of the bill have raised other concerns
related to the composition of the new advisory committee, the
lack of an exit provision from the program, qualifications of
any private management company selected to operate a school, and
the duplication of efforts with current federal law.
Previous legislation: AB 519 (Assembly Committee on Budget),
Chapter 757, Statutes of 2008, a trailer bill to the Budget Act
of 2008, provides statutory authority to allocate $112.7 million
in federal funds through the establishment of a funding formula
for LEAs in PI status and facing corrective actions under NCLB;
also authorizes the CDE and SBE to develop objective criteria by
which a LEA identified for corrective action and subject to a
sanction is to be evaluated to determine the pervasiveness and
severity of its problems, the type of sanction to be imposed,
and the level of grant to be funded. AB 953 (Coto), Chapter
513, Statutes of 2005, amends the State program to support LEAs
and schools in PI. AB 2066 (Steinberg), Chapter 579, Statutes
of 2004, provides additional funding to school districts for
schools identified for PI and revises the provisions required
for a low-performing school to exit HPSP. AB 312
(Strom-Martin), Chapter 1020, Statutes of 2002, establishes
the School System of School Support (S4) and allocates federal
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and state funding for the purposes of school sanctions related
to II/USP and federal law. SB 1 X1 (Alpert), Chapter 3, 1st
1999 Extraordinary Session, establishes the Public School
Performance Accountability Program that would apply to all
schools, and defines the API.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
EdVoice (sponsor)
Opposition
Association of California School Administrators
California School Boards Association
California Teachers Association
Californians Together (unless amended)
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087