BILL ANALYSIS
SB 930
Page 1
SENATE THIRD READING
SB 930 (Ducheny)
As Amended August 16, 2010
Majority vote
SENATE VOTE :23-13
EDUCATION 6-1 APPROPRIATIONS 12-5
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|Ayes:|Brownley, Ammiano, |Ayes:|Fuentes, Bradford, |
| |Arambula, Carter, Eng, | |Huffman, Coto, Davis, De |
| |Torlakson | |Leon, Gatto, Hall, |
| | | |Skinner, Solorio, |
| | | |Torlakson, Torrico |
| | | | |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
|Nays:|Miller |Nays:|Conway, Harkey, Miller, |
| | | |Nielsen, Norby |
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SUMMARY : Modifies California's public school assessment and
accountability system with respect to English Learner (EL)
pupils, including expanding the number of limited English
proficient (LEP) students who are tested on the state's content
standards in their primary language, and other changes related
to the testing of EL pupils and inclusion of their test scores
in accountability measures. Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes Legislative findings and declarations regarding the
Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) program, other
assessments, accountability, and the testing of EL pupils.
2)Requires that any primary language assessment developed on or
after July 1, 2013, and the results of that primary language
assessment for LEP students who receive instruction in their
primary language, who are identified as literate by the
primary language assessment and have been enrolled in U.S.
schools for less than three consecutive years, or who are
enrolled in public school dual language immersion programs, be
included and used for the purposes of the state assessment
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system, the federal and state accountability system, and any
successor assessment or accountability systems.
3)Requires that any successor to the state assessment system
adopted on or after July 1, 2013, modify, based upon research
designed to maintain the rigor of the test, the California
Standards Test in order to eliminate linguistic complexity and
include test accommodations for English learners, including
repetition of test directions, and a glossary and translations
of test directions provided by the California Department of
Education (CDE).
4)Requires that an advisory committee, work group, task force or
technical assistance group required by the Legislature or
Governor, or established by the Superintendent of Public
Instruction (SPI) for the purposes of providing
recommendations on future state assessment, or state or
federal accountability systems provide recommendations to the
SPI and the State Board of Education (SBE) on 2) and 3) above,
as well as on reporting and disaggregating comprehensive EL
data. Also specifies that the advisory committee has a
majority membership of individuals with expertise in
assessment of or research on EL pupils.
5)Requires that the state's primary language assessments meet
the technical requirements, with respect to validity,
reliability and comparability, as specified by the National
Council on Measurement in Education, and that the test
development contractor report to the SBE on how those
requirements are met.
6)Establishes an operative date of July 1, 2013 for these
provisions.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires a LEP pupil, who is enrolled in grades 2 through 11
to take a test in his or her primary language if a test is
available, and if fewer than 12 months have elapsed after his
or her initial enrollment in any public or nonpublic school in
the state or if the pupil receives instruction in his or her
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primary language; the Standards-based Tests in Spanish (STS)
are currently available for this purpose.
2)Requires each school district that has one or more EL pupils,
to assess each pupil's English language development in order
to determine the level of proficiency within 30 calendar days
after the pupil's initial enrollment, and annually,
thereafter, until the pupil is redesignated as English
proficient; also requires the CDE with the approval of the SBE
to establish procedures for conducting English language
proficiency assessments and for the reclassification of a
pupil from LEP to proficient in English; the California
English Language development Test (CELDT) is the assessment
designated for this purpose.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee;
1)Annual General Fund Proposition 98 (GF/98) state assessment
apportionment costs, beginning in 2013, of approximately
$200,000 to school districts to administer a primary language
assessment. This cost may be reduced if pupils enrolled in a
dual language immersion program take this assessment, since
the measure requires school districts implementing such
programs to pay for the assessment.
2)Beginning in 2013, annual GF/98 administrative costs, likely
less than $100,000, to CDE to provide school districts with
bilingual glossaries and translated test directions, as
specified.
COMMENTS : According to the author, "Current law requires
English learners enrolled in grades 2 through 11, to take an
achievement test in his or her primary language if instructed in
their primary language or if enrolled in public school in the
United States for less than 12 months. The primary language
achievement test is in addition to the achievement tests in
English." The author also correctly states that under current
law and practice, "Only scores of the English achievement tests
are included in the calculation of the Academic Performance
Index and in the Adequate Yearly Performance. After 12 months of
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enrollment, an English learner not instructed in their primary
language is required to take the academic test only in English.
Additionally, only minimal accommodations have been made
available to English learners taking the achievement tests in
English." The author's stated intent of this bill is to
"establish an accountability system that would provide accurate
information regarding the academic performance of students who
are English learners."
California's state assessment program is comprised of three
major testing components, the Standardized Testing and Reporting
(STAR) Program, the CELDT, and a high school exit examination
(the California High School Exit Examination, CAHSEE, is
currently the designated high school exit examination). The
program also includes a number of smaller, more specialized
assessments. The STAR Program includes the STS, which are
Spanish language tests in reading-language arts and mathematics
that are administered to Spanish speaking English learners who
have been in school in the United States less than 12 months or
who are receiving instruction in Spanish. STAR results are
reported for the individual pupil, but no accountability
attaches to these individual results; metrics used in the state
and federal accountability systems (e.g., the academic
performance index (API) and adequate yearly progress (AYP) are
primarily based on aggregated STAR test scores from all pupils
in a school or school district but do not include STS results.
The fundamental question posed by this bill is whether it is
appropriate to make decisions, where educational stakes for a
pupil, school or district are involved, on the sole basis of
content tests that are administered to pupils that do not fully
understand the language in which the test is written. That
question may be answered by a hypothetical example. If there
were a grade 6 mathematics test written in Japanese kanji
(characters), that test would look very different from its
English version. There would be similarities, since modern
mathematics has developed a fairly universal set of standard
notations and most of the world has adopted Arabic numbers and
Greek letters for the purposes of mathematics, but the test
would clearly be different in terms of the test directions and
the text-based stem of any question (particularly in the word
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problems that frequent grade 6 mathematics). If that test were
administered to a non-Japanese reading pupil, then that pupil
would be able to engage in some parts of the test (the numbers
and symbols might be familiar) but clearly would be unable to
show the depth of his or her understanding and abilities in
mathematics. Even though the content of the test is meant to be
purely mathematics and the score is intended to reflect that,
for this pupil it would be a test of something more than
mathematics; clearly the test score would reflect both the
pupil's understanding of mathematics and the pupil's ability to
read and understand the language in which the test was written.
This example is analogous to the situation faced by an EL
student who is administered a content-based test written in
English; the score may have some information about the pupil's
understanding or abilities with respect to the content of the
test, but that information is confounded by the fact that the
test score will also reflect the pupil's lack of understanding
of the language in which the test was written. If the testing
was not explicitly designed to separate out a content score from
a language score (to the extent that would be possible), then it
would not be possible to determine what the student knows and
can do in the content area. Thus decisions, including those
concerning instruction, retention, promotion or graduation, made
about that pupil using judgments about the pupil's knowledge and
ability in that content area derived from a content test written
in a language in which the pupil has limited fluency may very
well be flawed. This problem follows the pupil's test score as
it is aggregated up into scores at the school, district and
other levels, and will also be present in any other metric that
includes the test score (e.g., API, AYP). This would
particularly present problems for aggregate scores and measures
in schools or districts with very high proportions of EL pupils,
and for any educational decisions that involve high stakes
(e.g., graduation for the individual, or sanctions and
interventions for the school or district).
This bill addresses this test validity problem by improving the
state's primary language tests and expanding the number students
to whom the tests are administered, increasing the information
composited into the API and AYP by including primary language
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content test results, and reducing linguistic complexity and
requiring testing accommodations on English language content
tests so as to reduce the effect of language differences on the
test scores of EL students.
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0006113