BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Gloria Romero, Chair
2009-2010 Regular Session
BILL NO: SB 1301
AUTHOR: Simitian
INTRODUCED: February 19, 2010
FISCAL COMM: Yes HEARING DATE: April 14, 2010
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT:Kathleen Chavira
SUBJECT : Student Records
KEY POLICY ISSUE
Should a student's permanent record be required to include
a unique pupil identifier?
SUMMARY
This bill requires the State Board of Education (SBE) to
ensure that permanent pupil records include a unique pupil
identifier in order to achieve specified outcomes.
BACKGROUND
Current law requires school districts to establish,
maintain, and destroy pupil records according to
regulations adopted by the State Board of Education (SBE).
Among other things, these regulations are to establish
state policy as to what items of information shall be
placed into pupil records. (Education Code 49062)
ANALYSIS
This bill requires the SBE to ensure that permanent pupil
records include a unique pupil identifier in order to:
1) Improve the quality of statewide longitudinal data.
2) Enable local educational agencies to readily determine
the unique identity of pupils upon their enrollment.
3) Better enable the linking of cross-segmental data
within a P-20 data warehouse.
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STAFF COMMENTS
1) Need for the bill . According to the author, ongoing
California efforts, existing California law, and
assurances provided to secure funding from
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), all
support the need to link K-12 and higher education
records. Currently, information about students in
California's public education system is collected and
stored in as many as 150 separate data systems. While
these data systems provide very useful information
with respect to specific segments, there is a need to
bring this information together in a manner that
allows for tracking student achievement from preschool
through university (P-20) in order to evaluate program
outcomes and to ensure the best use of limited
education dollars. According to the author, this bill
provides an efficient and effective means of linking
K-12 records with higher education by ensuring that
the unique student identifier is maintained in the
permanent pupil record.
2) Permanent Pupil Record . Each school district is
required to maintain indefinitely all mandatory
permanent pupil records or an exact copy thereof for
every pupil who was enrolled in a school program
within the district, and to forward the record, or a
copy, upon request of the public or private school in
which the student is enrolling. The permanent pupil
record must include; the pupil's legal name, date of
birth, method of verification of the birth date, sex,
place of birth, name and address of the parent of a
minor pupil (and address of pupil if different as well
as annual verification of parent name and address and
pupil residence)
entering and leaving dates of each school year, summer
session or other extra session, subjects taken during
each year, half-year, summer session, or quarter, the
mark or number of credits toward graduation allowed
for work taken, verification of or exemption from
required immunizations, and date of high school
graduation or equivalent. These elements of the
Permanent Pupil Record are defined in the California
Code of Regulations, Title 5, Section 432 (b)(1).
This bill would additionally require the inclusion of
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a unique student identifier in the Permanent Pupil
Record maintained by school districts.
3) Related state activity . The importance of a unique
student identifier and the need to link information
across a P-20 network has been reinforced through
several legislatively directed efforts, including:
SB 1453 (Alpert, Chapter 1002, Statutes of
2002) authorized the
creation of the California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System (CALPADS) to provide
school districts and CDE with the data necessary
to comply with federal reporting requirements
under No Child Left Behind. The bill required
that a unique pupil identifier be assigned to
each K-12 student enrolled in a California public
school.
SB 1298 (Simitian, Chapter 561, Statutes of
2008), the Education Data and Information Act of
2008, established a process by which local
education agencies and public institutions of
higher education issue, maintain, and report
information using the unique statewide student
identifiers required under current law. The bill
among other things, required the State Chief
Information Officer (CIO) to
convene a working group to create a strategic
plan to link education data systems from all
segments.
SB 19 (Simitian, Chapter 159, Statutes of
2009) added an additional issue, to identify
specific procedures and policies that would
facilitate the sharing and transfer of data from
one segment to another and ultimately to include
linkages to workforce data, to the strategic plan
being created by the CIO working group
established by SB 1298 (Simitian, 2008). It also
authorized the use of federal grant funds,
received pursuant to the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and provided for
statewide data systems, to fund the activities
required of the CIO working group.
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SBX5 2 (Simitian, Chapter 1, Statutes of
2010), among other things, declared the
Legislature's intent to create a preschool
through higher education (P-20) statewide
longitudinal educational data system in order to
inform education policy and improve instruction
and to be used for state-level research to
improve instruction and to require the State
Department of Education, the Commission on
Teacher Credentialing, the California Community
Colleges, the University of California, the
California State University, and any other state
education agency to be required to disclose, or
redisclose, personally identifiable pupil records
to this P-20 system.
1) Related national efforts. The need for a unique
student identifier and the ability to link student
information across a P-20 network is the focus of
several current national efforts. These include:
The Data Quality Campaign (DQC), created in
2005, is a national, collaborative effort to
encourage and support education policymakers to
improve the collection, availability and use of
data and to implement state longitudinal data
systems to improve student achievement. For the
past four years, the DQC's annual survey has
tracked state progress in implementing the 10
Essential Elements to ensure that policymakers
and educators have the longitudinal data systems
capable of providing timely, valid and relevant
data to inform decisions. According to the DQC,
California currently meets 8 of the 10 essential
elements. One of the unmet elements is the
ability to match P-12 student-level data to
higher education data.
The federal America COMPETES Act of 2007
codified the twelve elements of a P-16 education
data system and among other things, requires a
unique student identifier and the capacity to
communicate with higher education data systems.
Additionally it requires the use of system data
to inform policy and practice to
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better align State standards and curricula with
the demands of postsecondary education, the
workforce and the Armed Forces.
In 2009, the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA) required states, as a
condition of receiving State Fiscal Stabilization
Funds (SFSF), to provide, among other things,
assurances regarding "Improving collection and
use of data." More specifically, states were
required to provide an assurance that they would
establish a longitudinal data system that
included the 12 elements described in the America
COMPETES Act. California, in return for its
receipt of SFSF funds, is obligated to provide a
certain amount of data reporting to the federal
government that relies on the linkage of P-20
data.
The Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems
(SLDS) grant program, authorized by the federal
Educational Technical Assistance Act of 2002, is
designed to aid state education agencies in
developing and implementing longitudinal data
systems. AARA provided $245 million for the SLDS
grant program to be awarded in 2010.
California's grant proposal includes a request
for $20 million to fund various data related
activities. However, the bulk of funding is
proposed to be used to create a longitudinal P-20
education data warehouse. The recipients of
these awards are expected to be announced in
April or May of 2010.
In 2009, the federal Department of Education
issued an invitation to the states to compete for
approximately $4.35 billion of ARRA one-time
funding as Race to the Top (RTTT) grants to be
distributed in two phases. Among other things,
the RTTT applications required demonstration of
an assurance regarding the creation of data
systems to measure student success and support
instruction. California was not among the
winners in the first phase of grants awarded in
March 2010. Among the reviewer comments on a
number of elements of the California application,
it was noted that California reports that it
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currently only had 3 of the 12 America COMPETES
Act elements in place in its longitudinal data
system.
SUPPORT
Bay Area Council
Children Now
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California
OPPOSITION
None received.