BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 180
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CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 180 (Carter)
As Amended September 2, 2011
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |60-0 |(April 14, |SENATE: |35-0 |(September 7, |
| | |2011) | | |2011) |
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Original Committee Reference: ED.
SUMMARY : Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction
(SPI) and the State Board of Education (SBE) to allow dropout
recovery high schools (DRHS), numbering no more than 10, to
report the results of an individual pupil growth model, that the
SPI certifies as meeting specified criteria, in lieu of other
indicators under the state's alternative accountability system.
The Senate amendments :
1)Clarify that these provisions are implemented as part of the
alternative school accountability system developed pursuant to
current law, or any successor system;
2)Delete legislative findings and declarations specified in the
bill; and,
3)Limit the provisions of the bill to no more than 10 DRHS.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the SPI, with the approval of the SBE, to develop and
implement the Academic Performance Index (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, with the approval of the state board, to
develop an alternative accountability system that may be used
for schools under the jurisdiction of a county board of
education or a county superintendent of schools, community day
schools, nonpublic, nonsectarian schools, and alternative
schools serving high-risk pupils, including continuation high
schools and opportunity schools; also, authorizes schools in
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this alternative accountability system to receive an API
score, but prohibits the inclusion of those schools in API
rankings.
3)Defines DRHS, for the purposes of prohibiting the inclusion of
graduation rates in the API and for calculating "full year"
dropout rates, to mean a high school in which 50% or more of
its pupils have been designated as dropouts pursuant to the
exit/withdrawal codes developed by the California Department
of Education (CDE).
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill was substantially similar
to the version passed by the Senate, except for limiting the
provisions to no more than 10 DRHS.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, the CDE review and certification required by this
bill creates potentially significant general fund start-up
costs, as well as ongoing costs that will depend upon the number
of schools that develop and propose individual pupil growth
models.
COMMENTS : Current law requires the SPI to develop and
administer the school accountability system which assigns each
school a score on the API that is based on measures of
performance that are aggregated for all students in that school.
Only achievement test results are currently incorporated into
the API; however, having an API that focuses solely on
achievement test results is overly narrow and does not reflect
information about student outcomes (e.g., dropout and graduation
rates, college readiness, preparation for the workplace) that is
important in measuring the performance of districts, schools and
subgroups. The Legislature foresaw this issue when it
authorized the API in 1999 to be a broad-based measure of school
and district performance based on a variety of indicators,
including, but not limited to, achievement test results,
attendance rates, and graduation rates.
Since the reliability of an API score based on small numbers of
pupil test scores is questionable, current law instructs the SPI
to compute an API score for schools with less than 100 pupil
scores, but to not include the school's API in state rankings.
Similarly, the API scores of community schools, continuation
high schools and non-public schools that serve special education
pupils are not considered reliable due to both small numbers of
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scores and the fact that most pupils are placed in the schools
for less than a year. Accordingly, the SPI is directed in
current law to develop an alternative accountability system
under which these schools may receive an API score, but are not
included in API rankings. The Alternative Schools
Accountability Model (ASAM) is the alternative system developed
by the SPI for this purpose.
However, even the alternative accountability system may not
appropriately evaluate all schools. The DRHS targeted in this
bill are small in number and have a student population
(effectively dropouts who are re-enrolling in an alternative
school and jobs program) that is relatively unique, even among
alternative school populations. For example, rapid turnover of
pupil populations and short stays by students are common across
many alternative programs, but DRHS typically have students who
will enroll and dis-enroll through multiple cycles during the
school year; the instructional program is also individually
tailored to help speed-up the pupil's progress toward completion
of the program in the short time that they may be enrolled.
Between small populations, enrollment cycling and tailored
instruction, any measure that either provides a point-in-time
snapshot of student performance or that is aggregated across a
cohort of students may have absolutely no meaning with respect
to the school's student population at the time that the results
of that measure are reported, since those results may not apply
to any of the pupils enrolled in the school at that time. In
these cases measuring the growth of individual pupils without
aggregating those results and building an accountability model
that is individually based and tailored to that school, rather
than based on the aggregate performance of a cohort of pupils,
may more appropriately reflect the progress that a DRHS is
making. The state does not have such a tailored individual
growth model for each school, and building such models at the
state level would not be cost effective; a reasonable solution
to this problem is to authorize this small group of schools to
report pupil results from their own individual pupil-based
accountability model in lieu of other required indicators, while
conditioning that authority on the SPI's certification of the
individual growth model and limiting this authority to no more
than 10 DRHS.
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0002558
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