BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 532
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ASSEMBLY THIRD READING
AB 532 (V. Manuel Pérez)
As Amended May 27, 2011
Majority vote
EDUCATION 7-3 APPROPRIATIONS 12-5
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|Ayes:|Brownley, Ammiano, |Ayes:|Fuentes, Blumenfield, |
| |Buchanan, Bonilla, | |Bradford, Charles |
| |Carter, Eng, Williams | |Calderon, Campos, Davis, |
| | | |Gatto, Hall, Hill, Lara, |
| | | |Mitchell, Solorio |
| | | | |
|-----+--------------------------+-----+--------------------------|
|Nays:|Norby, Hagman, Halderman |Nays:|Harkey, Donnelly, |
| | | |Nielsen, Norby, Wagner |
| | | | |
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SUMMARY : Modifies California's public school assessment and
accountability system with respect to English Learner (EL)
pupils, commencing July 1, 2012. Specifically, this bill
requires:
1)Any primary language assessment developed and administered
pursuant to current law, and the results of that assessment,
to be included in the state assessment system, the federal and
state accountability system, and any successor assessment or
accountability systems, for all limited English proficient
(LEP) students who receive instruction in their primary
language, or have been enrolled in U.S. schools for less than
12 months.
2)The Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), if California
joins a national testing consortium as a governing state, to
recommend to the consortium that a state assessment system
include modifications to eliminate linguistic complexity, to
the extent practicable.
3)Any advisory committee, work group, task force or technical
assistance group required by the Legislature or Governor, or
established by the SPI for the purposes of providing
recommendations on future state assessment, or state or
federal accountability systems, to determine how to accomplish
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specified tasks related to 1) and 2) above, as well as to
reporting and disaggregating comprehensive EL data. Also
specifies that any group specified above includes persons with
demonstrated expertise in assessment of or research on EL
pupils.
4)California's state assessments to be valid, reliable, and
comparable for LEP students and students with disabilities,
and that accommodations for those students be provided
pursuant to the core state assurances provided by the state
under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
5)The state's primary language assessments meet the technical
requirements, with respect to validity, reliability and
comparability, in the standards jointly developed by the
American Psychological Association, American Educational
Research Association, and National Council on Measurement in
Education; also requires the test development contractor to
report to the SBE in writing as to how those technical
requirements are met.
EXISTING LAW requires, under the federal No Child Left Behind
Act and state law, the implementation of a statewide
accountability system based on state standards in reading and
mathematics, annual testing for all students in specified
grades, including primary language content tests as specified,
and annual statewide progress objectives and measures.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Assembly Appropriations
Committee, General Fund, Proposition 98 administrative cost
pressure, likely between $200,000 and $500,000 to the California
Department of Education (CDE) to modify state and federal
accountability systems, as specified.
COMMENTS : California's state assessment program is comprised
of three major testing components, including the STAR Program,
which requires the English language California Standards Tests
(CST) in English language arts, mathematics, science and
history/social science at specified grade levels, and includes
the Standards-based Tests in Spanish (STS). The STS 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 U.S. less than 12 months or who are receiving
instruction in Spanish. Results for STAR tests are reported for
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the individual pupil, but no accountability attaches to these
individual results; metrics used in the state and federal
accountability systems are primarily based on the aggregated
STAR test scores from all pupils in a school or school district.
For example, the results of the English language content
achievement tests are incorporated into the Academic Performance
Index (API) to measure the overall performance of schools and
school districts; no other information, including STS results,
is included in the API.
The primary result of this bill is to mediate the invalid
practice of making decisions, where educational stakes for a
pupil, school or district are involved, on the sole basis of
content tests that are administered to pupils who do not fully
understand the language in which the test is written. Even
though the STAR CSTs are meant to be pure content (e.g.,
mathematics, science, history social studies) tests and the
scores are intended to reflect the pupil's understanding of that
content, for pupils with limited English language skills the
CSTs measure something more than the pupil's abilities in those
content areas; clearly an EL pupil's test scores would reflect
both the pupil's understanding of those content areas, and the
pupil's ability to read and understand the language in which the
test and test directions were written. 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). 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 proposes to address this issue by improving the
state's primary language tests and increasing the information
composited into accountability measures (e.g., API) by including
primary language content test results, and by reducing
linguistic complexity and requiring testing accommodations on
English language content tests so as to reduce the effect of
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language differences on the test scores of EL students.
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087
FN: 0001099