BILL ANALYSIS Ó
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
AB 532 (V. Perez)
Hearing Date: 08/25/2011 Amended: 08/15/2011
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 6-2
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 532 modifies the state's assessment and
accountability system as it pertains to English learner
students, beginning July 1, 2012.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 Fund
English learner assessments ---Substantial cost
pressure--- General
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STAFF COMMENTS: SUSPENSE FILE. AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED.
Existing law establishes the Standardized Testing and Reporting
(STAR) Program to measure the degree to which pupils are meeting
the state's academic content and performance standards. The STAR
Program consists of the California Standards Tests (CSTs); the
California Modified Assessment (CMA) for students with
disabilities in grades 3-8; the California Alternate Performance
Assessment (CAPA) for students with disabilities in grades K-11;
and the Standards-based Tests in Spanish (STS).
Existing law requires Spanish-speaking English learners enrolled
in grades 2 through 11 who receive instruction in their primary
language or who have been enrolled in public school in the
United States for less than 12 months to take the STS. Students
who take the STS are also required to take the CSTs and/or CMA
appropriate to their grade level. School districts have the
option of administering the STS to Spanish-speaking English
learners who have been in school in the United States 12 or more
months or who are not receiving instruction in Spanish.
AB 532 (V. Perez)
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Existing law also provides for the statewide pupil assessment
program (which includes the STAR program) to become inoperative
on July 1, 2013, and expresses the intent of the Legislature
that the reauthorization of the statewide pupil assessment
system include specified elements, including a plan for
transitioning to a system of high-quality assessments. Existing
law further establishes an Academic Content Standards Commission
to develop academic content standards in language arts and
mathematics that will be internationally benchmarked and at
least 85% the same as the national standards being developed by
the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
This bill requires, if California joins a national testing
consortium as a governing state, that the SPI recommend that a
state assessment system include modifications to achievement
tests to eliminate linguistic complexity, as specified.
California has recently become a governing state in the Smarter
Balance national testing consortium, and Department of Education
(CDE) staff support the SPI in those duties. There would be no
additional costs for the SPI to make this bill's recommendation
to the consortium; however, there is no guarantee that the
consortium would agree to research and design modifications or
to adopt any modifications proposed by the SPI (presumably done
at the CDE's expense).
This bill also requires any successor system to the STAR to
include accommodations and modifications for English learner
students, as determined by the SPI, in consultation with persons
with specified experience. The bill further requires that any
primary language assessment be included in the state's
assessment system or any successor system and in any measure or
index used for state and federal accountability purposes.
Additionally, this bill requires primary language assessments
developed pursuant to the bill's provisions to meet requirements
regarding validity, reliability, and comparability as specified
by testing standards developed by specified testing and research
organizations and requires the contractor chosen to develop the
assessment to report to the SPI and State Board of Education as
to how these requirements were met.
Those requirements force, even in the absence of the Smarter
Balance consortium agreement or resources, the SPI to change the
AB 532 (V. Perez)
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way in which English learners are assessed, and to develop a
system for including primary language assessments and their
scores in the states assessment system. The testing requirements
would create CDE costs to go it alone, in the absence of
consortium support. The Smarter Balance consortium has no
immediate plans to adopt the suggested Reading/ELA
modifications. It does, however, plan to translate math
assessments into Spanish, which would fulfill part of the bill's
requirements.
This bill specifies the recommendations for the course of action
will be completed by "any advisory committee, work group, task
force, or technical assistance group that is existence on or
after" its operative date related to future assessment systems.
The CDE has an existing committee working on future assessment
considerations, and this new workload would likely be assumed by
that committee.
The cost of incorporating modifications, and changing the use of
primary language assessments in the successor assessment system
will ultimately be determined by the modifications and
implementation path chosen. The CDE has identified potential
additional costs for reapportionment to districts because of the
larger pool of students required to take the STS, as well as to
provide modifications such as word-to-word glossaries that would
be developed and issued to test takers. The CDE also identifies
costs to align the assessments to the state's academic content
standards, and for score reporting and calculation. Under
existing law, the CDE will incur substantial costs to change its
assessment system to account for the curriculum change to Common
Core in the near future. The activities of the national testing
consortium are still being determined, and it is likely that at
least some of the tasks required by this bill could be carried
out through the consortium, which will receive federal funding.
AS PROPOSED TO BE AMENDED: Proposed amendments would reduce the
authority of the advisory committee to making recommendations.
Proposed amendments would eliminate test modifications.