BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 532
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CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS
AB 532 (V. Manuel Pérez)
As Amended August 30, 2011
Majority vote
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|ASSEMBLY: |51-26|(June 2, 2011) |SENATE: |23-15|(September 1, |
| | | | | |2011) |
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Original Committee Reference: ED.
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 considered for inclusion 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)Any advisory committee, work group, task force or technical
assistance group after July 1, 2012, that is either required
by the Legislature or Governor, or established by the
Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) or State Board of
Education to provide recommendations on future state
assessment, or state or federal accountability systems, to
determine how to accomplish specified tasks related to 1)
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.
3)California's state assessments to be valid, reliable, and
comparable for LEP students and students with disabilities,
and that accommodations and variations for those students be
provided pursuant to the core state assurances provided by the
state under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009.
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4)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.
The Senate amendments :
1)Clarify that any advisory group specified in 2) above be in
existence after July 1, 2012;
2)Delete the requirement that the SPI recommend to any national
assessment consortium that California joins as a governing
member, that state assessment systems include modifications to
eliminate linguistic complexity, to the extent practicable;
and,
3)Require any primary language test "be considered for
inclusion" in the state's assessment and accountability
systems, rather than require such test to "be included."
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.
AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill was substantially similar
to the version passed by the Senate, but placed stronger
requirements on the use of primary language assessment results.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, substantial General Fund cost pressure, related to
changing the use of primary language assessments in the
successor assessment system and California Department of
Education workload.
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), Spanish language
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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
each pupil, but no accountability attaches to 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 open the possibility, if
primary language assessments are incorporated into
accountability systems, of mediating 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 particularly
presents 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
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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 requiring testing
accommodations and variations on those 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: 0002568