BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
AB 1521 (Brownley) - Standardized Testing.
Amended: June 6, 2012 Policy Vote: Education 6-0
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: June 25, 2012
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-Hernandez
This bill may meet the criteria for referral to the Suspense
File.
Bill Summary: AB 1521 authorizes the administration of a primary
language assessment to pupils enrolled in dual immersion
programs who are not limited English proficient, and authorizes
the state Department of Education (CDE) to make a primary
language assessment available to those schools, as specified.
This bill also eliminates several high school level standardized
tests.
Fiscal Impact:
Primary language assessment: Significant General Fund cost
pressure, which may be offset by fees, if the CDE elects to
make tests available.
End-of-course (EOC) exam elimination: $880,000 in annual
General Fund and federal funds savings resulting from the
elimination of contracts related to developing end-of-course
exams.
Background:
Primary language assessment: Existing law requires the CDE to
develop and adopt primary language assessments that are aligned
to the state academic content standards for reading/language
arts and mathematics. The primary language assessments developed
pursuant to this statute are the Standards-Based Tests in
Spanish (STS). (EC � 60640 (f)(3))
Dual immersion programs, which are operated by both school
districts and charter schools throughout California, integrate
language minority students (English learners) and language
majority students (English speakers) to develop bilingualism and
biliteracy in English and another language. These programs are
optional; students are not automatically enrolled in a dual
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immersion program or school as a "neighborhood school". Parents
of English learners must sign yearly waivers of consent prior to
placement of their child in a dual immersion program. The two
most common program models are the 50/50 and the 90/10 models.
Both English and the target language are used 50 percent of the
time during the entire program in a 50/50 model. English is used
for a minimum of ten percent of the time beginning in
kindergarten, and the percentage increases annually until both
English and the target language are used equally in a 90/10
model. In both models, instruction is delivered in the two
languages; however, only one language at a time is used for
instruction.
Consistent with existing law requiring pupils in grades 2-11 to
be part of the
Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program, English
speakers in dual immersion programs participate in the STAR. The
STAR Program requires pupils to be tested in English language
arts, math, science and history-social science at specific grade
levels. The STAR Program includes the California Standards Tests
(CSTs), the California Alternate Performance Assessment and the
California Modified Assessment administered to certain pupils
with disabilities, and a primary language assessment.
Existing law requires the CDE to develop and adopt primary
language assessments that are aligned to the state academic
content standards for reading/language arts and mathematics. The
primary language assessments developed pursuant to this statute
are the Standards-Based Tests in Spanish (STS). Consistent with
existing law, requiring a pupil who is limited English
proficient and receives instruction in his or her primary
language or has been enrolled in a school in the United States
for less than 12 months to take the primary language assessment,
English learners in dual immersion programs whose primary
language is Spanish take the STS. These pupils must also take
the CSTs or the CMA appropriate to the pupil's grade level. (EC
� 60640 (g))
EOC exams: The STAR program also includes end-of-course and
integrated assessments. EOC assessments are administered to
pupils in specific grade levels and subject areas, including
math and science. Integrated assessments are administered to
pupils enrolled in integrated math and/or science courses.
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Beginning with the 2002 Base API, the State Board of Education
(SBE) adopted a methodology to account for students who do not
take EOC CSTs; the "assignment of 200," assigned the lowest
value (called the performance level weighting factor) of 200
points when calculating a school's API in instances where the
student did not take one of these tests. This methodology
addressed the fact that the tests are EOC exams and not
universally-administered to all students within a grade level.
The policy goal of the SBE was to provide an incentive for high
schools to encourage students to enroll in rigorous,
standards-based mathematics and science courses and
correspondingly to reduce incentives for high schools to
discourage low-performing students from enrolling in these
courses. In 2007, the State Board opted to maintain the policy
of assigning 200 points but to reduce its impact by lowering the
test weights of the EOC CSTs.
Proposed Law: AB 1521 authorizes the CDE, subject to the
approval of the State Board of Education (SBE), to make
available to school districts and charter schools a primary
language assessment that allows school districts and charter
schools to assess pupils who are enrolled in a dual language
immersion program, as specified. This bill requires that a
school district or charter school that chooses to administer the
primary language assessment do so at its own expense, and pay a
fee for the test to CDE. This bill also eliminates the EOC
assessments in math 1-3 and integrated/coordinated assessments
in science 1-4.
Related Legislation: AB 409 (Alejo) 2011 contained very similar
provisions to those in this bill authorizing the administration
of a primary language assessment to pupils enrolled in dual
immersion programs. The bill was held under submission in this
Committee.
Staff Comments: This bill contains two provisions which address
two distinct areas of standardized testing; neither provision is
dependent upon the other. Because either provision could be
eliminated or amended without impacting the fiscal effect of the
other, the cost savings associated with eliminating certain
end-of-course exams are not offsetting savings to the cost of
making primary language assessments available.
Primary language assessment : English speaker pupils enrolled in
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English-Spanish dual immersion programs, who may be receiving up
to 90% of their instruction in Spanish, are not allowed to take
the STS. This bill authorizes the CDE to make available to the
school primary language assessments for assessing their English
speaker pupils. This would not replace the STAR for state
accountability, but would be an additional tool available to the
school for assessing its students' progress.
This bill is permissive both for the CDE to make the assessments
available, and for the school to administer the assessment. The
CDE would have to elect to make tests available before any costs
identified would be incurred. If the CDE makes specified
assessments available, it could incur costs beyond what it could
recover in fees.
The intent of this bill seems to be to allow the CDE to recover
costs for making tests available, but the language presents some
ambiguity. The bill specifies that costs charged to requesting
schools cannot exceed the "marginal cost of the assessment",
which is not defined. It is not clear whether "the assessment"
is the physical exam being made available or whether it includes
activities related to the exam (e.g. distribution, scoring,
reports) which are components of the current STS assessment for
English learners. Thus, while it is clear that the CDE could
recover costs for the physical exams, it is not clear whether
CDE's projected "marginal cost" in the estimates it provided to
the Committee would, in fact, be recoverable under this bill.
This bill does not specify that the STS, which is the state's
sole primary language assessment, be made available, but rather
that "a primary language assessment" may be made available that
is developed pursuant to EC � 60640 (f). The code referenced
refers to using federal Title VI funds appropriated in the
Budget Act to develop any current or future primary language
assessments, in general. While English-Spanish dual immersion
programs are the most common, dual immersion programs exist in a
variety of languages and serve approximately 50,000 students
statewide in several languages. Glendale Unified School
District, in Los Angeles County, offers dual immersion programs
in (English and) Italian, German, Armenian, Japanese and Korean,
as well as Spanish. By allowing the CDE to make tests available,
which it does not yet have, to an increasing number and variety
of dual immersion programs, this bill could create cost pressure
to develop those tests, though the bill does not require the
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development of additional tests.
EOC exams : The CDE estimates that eliminating the specified EOC
exams will result in savings for development and production
contracts, as well as the administration of exams. The
department estimates approximately $880,000 in annual savings,
based on current contracted rates. By those rates, eliminating
the general mathematics EOC would save $250,000, the integrated
math tests would save $61,000, and the integrated/coordinated
science tests would save $569,000. Future contracts for STAR
tests would reflect a reduced amount because there would be
fewer tests provided.
Recommended Amendments: Staff recommends that the CDE be
explicitly authorized to charge fees that fully cover the costs
related to the production and administration of all additional
assessments requested under the provisions of this bill, if the
CDE elects to make them available.