BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 2497
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Date of Hearing: April 17, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HIGHER EDUCATION
Marty Block, Chair
AB 2497 (Solorio) - As Introduced: February 24, 2012
SUBJECT : California State University: Early Start Program.
SUMMARY : Prohibits the California State University (CSU) from
implementing the Early Start Program unless funding is provided
in the annual Budget Act and specified actions are taken.
Specifically, this bill :
1)Prohibits CSU from implementing the Early Start Program
effective January 1, 2014, unless a specific appropriation is
made for its implementation in the annual Budget Act.
2)Requires the CSU Chancellor and Trustees to submit an annual
report to the Legislature every five years, as specified,
beginning January 1, 2014, detailing the impact of the CSU
Early Start Program on student mathematics and English
proficiency, that may also include a budget appropriation
request for the implementation of the Early Start Program.
3)Requires the Legislature, as part of its annual budget
deliberations, to review the report and request for inclusion
in the annual Budget Act.
4)Sunsets these provisions effective January 1, 2018.
EXISTING LAW establishes CSU, under the administration of the
CSU Board of Trustees and expresses legislative intent with
respect to the determination of standards and criteria for
admission to CSU. (Education Code � 66600, 66205)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Background . According to a March 2011 issues brief
by the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO), of regularly admitted
CSU freshmen in 2009, about 58% were unprepared for
college-level writing or math or both. In 1996, CSU set a goal
to reduce the percentage of unprepared freshmen to 10% in math
and English by 2007. That goal was not met, and CSU has now
implemented its Early Assessment Program to improve student
preparation, enabling students to test their academic readiness
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by taking a voluntary exam offered to students in the 11th grade
as part of the California Standards Test.
Previous remediation requirements . CSU students who do not
demonstrate proficiency must pass the appropriate precollegiate
(commonly called "remedial") courses within one year of
admission. According to information provided by CSU, this
policy exposed two issues: 1) students who tested in the lowest
quartile of the CSU placement exams were required to do all of
their remediation while taking college-level courses, and 2)
many students were not completing remediation by the end of the
spring term but were enrolling or re-enrolling in remedial
courses in the summer at great expense to themselves and to CSU.
What is the Early Start Program ? To address these concerns,
Executive Order 1048 was issued in 2010, creating the Early
Start Program. Beginning in Fall 2012, entering freshmen who
are not proficient in math or "at risk" in English will need to
start the remediation process before their first term. By fall
of 2014, students will need to have started their work on
becoming ready for college-level English. Students will be
given a menu of options to determine the best approach for them
to start their remedial instruction, including such things as
senior year high school courses, courses offered in the summer
at any one of their local California Community College (CCC) or
CSU campuses and online courses, to name a few. According to
CSU, three pilots were conducted in order to understand the
program's impacts, and all resulted in success for students with
a minimum 80% success rate to move on from remedial education.
On October 28, 2009, CSU staff provided a briefing of the Early
Start Program for legislative staff, cosponsored by the Assembly
Higher Education and Senate Education Committees.
Cost to students . The Early Start Program is self-supported;
thus, students who take courses during the summer would pay $46
per unit at CCC or $182 per unit plus $2 per campus at CSU.
Financial aid will be offered to eligible students (those with a
family contribution of less than $5,000 per year) in order to
cover the cost of their enrollment in the program.
Need for this bill . According to the author, "There is no
evidence that a mandatory summer program will solve the issue of
high remediation rates, particularly when one of the processes
to satisfy the program is through 15 hours of unsupervised
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instruction online." Further, the author notes, "The Early
Start Program was developed entirely at an administrative level,
without the support from the very professionals that will be
teaching these remedial courses. These faculty members have
expressed concerns that an investment in a new program without
the input of all the stakeholders involved, including the
Legislature, is a risky experiment."
Would a report suffice ? This bill sets a precedent by requiring
a self-supporting program, initiated by the CSU administration
to cease operation unless state funding is provided and
reporting requirements are met. CSU operates other
remediation-related programs that have not been subject to these
conditions, including the Early Assessment Program and Summer
Bridge and Foster Youth programs for at-risk youth. Further,
this budget environment makes it unlikely the Budget Act would
include funding for this purpose.
If the goal is to determine whether the Early Start Program is
improving students' academic success without disadvantaging
them, perhaps the LAO can study the efficacy of the Early Start
Program as part of its ongoing review of remediation needs in
higher education?
Related legislation . AB 1237 (Nestande), which failed in this
Committee in January, declared that state General Funds that do
not count toward the Proposition 98 minimum guarantee shall not
be appropriated for remedial instruction at the University of
California (UC) and CSU and authorized the appropriation of
Proposition 98 funds from K-12 instruction to CCC for the
purposes of remedial instruction for UC and CSU students.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Faculty Association (sponsor)
California Labor Federation
Opposition
California State University
Analysis Prepared by : Sandra Fried / HIGHER ED. / (916)
319-3960
AB 2497
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