BILL ANALYSIS �
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THIRD READING
Bill No: SB 172
Author: Huff (R)
Amended: 3/16/11
Vote: 21
SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE : 8-0, 1/11/12
AYES: Lowenthal, Alquist, Blakeslee, Hancock, Huff, Liu,
Simitian, Vargas
NO VOTE RECORDED: Runner, Price, Vacancy
SUBJECT : School districts: Open Enrollment Act
SOURCE : Author
DIGEST : This bill substitutes the term low-achieving
school with "open enrollment school," and changes the
application deadline from January 1 to January 5 of the
preceding school year for a parent wishing to transfer
their child to an "open enrollment school."
ANALYSIS :
Background
California enacted SBX5 4 (Romero), Chapter 3, Statutes of
2010, Fifth Extraordinary Session, in response to the
federal Race to the Top initiative, including the Open
Enrollment Act specific to pupils who attend low-achieving
schools. The Open Enrollment Act:
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1.Allows any pupil enrolled in one of 1,000 schools
identified annually by the Superintendent of Public
Instruction (SPI) as low achieving to apply for
enrollment in a higher performing school anywhere in the
state. The list of 1,000 schools established by ranking
schools based on the Academic Performance Index (API),
with the same ratio of elementary (68.7 percent), middle
(16.5 percent), and high schools (14.8 percent) as
existed in decile 1 in the 2008-09 school year. However,
a district cannot have more than 10 percent of the
schools within that district placed on the list.
Specifically excluded from the list are the following
types of schools: (a) court schools, (b) community
schools, (c) community day schools, and (d) charter
schools.
2.Encourages each school district to keep an accounting of
all requests made for alternative attendance, records of
all action of these requests that may include, but are
not limited to, the number of requests granted, denied,
or withdrawn. In the case of denied requests, the
records may indicate the reasons for the denials.
3.Requires the SPI to contract for an independent
evaluation which must, at a minimum, consider all of the
following: (a) the levels of, and changes in, academic
achievement of pupils in school districts of residence
and school districts of enrollment for pupils who do and
do not elect to enroll in a district of enrollment, (b)
fiscal programmatic effects on districts of residence and
districts of enrollment, and (c) numbers and demographic
and socioeconomic characteristics of pupils who do and do
not elect to enroll in a district of enrollment.
The SPI is to provide the final evaluation to the
Legislature, governor and State Board of Education (SBE) by
October 1, 2014.
The SBE adopted regulations that provide:
1.Schools with less than 100 valid scores reported on the
209 Base API data file are also excluded.
2.Because of the ratio specified in #1 above, 687 of the
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1,000 on the list are elementary schools, 165 are middle
schools, and 148 are high schools.
3.Creating the list starts with the identification of the
elementary, middle and high schools that have the lowest
API scores within the criteria described above. The list
is ranked from the lowest API score to the highest API
score. When a school district on the list has reached
its 10 percent cap, the district's schools with the
highest API scores are dropped from the list until the
district has no more than 10 percent of its schools on
the list. Schools with the next lowest API scores
remaining in the pool are then added to create the next
list of 1,000 schools that maintains the required ratio
of schools. This process continues until a final list of
1,000 schools is achieved that both maintains the ratio
of 68.7 percent elementary schools, 16.5 percent middle
schools, and 14.8 percent high schools and does not
exceed any district's 10 percent number of schools.
Schools that are closed are exempt.
This bill modified the Open Enrollment Act. More
specifically, this bill:
1.Substitutes the term "low-achieving school" with "open
enrollment school." However, the bill does not change
the eligibility criteria used to identify the 1,000
schools under the Open Enrollment Act.
2.Changes the application deadline form January 1 to
January 5 of the preceding school year for a parent
wishing to transfer their child from an "open enrollment
school" to a school district of enrollment.
Comments
Need for the Bill . According to the author's office, some
school districts have raised concerns that the
"low-achieving schools" label in certain circumstances may
be unwarranted. The open enrollment act was never intended
to be a punitive program. Instead, it was intended to be
an opportunity for parents to transfer to a better
performing school. School choice, not subjective labels,
is the underlying purpose of the Open Enrollment Act.
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Prior Policy Discussions on Open Enrollment . The
discussions around the purpose of enacting the Open
Enrollment policy was generally to allow pupils attending
low-performing schools, as specified, to attend schools in
a different district and allowing parents another option
beyond the current transfer policies. As a result, open
enrollment had vigorous debate on the implications for not
only the lowest-performing schools, but also the
implications on receiving districts of enrollment.
By changing the name of "low-achieving school" to "open
enrollment school" (1) the connection with the original
statute is significantly diluted - no mention of
"low-achieving school" will remain in the Act and a
rationale for passage of open enrollment will vanish, and
(2) it may create more confusion to parents and pupils as
the name changes.
Meaningful change ? While this bill attempts to change the
labeling of schools that are affected by the Open
Enrollment Act, it does not provide a policy change to the
eligibility criteria used to identify the 1,000 schools
impacted by the Act.
Schools that object to "low-achieving status" have
administrative recourse. Under Education Code Section
33050, schools can request a waiver from the Open
Enrollment Act. Since September 2010, 130 schools
identified on the open enrollment list have requested a
waiver from the State Board of Education (SBE), which
allows them to be removed from the list. According to the
California Department of Education, 103 waivers were deemed
approved and there are 27 new waivers before the SBE for
consideration.
Prior Legislation
AB 47 (Huffman), 2011-12 Session, among other things, would
have modified the Open Enrollment Act to exempt schools
with API scores of at least 700, schools with at least 50
points growth in the prior year, and certain special
education schools. This bill was vetoed by Governor Brown.
In his veto message, the Governor stated:
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"This bill modifies the eligibility criteria used to
identify schools under the Open Enrollment Act which
was enacted last year to provide parents with
enrollment options in 1000 public schools that fail to
meet defined student academic achievement criteria.
"The bill increases the threshold for identifying open
enrollment schools to exclude schools that score above
700 on the Academic Performance Index for two
consecutive years. The California Department of
Education estimates that based on the revised criteria
only 150 schools would be included in the new list of
schools. I believe that the proposed changes go too
far and would undermine the intent of the original law.
"The State Board of Education has administrative
authority to exempt schools from the Open Enrollment
Act that document strong student academic achievement.
I expect the Board will thoughtfully exercise this
authority and believe we should carefully review the
implementation effects of the program before making
significant changes."
Effect of Open Enrollment . The effect of open enrollment
on schools, districts, and pupils is unknown because this
option is so new and because current law authorizes
specific data to be collected but does not require this
data to be collected or reported to the state.
Race to the Top Competition . The federal U.S. Department
of Education (USDE) issued an invitation to states to
compete for approximately $4.4 billion of American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) one-time funding known as Race
to the Top (RTTT) grants. The RTTT grants were issued in
three competitive phases.
RTTT was a competitive grant program designed to encourage
and reward states that are creating conditions for
education innovation and reform; achieving significant
improvement in student outcomes, including making
substantial gains in student achievement; closing
achievement gaps; improving high school graduation rates;
ensuring student preparation for success in college and
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career; and implementing ambitious plans in four core
education reform areas: (a) adopting higher quality
standards and assessments to prepare students for higher
education or work, (b) recruiting, developing, retaining
and rewarding effective teachers and principals, (c)
creating data systems to measure student access and support
instruction, and (d) turning around the lowest performing
schools.
California was not selected for funding in any of the three
competitive phases.
FISCAL EFFECT : Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: No
Local: No
SUPPORT : (Verified 1/11/12)
EdVoice
Valle Lindo School District
OPPOSITION : (Verified 1/11/12)
Association of California School Administrators
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT : EdVoice, in support, states "The
bill would make clear to parents and schools that the
technical mechanism and ultimate purpose of establishing a
list of schools is to identify eligible applicants and
provide additional voluntary public school options for
those students."
ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION : In opposition, the Association
of California School Administrators (ACSA), states "?seems
to be an attempt to move away from the premise of the
current statute and the premise advocated by the author
during the special legislative session, to make California
more competitive in securing grant funding for low income
students under Race to the Top. ACSA further states "We
can only assume SB 172 is intended to turn the current
program for low income families into an open enrollment
policy that begins to erode the meaning and purpose of
local district boundaries. If the author's intent is to
begin to collapse all attendance boundaries by starting
with 1,000 schools first, and then to move to expand that
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number to more schools, we would argue this is a much
larger policy discussion and cannot simply be accomplished
by a word change."
CPM:cm 1/12/12 Senate Floor Analyses
SUPPORT/OPPOSITION: SEE ABOVE
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