BILL ANALYSIS �
SB 512
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Date of Hearing: June 22, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
SB 512 (Price) - As Amended: April 13, 2011
SENATE VOTE : 40-0
SUBJECT : Academic Performance Index: pupil subgroups:
performance data
SUMMARY : Makes changes with respect to Academic Performance
Index (API) reporting for pupil subgroups. Specifically, this
bill :
1)Requires reporting of the API to include performance data for
any pupil subgroup specified in law, if that subgroup includes
10 or more pupils with valid test scores.
2)Requires the subgroup reporting in 1) to be in accordance the
federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and
any related regulations.
3)States Legislative intent that the subgroup reporting in 1) be
for reporting purposes only and not be used for federal or
state accountability purposes.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), with
the approval of the State Board of Education (SBE), to develop
the API to measure the performance of schools, and to include
a variety of indicators in that measure, including, but not
limited to, achievement test results, attendance rates, and
graduation rates.
2)Requires the SPI to establish an advisory committee to provide
advice on all appropriate matters relative to the creation of
the API.
3)Requires an SPI to produce an API for any:
a) School or school district with at least 100 pupils with
valid test scores.
b) School or school district with between 11 and 99 pupils
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with valid test scores, and requires that API to be marked
with an asterisk that indicates less statistical certainty
than API scores based on 100 or more test scores.
c) Numerically significant subgroup.
4)Defines a numerically significant pupil subgroup, for the
purposes of reporting and comparing API results, to be a
subgroup with at least 50 valid test scores that constitutes
at least 15 percent of the total population of pupils, or
otherwise to be a subgroup with at least 100 valid test
scores.
5)Requires the SPI to rank all schools by the value of the API
in decile categories and by the value of the API when compared
to schools with similar characteristics, including
characteristics associated with specified subgroups, and to
report these results.
6)Requires that each school district produce an annual School
Accountability Report Card (SARC) for each school in the
district, including various specific data elements describing
the school and its condition; among those specified data
elements is the API ranking and a description of the
components of the API.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations
Committee, pursuant to Senate Rule 28.8, negligible state costs.
COMMENTS : The SPI established, pursuant to SB 1 X1 (Alpert),
Chapter 3, Statutes of 1999-2000 First Extraordinary Session, an
advisory committee to advise the SPI and the SBE on all
appropriate matters relative to the creation of the API. SB 1
X1 also requires the SPI, with the approval of the SBE, to
develop the API to measure aggregate academic performance, and
to include a variety of indicators in that measure, including,
but not limited to, achievement test results, attendance rates,
and graduation rates. Currently only achievement test results
are incorporated into the API, and the API is configured to
produce scores measuring a school's static performance at each
grade level, in each content area, in each year, at one point in
time.
The API is a single number, ranging from a low of 200 to a high
of 1000, and is calculated by converting a student's performance
on statewide assessments across multiple content areas into
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points on the API scale. These points are then averaged across
all students and all tests. The result is the API. An API is
calculated for schools, districts, and for each numerically
significant subgroup of students at a school or an LEA. School
and district APIs are also ranked statewide and against the 100
schools or districts in the state that are the most similar
demographically.
Since the reliability of an API score based on small numbers of
pupil test scores is questionable, small schools having between
11 and 99 valid test scores receive an API statewide rank with
an asterisk, indicating less statistical certainty than API
scores based on 100 or more test scores. Similarly, the API
scores of community schools, continuation high schools and
non-public schools that serve special education pupils are not
considered reliable due to both small numbers of scores and the
fact that most pupils are placed in the schools for less than a
year. Accordingly, the SPI is directed in current law to
develop an alternative accountability system for these schools
under which schools may receive an API score, but are not
included in API rankings. The Alternative Schools
Accountability Model (ASAM) is the alternative system developed
by the SPI for this purpose.
The API is also reported for subgroups of pupils within a school
or district, as long as a subgroup is "numerically significant"
(i.e., large enough to produce statistically reliable data from
which conclusions could be drawn). To be considered numerically
significant for the API (or for Adequate Yearly Progress, AYP,
under federal accountability requirements) a pupil subgroup must
include at least 100 pupils with valid test scores, or at least
50 students with valid test scores, who make up 15 percent or
more of the school's total population. API results from
numerically significant subgroups are calculated for the
following categories: Black or African American, American Indian
or Alaska Native, Asian, Filipino, Hispanic or Latino, Native
Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, White, Two or More Races,
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged, English Learners, and Students
with Disabilities.
Current law prohibits the CDE from reporting API results for any
subgroup that is not numerically significant. In addition, no
aggregated test results from any component of the state testing
program may be reported if there are test scores from fewer than
ten pupils in that aggregation; this prohibition effectively
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prevents the calculation of any API for a group or subgroup with
fewer than ten pupils with valid test scores. This provides
minimal protection against an unintended breach in
confidentiality with respect to pupil data that could be
individually identified, since as the group size being reported
decreases, it becomes easier to effectively reverse-engineer
individual test results. The intent behind these prohibitions
and requirements is to balance the benefit of providing a
transparent look into subgroup academic performance against the
issues of statistical reliability and confidentiality.
In January 2011 the African American Advisory Committee (AAAC)
to the SBE, which is charged with providing the SBE with advice
regarding ways to address challenges that may impede success for
African American students, presented a report that included a
series of recommendations to the SBE. That report stated that
among the approximately 500,000 African American pupils enrolled
in California public schools, roughly 14,500 of those pupils in
2009 were in schools where the African American subgroup was not
numerically significant; thus those students' academic
performance was not reported in a subgroup API for that school.
Even though these pupils' performance was included in the
overall aggregate API for the school and possibly in subgroup
reporting at the district level, the AAAC concluded that this
reflects "a general lack of transparency and accountability
built into the K-12 system when it comes to subgroup
proficiency." Among the recommendations that the AAAC provided
to the SBE was to consider inclusion of subgroup proficiency and
accountability data for all subgroups with more than 10 students
on all assessment and accountability reports. According to the
author, "This bill incorporates the recommendation of the
African American Advisory Committee to the State Board of
Education" with respect to "numerically significant" subgroups.
The bill accomplishes this by proposing to require that a
subgroup API be reported at any level when the subgroup includes
ten or more pupils with valid test scores.
It should be noted that, while the AAAC's recommendation and the
author's statement of intent focus on the lack of subgroup
reporting for many African American pupils, the point made by
the AAAC and the author can be generalized to all of the
subgroups listed on the previous page; whenever any subgroup
fails to include sufficient pupils so as to be numerically
significant, performance data for those pupils is not reported
at the subgroup level for that school.
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The prohibitions with respect to sample size that have been
historically imposed on the reporting of test scores and
accountability measures, were put in place in order to prevent
invalid conclusions being drawn from (unreliable) data with a
large amount of statistical error, and to help secure the
confidentiality of pupil data. However, the trade-off or cost
of imposing those prohibitions is a reduction in transparency
and a decrease in the level of information concerning academic
performance for small subgroups. This bill proposes to relax
those prohibitions, and thus chooses to trade off increased
transparency and information at the risk of less statistical
Committee amendments: Committee staff recommends that the bill
be amended to:
1)Conform the proposal in this bill to current practice with
respect to APIs produced at the school level. At the school
level, an API is produced and reported for any school with
more than 100 pupils with valid test scores; this is analogous
to reporting for any numerically significant subgroup. At the
school level, an API is also produced and reported for any
school with between 11 and 99 pupils with valid test scores
(analogous to the non-numerically significant subgroups with
more than ten pupils, as addressed by this bill), however,
those schools are required to "receive an API score with an
asterisk that indicates less statistical certainty than API
scores based on 100 or more test scores." �EC 52052(f)] Thus
this bill should be amended to require that any reported API
score for a non-numerically significant subgroup receive an
asterisk that indicates less statistical certainty than data
reported for a numerically significant subgroup. This
amendment will achieve the goal of the bill in providing
greater transparency and information, at the same time that it
lessens the trade-off or cost created by the current version
of the bill in terms of increasing the opportunity for making
invalid conclusions from data that is less reliable
statistically. The amendment also has the advantage of
creating consistent policy with respect to reporting of the
API at any level of aggregation, including for subgroups.
2)Broaden the requirement that the proposed subgroup reporting
be in accordance the federal Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act (FERPA) and any related regulations, to include
state law protecting pupil privacy as well.
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3)Restructure the language proposed in this bill into a separate
section of law in the same article and chapter, in order to
avoid potential technical conflicts with other bills.
Previous and Related Legislation: AB 224 (Bonilla), currently
pending in the Senate Education Committee, and AB 400, vetoed in
2007, both require the Superintendent of Public Instruction
(SPI), in consultation with the State Board of Education (SBE),
to incorporate both previously specified and additional measures
of performance into the Academic Performance Index (API), using
the best available data. SB 547 (Steinberg), currently pending
in the Assembly Education Committee, makes changes in the mix of
data that is incorporated into the API. AB 519 (Mendoza), held
in the Senate Appropriations Committee in 2007 but later amended
to a different subject, would have required the incorporation
into the API of data regarding the availability in high schools
of a course of study that fulfills University of California and
California State University admission requirements, and the
submission of a plan for incorporating dropout data into the
API. AB 2167 (Arambula), Chapter 743, Statutes of 2006,
establishes a specific methodology for including graduation
rates, as previously required, in the API; also requires the SPI
to report annually to the Legislature on graduation and dropout
rates in the state. SB 1284 (Scott), held in the Assembly
Appropriations Committee in 2006, would have updated and made
technical amendments to statutes that establish the API. SB 257
(Alpert), Chapter 782, Statutes of 2003, requires the advisory
committee established to advise the SPI on the API to make
recommendations to the SPI on a methodology for generating a
"gain" score measurement to provide more accurate measure of a
school's growth over time. AB 1295 (Thomson), Chapter 887,
Statutes of 2001, makes changes to the API to allow small school
districts to receive an API score, receive growth targets, and
performance awards; included in these changes was a definition
of the number of pupil scores necessary to constitute a
numerically significant subgroup. SB 1 X1 (Alpert), Chapter 3,
Statutes of 1999-2000 First Extraordinary Session, known as the
Public Schools Accountability Act (PSAA), authorizes the state's
current accountability program, including establishment of the
PSAA Advisory Committee and development of the API.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
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Association of California School Administrators
Californians Together
Public Advocates
Opposition
Greater South Bay Education Coalition
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087