BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
SB 753 (Padilla)
Hearing Date: 05/23/2011 Amended: 04/26/2011
Consultant: Jacqueline Wong-HernandezPolicy Vote: Education 9-0
_________________________________________________________________
____
BILL SUMMARY: SB 753 would require that the California English
Language Development Test (CELDT) be administered annually
during a three-month test period commencing with the day upon
which 65 percent of the instructional year is completed,
beginning after the current CELDT test contract expires. This
bill would require the California Department of Education (CDE)
to provide the score a pupil achieves on the CELDT to the parent
or guardian of the pupil in English and, if available, in the
language reported on the home language survey, as specified.
_________________________________________________________________
____
Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14
Fund
Screening test development $3,500 one-time costs in
2014-15 General
Screening test implementation $4,000-$8,000 annually, beginning
in 2015-16 General
_________________________________________________________________
____
STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the
Suspense File.
Under existing law, a pupil whose primary language is not
English must have his or her English language development
assessed within 30 days of enrolling in a California public
school and annually thereafter until the pupil is redesignated
as fluent English proficient. The assessment tool used by the
state is the CELDT. Currently, authority for setting the annual
timeframe for administration of the CELDT is determined by the
Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) and the State Board
of Education (SBE). The SPI and SBE have established the
testing window as beginning on July 1 and ending on October 31.
Existing law further requires that the assessment be conducted
upon initial enrollment, and annually thereafter during a period
of time determined by the SPI and the SBE, until the pupil is
redesignated as English proficient.
SB 753 (Padilla)
Page 3
This bill would require the annual assessment (the CELDT) to be
conducted during a 3-month test period commencing with the day
upon which 65% of the instructional year is completed, and would
provide that these provisions, as well as the provisions
requiring an initial and annual assessment, would not be
implemented until 2015, after the current test publisher's
contract expires.
Because federal law requires that English learners' language
development be tested within 30 days of enrolling in a
California school, and the majority of new students enroll at
the beginning of a school year, the CDE would be required to
develop or select a test that will be given as an initial
screening, separate from the spring CELDT. The CDE estimates
that developing such a test for each grade level will incur
one-time costs of $3.5 million. Considering that this bill will
be implemented after as new CELDT test is
developed under a new contract in 2013-14, costs could likely be
substantially reduced by using an existing CELDT exam as the
screening test for English learners that begin school in fall
and need to be tested before the spring test is offered. The
decision to use CELDT exams from previous years as screeners or
to develop a new screening test would be at the discretion of
the SPI.
This bill will also incur additional costs to administer the
initial screening test, which will presumably be modeled after
the CELDT. The CELDT is a labor-intensive test to administer
because portions of it are done one-on-one (verbally) with an
administrator and each single student test taker. Test
administrators receive significant training to administer the
CELDT. Costs to administer the CELDT in 2009-10 were over $21.9
million, of which $11.4 million was General Fund. There are 1.5
- 2 million test takers, annually, and the vast majority of them
are tested as part of the annual assessment, which indicates
that most English learners either first enrolled in California
schools in Kindergarten or enroll in the fall. Students who
currently enroll after the CELDT test has been completed are
SB 753 (Padilla)
Page 4
tested separately within 30 days of enrolling in a California
school. It is unclear how many new English learner students will
need to be given the initial screening test in a given year,
under this bill. Costs will be driven by the number of
out-of-cycle test takers.