BILL ANALYSIS �
SB 753
Page 1
Date of Hearing: July 6, 2011
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Julia Brownley, Chair
SB 753 (Padilla) - As Amended: May 31, 2011
SENATE VOTE : 39-0
SUBJECT : Pupils: English learners: assessment
SUMMARY : Makes changes related to the timing of the
administration of the required English language development
(ELD) assessments. Specifically, this bill :
1)Makes current law, with respect to the timing of ELD
assessments of English learners (ELs), inoperable following
the 2012-13 school year.
2)Requires, commencing with the 2013-14 school year, the annual
ELD assessment of ELs, using the test specified for that
purpose, to be conducted annually during a three-month testing
window that begins with the day upon which 65 percent of the
instructional year is completed.
3)Requires a school district to conduct an assessment of a pupil
at the pupil's initial enrollment to determine if the pupil is
an EL; also requires the prior year's test, for the grade in
which the pupil is being enrolled, to be used for this initial
assessment.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Requires each school district that has one or more pupils who
are ELs to assess each pupil's ELD, using a test acquired or
developed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI)
with the approval of the State Board of Education (SBE), in
order to determine the level of proficiency upon initial
enrollment, and annually, thereafter, until the pupil is
redesignated as English proficient.
2)Requires the SPI and the SBE to establish procedures for
conducting the ELD assessments, including determining the
period of time within which the annual ELD testing is required
to be conducted.
SB 753
Page 2
3)Requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to
develop reclassification procedures that utilize multiple
criteria in determining whether to reclassify a pupil as
proficient in English, including, but not be limited to, the
following:
a) Assessment of language proficiency.
b) Teacher evaluation.
c) Parental opinion and consultation.
d) Comparison of the pupil's performance in basic skills
that demonstrates whether the pupil is sufficiently
proficient in English to participate effectively in a
curriculum designed for native English speaking pupils of
the same age.
FISCAL EFFECT : According to a Senate Appropriations Committee
analysis of a similar proposal in 2008, "The bill's requirement
to move the testing window to at least 65 percent of the way
into the school year would result in one-time costs for standard
setting (essentially, this means adjusting results based on the
age of test takers) of $200,000 or $300,000. Also, �CDE] is
concerned that the later testing window would compel a second
administration of the test to some pupils in order to comply
with Federal law, resulting in a cost of $1 million."
COMMENTS : Nearly one quarter of the student population in
California's public schools are classified as ELs and closer to
one half of the state's pupils come from homes where English is
not the primary language. Current law requires schools to
assess the English proficiency of all pupils whose primary
language is not English, using an ELD test acquired or developed
by the SPI with the approval of the SBE; the California English
Language Development Test (CELDT) was developed and is required
as the assessment to be used for this purpose. The ELD test is
used for three purposes: (1) to identify new students who are
English learners in kindergarten through grade twelve; (2) to
determine the level of English-language proficiency; and (3) to
annually assess ELs progress in learning English until they are
reclassified.
ELs in grades 2-12 are administered the ELD test, which assesses
those pupils in four domains: speaking, listening, reading and
writing. ELs in kindergarten and grade one are also assessed in
English listening and speaking, and, since 2009, have also been
assessed in early literacy skills, including the areas of
reading and writing. The changes in 2009 were made in order to
SB 753
Page 3
conform to the requirements of Title III under the federal
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the current version of
which is known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Current law requires annual ELD testing to be conducted during a
period determined by the SPI and SBE; the annual testing window
for the CELDT is currently from July 1 to October 31. This bill
proposes to specify in statute and change that testing window
for the annual administration of the ELD test to be a three
month period commencing with the day upon which 65 percent of
the instructional year is completed. This approach to setting a
testing window is fairly standard and sound from a policy
perspective, in that it ensures that testing of pupils occurs
after approximately the same amount of instructional time in the
year has elapsed, independent of any variations in school
calendars across schools and districts. The approach is also
used in other California testing programs; for example, in the
Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program, the testing
window is specified to be a 25-day period comprised of the 12
days before and 12 days after the day on which 85 percent of the
instructional year is completed. For a school district offering
180 days of instruction, this proposal would lead to a
three-month testing window opening on the 117th day of
instruction; for most school calendars this would mean testing
would occur sometime between late February and the end of May.
According to the author, the change in the testing window from
the fall to the spring is needed because "ELs are required to
take the CELDT immediately following their summer break. This
time of year does not allow ELs to prepare or practice their
English language skills at their new grade level." The author
goes on to say that, "Moving the CELDT to the Spring would give
teachers more opportunity to prepare students for the test which
would increase the reclassification rate." However,
implementing a policy in order to generate a test preparation
effect may not be good policy, in that it may artificially
inflate pupils' test results, lead to results that do not
reflect a pupil's true language proficiency, and thus not be in
the pupil's best interests.
The sponsor of the bill, the Los Angeles Unified School
District, states that the proposed change in the testing window
would "assist our teachers in accessing timely CELDT scores for
purposes of appropriate placement and reclassification of our
�ELs] in the fall?" Effectively the argument is that spring
SB 753
Page 4
testing means that test results are returned in time to provide
input into decisions about pupils that are made prior to the
beginning of the next school year in the fall; though that is
also true of testing in the previous fall, fall testing would
provide results that are potentially stale in that they would
not reflect any gains made by the student in the school year in
which he or she were tested. The author supports this point by
stating that the change "would provide teachers a more current
status of language skills of EL students?"
The issue that this bill would resolve was noted in the
Proposition 227 Year Five evaluation report, published by the
American Institutes for Research (AIR) in 2006; AIR found that
the deadline for reporting reclassification results is out of
sync with the calendar of required assessments, and that the
timing and availability of assessment results complicate local
reclassification procedures. The report states, "School
Districts experience significant pressure carrying out
redesignation procedures and completing counts of redesignated
students in time for the Language Census February 28 deadline.
Moreover, some districts noted that this short February time
window is further compressed as they also require parents to
meet one-on-one with educators, participate in the redesignation
process, and/or sign off approving the decision to redesignate."
In addition, the report further points out that "several
districts in the study noted that they have had to grossly
underreport the number of students redesignated in those years
where the test publisher delayed providing their particular
results."
There are three technical issues that the bill potentially
raises, though it is uncertain that these problems would arise.
1)The proposed ELD testing window would overlap with the testing
window for several other tests administered as part of the
state testing program. For example, all of the tests
administered in the STAR program, as mentioned above, are
administered in a 25-day window centered on the instructional
day that falls 85 percent of way through the instructional
year (in most districts this would be in an April-May window),
the high school exit examination generally has two spring
administration dates established by the SPI, the state's
physical fitness testing is administered in February through
May, and both Advanced Placement (AP) and SAT examinations,
used for college admission purposes, are administered in the
spring. Since these other tests, some with higher stakes for
SB 753
Page 5
the individual pupil, are administered in the spring, an
argument could be made that adding another test during the
same period of time may result in additional testing fatigue,
which could have an effect on pupils' test results; in
addition, clustering all of the state testing in the spring
means that any instructional time lost to testing occurs
during that single semester.
2)There also may be technical psychometric issues that arise
from moving the testing window. For example, the scores or
score scale, as well as the resulting standard setting that
ties those scores to a reported outcome level, for large
assessments is often sensitive to the time the test is
administered; in other words, the scores and levels reported
for the current ELD test have been established based on data
generated by testing in the fall, thus a given score may not
represent the same level of language proficiency if it is
achieved as a result of testing at a different time of the
year. The author effectively acknowledges that scores may be
different, by stating that "Moving the CELDT to the Spring
would give teachers more opportunity to prepare students for
the test which would increase the reclassification rate."
This would be beneficial if the change reflects a true
increase in language proficiency, but not necessarily
beneficial if the higher reclassification rate is only related
to moving the test to a later date. In order to examine this
issue, it may be necessary for the CDE to conduct additional
statistical research or to reset the standard levels on the
test.
3)Enactment of this proposal may potentially create a conflict
with federal requirements for ELD testing of EL pupils under
NCLB that specify that such testing must be administered to
each EL pupil annually. Under this bill, existing EL pupils
will be tested during the current fall 2012 testing window,
but would then not be tested again until the new spring 2014
testing window; if the interpretation of the federal
requirement is that "annual" testing implies either testing on
a twelve month cycle or testing at some point during each
calendar year, then the federal requirement would not be met
during 2013. If, however, the federal interpretation of this
requirement is that "annual" means that ELD testing is
administered to EL pupils at some point during each school or
fiscal year, then the transition proposed by this bill would
meet the federal requirement. Committee staff recommends that
SB 753
Page 6
the Chair ask the SPI and SBE to clarify this requirement with
the U.S. Department of Education. If that clarification
indicates that this transition does not comply with the
federal requirement, then one of two courses of action could
be followed prior to the 2013-14 change in the testing window:
1) the state could seek a federal waiver from this requirement
for the purposes of making the transition from a fall to a
spring testing window, or 2) absent a federal waiver, clean-up
legislation might be necessary to allow additional fall
testing administration in 2013 only.
Committee amendments: Committee staff recommends that the bill
be amended to address the following issues:
1)Clarify, consistent with the original intent of the
legislature, that all ELs in school districts, county offices
of education or charter schools be assessed using the English
language development test required to be used.
2)The bill requires ELD testing of all pupils, regardless of
apparent language proficiency, upon their initial enrollment;
this requirement exceeds current law and would dramatically
increase costs for administration of the program. The bill
should be amended so as to require, as under current law, that
all new pupils be tested if they would also be tested in the
annual ELD assessment.
3)The ELD test is not required to be the sole source of
information used by an LEA to determine whether a pupil is an
EL (see subdivision (d) of Education Code Section 313), nor
would that practice be advisable from an educational or
assessment policy perspective; the bill, however, implies this
by requiring that a district conduct the initial ELD
assessment of a pupil " to determine if the pupil is an
English learner?". The bill should be amended to clarify that
the initial assessment provides information for that
determination, rather than directly determines the pupil's
language proficiency classification.
4)The bill requires the prior year's test, for the grade in
which the pupil is being enrolled, to be used for the initial
assessment of a newly enrolled pupil; however, if the pupil is
initially enrolling during the testing window for the current
year, then that initial testing could be conducted as part of
the annual testing, thus reducing costs and testing time; the
SB 753
Page 7
bill should be amended to allow for this exception to the
requirement that initial testing use the prior year's test.
Previous legislation : SB 521 (Romero) held in the Senate
Appropriations Committee in 2009, was substantially similar to
this bill. AB 2077 (Fuentes), held in the Senate Appropriations
Committee in 2008, would have made changes related to the
administration and scoring of the English language development
test, including moving the testing window to a three-month
period in the spring. AB 748 (Escutia), Chapter 936, Statutes
of 1997, requires the development of a statewide test of English
language development for English learners and requires all
districts to use it to assess their English learners.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
Boyle Heights Learning Collaborative
California Association for Bilingual Education
California Federation of Teachers
California State PTA
California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
Californians Together
Central American Resource Center - Los Angeles
Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles
Fresno Unified School District
Green Dot Public Schools
Hispanas Organized for Political Equality
InnerCity Struggle
Latin Business Association
Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsome
Long Beach Unified School District
Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
Los Angeles Unified School District (Sponsor)
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
National Council of La Raza
Parent Revolution
Public Advocates
San Francisco Unified School District
Service Employees International Union
United Teachers of Los Angeles
Vaughn Next Century
Youth Policy Institute
SB 753
Page 8
Opposition
Association of California State Administrators
Analysis Prepared by : Gerald Shelton / ED. / (916) 319-2087