BILL ANALYSIS �
SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Alan Lowenthal, Chair
2011-2012 Regular Session
BILL NO: SB 1138
AUTHOR: Liu
INTRODUCED: February 21, 2012
FISCAL COMM: Yes HEARING DATE: April 25, 2012
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT:Kathleen Chavira
SUBJECT : Postsecondary Education Data Management.
SUMMARY
This bill 1) authorizes the California Department of
Education (CDE) to succeed to the data management
responsibilities of the California Postsecondary Education
Commission (CPEC) as specified, for six months beginning
July 1, 2013, 2) establishes requirements that the
four-year public postsecondary segments report data on the
cost of education to the Legislature, 3) declares the
Legislature's intent that the segments refrain from
implementing new programs if the CPEC is unable to perform
its program review responsibilities, and 4) authorizes the
CPEC to provide access to data that may include personally
identifiable information to state policy analysts and
independent researchers, as specified.
BACKGROUND
Current law establishes the California Postsecondary
Education Commission (CPEC) to be responsible for
coordinating public, independent, and private postsecondary
education in California and providing independent policy
analysis and recommendations to the Legislature and the
Governor on postsecondary education issues.
Current law also requires the CPEC to act as a
clearinghouse for postsecondary education information and
to serve as a primary source of information for the
Legislature, Governor, and other agencies. As the result of
AB 1570 (Villaraigosa, Chapter 916, Statues of 1999) its
existing statutory requirement relative to data was
expanded to require that it develop and maintain a
comprehensive database that supported longitudinal studies
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of individual students as they progressed through the
state's postsecondary educational institutions through the
use of a unique student identifier. Additionally, the CPEC
was to provide each of the educational segments access to
the data made available to the CPEC for purposes of the
database in order to support statewide, segmental and
individual campus educational research needs. (Education
Code � 66903)
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20
U.S.C. � 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a federal law that
protects the privacy of student education records. The law
applies to all schools that receive funds under an
applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.
Generally, schools must have written permission from the
parent or "eligible student" ( i.e. the student reaches 18
or attends a school beyond high school) in order to
release any information from a student's education record.
However, FERPA allows schools to disclose those records,
without consent, to the following parties or under the
following conditions (34 CFR � 99.31):
School officials with legitimate educational
interest.
Other schools to which a student is transferring.
Specified officials for audit or evaluation
purposes.
Appropriate parties in connection with financial
aid to a student.
Organizations conducting certain studies for or on
behalf of the school.
Accrediting organizations.
To comply with a judicial order or lawfully issued
subpoena.
Appropriate officials in cases of health and safety
emergencies.
State and local authorities, within a juvenile
justice system, pursuant to specific State law.
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ANALYSIS
This bill :
1) Beginning July 1, 2013 and until January 1, 2014,
succeeds the data management responsibility granted to
the California Postsecondary Education Commission to
the California Department of Education and
additionally:
a) Grants the CDE the power to
require the governing boards and the institutions
of public postsecondary education to submit data
on plans and programs, costs, selection and
retention of students, enrollments, plant
capacities, and other matters pertinent to
effective planning, policy development, and
articulation and coordination.
b) Requires the CDE to furnish
information concerning the information delineated
in (2) to the Governor and the Legislature, as
requested by them.
c) Requires the CDE to enter into an
interagency agreement with the California
Community Colleges to administer the
comprehensive longitudinal database developed by
the CPEC, for purposes of meeting the data
management responsibilities succeeded to the CDE
by the bill.
2) Establishes a process for the reporting of data on the
cost of education by the public four-year
postsecondary segments. More specifically it:
a) Requires the UC Regents and the
CSU Trustees, beginning in academic year 2012-13,
to:
i) Provide the
Legislature with detailed information
regarding expenditures of revenues derived
from student fees and use of institutional
financial aid.
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ii) Provide information regarding the
total cost of education per student, as
specified.
b) Authorizes the Regents and the
Trustees to include this information in their
respective annual report on institutional
financial aid.
c) Requires the LAO to annually
review, by March 1, institutional compliance with
these provisions, and to report its findings,
conclusions or recommendations regarding
implementation of these policies to the
Legislature as well as an assessment of the
information provided by the Regents and the
Trustees.
3) Declares the Legislature's intent that, in the event
CPEC, or its successor, is unable to perform its
program review responsibilities, the public
postsecondary segments should refrain from
implementing new programs.
4) Authorizes the CPEC to provide access to data that may
include personally identifiable information to state
policy analysts and independent researchers for public
policy research and evaluation purposes with
appropriate privacy protections as required under
FERPA.
STAFF COMMENTS
1) Need for the bill . According to the author, the recent
veto of funding for the CPEC in the 2011-12 budget
left a number of higher education coordinating
responsibilities on the books with no means of
implementing them. The January 2012 LAO report,
Improving Higher Education Oversight, drafted in
response to legislative supplemental report language
related to the Governor's veto of funding for the
CPEC, recommends several steps the Legislature could
take to begin establishing an effective oversight
structure for higher education in California. In
addition, recognizing the difficulty of creating a new
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public organization in the current fiscal climate, the
LAO offered the following short term recommendations:
a) Amend statute to ensure pertinent data
remain available to policymakers and researchers.
b) Increase direct legislative oversight and
limit new long-term funding commitments until an
effective oversight structure is in place to
support the Legislature's decision-making.
c) Monitor the segments' allocation decisions,
including investment in new programs and other
major program changes, until mechanisms are in
place for outcome review.
According to the author, the provisions of this bill
implement interim responses to issues regarding data
management and reporting, and legislative oversight in
an effort to implement the short-term recommendations
of the LAO.
2) Current status . The Governor's veto of funding for
CPEC resulted in the closure of the CPEC office in
November 2011. Prior to its closure, the CPEC
transferred its data warehouse to the CCC Chancellor's
Office where the existing data is being housed and
stored under an interagency agreement between the UC,
CSU, and the CCC. According to the Chancellor's
office, the existing database is being maintained, and
the CPEC website is available to the public for
purposes of access existing reports posted on the
website. However, given the complex nature of the work
involved and the lack of resources to do this work, as
well as the fact that no associated funding or
personnel were transferred, the CCC do not anticipate
any ongoing collection or update of the unit record
dataset or the website once information for the next
academic year becomes available in November 2012.
Finally, although, the Governor eliminated all general
fund support for CPEC, its statutory authority remains
intact.
3) What have we lost ? The governor's veto message
acknowledged the need for higher education
coordination, but characterized the CPEC's work as
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ineffective and directed stakeholders to explore
alternatives. However, as noted in the LAO's oversight
report, data functions, including the maintenance of a
public website for data access, were the CPEC
functions most highly valued by stakeholders including
the segments, policymakers, analysts and researchers.
a) Data management. As the result of AB 1570
(Villaraigosa, Statutes of 1999) CPEC was able to
obtain and maintain individual student records
from the public higher education systems and to
link this data across the three segments using
unique student identifiers. In addition, the CPEC
collected publicly available datasets from CDE,
the Census Bureau, the Employment Development
Department, and others, and used this information
and the aggregated student data to create useful
data for the public and to respond to policymaker
and legislative inquiries.
Perhaps most importantly (and a clear goal of the
authorizing legislation), CPEC functioned as a
data management entity independent of the public
segments, enabling the CPEC to perform analyses
and provide information on behalf of and in
response to requests from the Legislature or
others, without relying on the "approval" or
framing of information by the entity whose
performance was being studied, analyzed, or
evaluated.
As a result of the CPEC's elimination, the
longitudinal data that was the foundation of
their reports and website is currently static,
and there is no independent entity housing,
updating and creating access to this information.
Further, under the current arrangement access to
the data is limited, since each segment has
control over access to its own student records
contained within the database, and currently,
outside entities wishing to use the information
for state policy purposes would need to secure
the approval of each of the segments involved.
b) Program review. The CPEC's role in program
review was to coordinate the long-range planning
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of the state's public higher education systems as
a means to ensure that they were working together
to carry out their individual missions while
serving the state's long-range workforce and
economic needs. The CPEC used seven criteria for
evaluation: student demand, societal need, and
appropriateness to institutional and segmental
mission, number of existing programs in the
field, total costs of program, maintenance and
improvement of quality, advancement of knowledge.
In its oversight report, the LAO noted that no
office or committee has the resources to devote
to review of programs to identify long-term
costs, alignment with state needs/institutional
missions, duplication and priority relative to
other demands.
Staff notes that, rather than restrict the
creation of new programs as proposed in this
bill, the LAO recommended the Legislature require
the segments to annually report new program
approvals, program deletions, and substantive
program changes, until such time as a structure
was in place to hold institutions accountable for
their programmatic decisions by measuring
outcomes such as student learning, graduation and
employment.
4) What should be preserved in the short-term ? While
there is clearly a need to respond to broader fiscal
and policy issues around a higher education
coordinating body and data management, shouldn't the
short term goal be to ensure that the state does not
lose ground in its efforts to create a useable
database to independently research or track the
state's progress in meeting its educational goals? If
so, the primary goal should be to ensure that
individual student data can continue to be collected
and an updated longitudinal database maintained. In
addition, the principle data be held by that an entity
that is independent of the public segments should also
be maintained.
Staff recommends the bill be amended to clarify that
the CDE data responsibilities are limited to receiving
and holding the individual student data and to further
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clarify that the CDE is to enter into an interagency
agreement with the CCC for purposes of updating and
maintaining the existing database and website.
5) A step at a time ? The provisions of this bill
establish the authority of the CPEC (and by the
succession of data management responsibilities, the
authority of the CDE) to release personally
identifiable information for research and evaluation
purposes. Staff notes that this would go beyond the
objective of simply ensuring the maintenance of the
current data management responsibilities. It may also
extend disclosure authority prematurely, given efforts
to develop alternative structures for the long term
management and disclosure of personally identifiable
data for research and evaluative purposes (see staff
comments regarding similar and related legislation).
Staff recommends that lines 19-23 on page 6 be deleted
and deferred to other legislative vehicles to more
comprehensively address the privacy and disclosure
issues affected by both FERPA and California privacy
law.
6) Cost impact . Currently, the California Community
Colleges are housing and storing the existing CPEC
data. In this form, there do not appear to be any
additional costs to the CCC. However, if, as
envisioned by this bill, additional unit record data
is obtained and the database is updated annually, it
is likely that additional funding would be necessary.
These costs would be even greater if the intent is to
use this data to make any changes/updates to the
existing website, service research queries, or produce
legislative reports that match data across segments.
Should the bill be amended to identify and authorize
the use of state and or non-state funding for this
purpose?
7) Is CDE the right "interim" agency ? According to
federal privacy officials, state departments of
education commonly can legally receive student data
resources when other entities holding student records
are terminated. Although, if amended by this committee
per staff comment #4, this bill would only designate
the CDE as the "receiver and holder" of the data on a
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short-term basis, the higher education segments have
raised concerns whether the CDE is the appropriate
entity for this purpose, suggesting that they can
individually hold their own data and still meet the
state's needs. While granting any of the individual
higher education segments the authority to "hold" the
data on the state's behalf would compromise the goal
of maintaining the principle that an entity
independent of the segments is necessary for this
purpose, recent changes in FERPA suggest that the
state may have greater latitude in this area. The
committee may want to explore whether, the Employment
Development Department, the California Research
Bureau, or other state or federal agencies, are a more
appropriate interim designee for this purpose.
8) Timing . As drafted the bill's provisions become
operative in July 2013 and sunset in January 2014. The
sunset is included in order to signal the "temporary"
nature of the provisions while stakeholders explore
and develop alternatives to the CPEC. However, it is
unlikely that the broader policy and fiscal issues
surrounding an appropriate successor entity to the
higher education coordinating functions performed by
CPEC or the data management function will be resolved
within those six months.
Staff recommends the bill be amended to have the data
management provisions become operative on January 1,
2013, and to sunset on January 1, 2015.
9) Similar legislation . AB 2190 (Perez), establishes and
provides for the governance structure and
responsibilities of a new coordinating body, the
California Higher Education Authority, to replace the
CPEC, transfers higher education data management
responsibilities to the Authority on or after July 1,
2013, and authorizes the Authority to collect data on
the cost of education, as specified.
10) Related legislation . SB 885 (Simitian, 2011) would
authorize the CPEC, CDE, UC, CSU, CCC, Commission on
Teacher Credentialing, the State Board of Education,
the Employment Development Department, and the
California School Information Services to enter into a
joint powers agreement to facilitate the
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implementation of a comprehensive longitudinal P-20
statewide data system for California, as well as the
transfer of educational and workforce data. SB 885 was
heard and passed by this committee in April 2011 by a
vote of 10-0. SB 885 is currently on the inactive file
on the Assembly floor.
SUPPORT
Children Now
OPPOSITION
University of California