BILL ANALYSIS                                                                                                                                                                                                    �



                                                                  SB 1497
                                                                  Page  1

          Date of Hearing:   August 8, 2012

                        ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
                                Felipe Fuentes, Chair

               SB 1497 (Negrete McLeod) - As Amended:  April 24, 2012 

          Policy Committee:                             Education Vote:9-0

          Urgency:     No                   State Mandated Local Program: 
          No     Reimbursable:              No

           SUMMARY  

          This bill prohibits a pupil from being counted more than once in 
          the dropout rates for the Annual Report on Dropout in California 
          (Dropout Report) and collected under the California Longitudinal 
          Achievement Data System (CALPADS). 

           FISCAL EFFECT  

          No additional GF/98 costs to the state to implement this 
          measure.  According to the State Department of Education (SDE), 
          it currently only counts pupils once for the purpose of 
          calculating the dropout rate.      

           COMMENTS  

           1)Purpose  .  SB 651 (Romero), Chapter 197, Statutes of 2009, 
            requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), on or 
            before August 1, 2011 and annually thereafter, to submit a 
            report to the governor, the Legislature, and the State Board 
            of Education (SBE), on the number of dropouts in the state. 
            Specifically, Chapter 197 requires the report to use data 
            produced by CALPADS, including a one-year dropout rate, 
            four-year cohort dropout rate, and information on the 
            promotion/retention of pupils, as specified. 

            The author contends this bill will codify existing practice 
            for calculating the dropout rate.  Likewise, it will ensure 
            pupils attending dropout recovery high schools, schools that 
            enroll at least 50% of pupils who are designated as dropouts 
            in grades 9-12, are not counted more than once for the purpose 
            of calculating the state dropout rate.  









                                                                  SB 1497
                                                                  Page  2

           2)The first annual Dropout Report  was completed in August 2011 
            and reported the four-year dropout rate the number of students 
            in a cohort who dropped out of school over the course of four 
            years divided by the number of first time ninth graders, with 
            adjustments for adding students who transfer into the cohort 
            and subtracting students who transfer out, emigrate to another 
            county, or die during the four-year period.  According to SDE, 
            the dropout rate for the class of 2010-11 was 14.4%.   

           3)The CALPADS  , established by SB 1453 (Alpert), Chapter 1002, 
            Statutes of 2002, required the SDE to track student 
            achievement in order to comply with the federal No Child Left 
            Behind Act of 2001. A longitudinal database requires 
            individual student identifiers be given to each student 
            enrolled in the public K-12 system. In the 2004-05 fiscal 
            year, school districts were provided incentive funding to 
            create these identifiers and establish systems to maintain 
            them. SDE began to fully implement CALPADS in the fall of 
            2009. 


           Analysis Prepared by  :    Kimberly Rodriguez / APPR. / (916) 
          319-2081