BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 815
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 17, 2013
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Joan Buchanan, Chair
AB 815 (Conway) - As Amended: April 10, 2013
SUBJECT : School intervention: parent empowerment
SUMMARY : Makes changes to the eligibility criteria for the
Parent Empowerment Program (PEP). Specifically, this bill :
1)Strikes the requirement that any school not identified as a
persistently lowest-achieving school is eligible for the PEP.
2)Makes any school ranked in any of deciles 1 to 3 eligible for
the PEP.
3)Makes technical, nonsubstantive corrections.
EXISTING LAW :
1)Establishes the PEP as follows:
a) Requires a local educational agency (LEA) to implement
one of the four interventions for turning around
persistently lowest-achieving schools as defined in the
Race to the Top (RTTT) statute or the Alternative
Governance reform described in Section 1116(b)(8)(B)(v) of
the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) that is
selected by parents for any school not identified as
persistently lowest-achieving, has fails to meet adequate
yearly progress (AYP), has an Academic Performance Index
(API) score of less than 800, but that is subject to
corrective action, if at least one-half of the parents or
legal guardians of pupils attending the school, or a
combination of at least one-half of the parents or legal
guardians of pupils attending the school and the elementary
or middle schools that normally matriculate into the middle
or high school, sign a petition making the request.
b) Specifies that the LEA may choose another RTTT or NCLB
intervention only if the LEA makes a written finding at a
regularly scheduled public hearing as to why it cannot
implement the option requested by parents, and notifies the
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SPI and the SBE that the option selected by the LEA has
substantial promise of enabling the school to make AYP.
Also restricts this program to the first 75 schools that
inform the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) and
the State Board of Education (SBE) of the final disposition
of the petition.
c) Specifies that a LEA shall not be required to implement
the option requested by the parent petition if the request
is for reasons other than improving academic achievement or
pupil safety. (Education Code (EC) Section 53300)
2)Defines "persistently lowest-achieving schools", under the
RTTT program, as the following:
a) The lowest 5 % of the low-achieving schools (schools in
Program Improvement (PI)) as measured by the academic
achievement of all students in a school in terms of
proficiency on the state's assessment in reading/language
arts and mathematics combined;
b) The lowest 5 % of secondary schools, as measured by the
academic achievement of all students in a school in terms
of proficiency on the state's assessment in
reading/language arts and mathematics combined, that are
eligible for but do not receive Title 1 funds;
c) Any high school with a graduation rate less than 60% in
each of the last three years; and,
d) Excludes, to the extent allowable under federal law,
specified special needs or alternative schools and those
schools that have experienced academic growth of at least
50 points on the API, unless the SPI and SBE jointly
overrule that exclusion. Also authorizes the SPI and SBE
to jointly exclude a community day school from this
definition. (EC 53201)
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS : Background . In February 2009, the President signed
into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
which, among others, provided $4 billion for one-time State
Incentive Grants known as the RTTT. One of the eligibility
requirements for RTTT was identifying, including establishing a
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definition for, persistently lowest-achieving schools in the
state and requiring these schools to implement one of four
intervention models, as follows:
1)Turnaround model: Replace the principal and 50% of the
existing staff; implement strategies to recruit, place and
retain staff with the skills necessary to meet the needs of
students; use data to improve instructional program; provide
high-quality professional development that is aligned with the
school's instructional program; among others.
2)Restart model: Convert a school to a charter school, or close
and reopen a school under a charter school operator, a charter
management organization, or an education management
organization.
3)School closure: Close a school and enroll the students in
other higher achieving schools in the LEA.
4)Transformation model: Similar to the Turnaround model,
replace the principal and develop strategies focusing on
principal and teacher effectiveness, instructional reform,
increasing learning time and creating community-oriented
schools, and providing operational flexibility and support.
The PEP was established by SBX5 4 (Romero), Chapter 3, Statutes
of 2009-10 Fifth Extraordinary Session, to enable parents and
legal guardians at a school not identified as a persistently
lowest-achieving school under the RTTT, has an API score of
under 800 and is in PI year 4, to require a governing board to
implement any of the RTTT interventions or an alternative
intervention authorized by the NCLB if at least one-half of the
parents or legal guardians of pupils attending the school, or a
combination of at least one-half of the parents or legal
guardians of the pupils attending the school and its elementary
or middle feeder schools, sign a petition making the request.
The bill authorizes a governing board to choose another RTTT or
NCLB intervention only if it makes written findings in a
regularly scheduled public hearing of the reason it cannot
implement the intervention requested by parents and guardians,
and inform the SPI and the SBE how the alternative intervention
it has selected has substantial promise of enabling the school
to meet AYP. SBX5 4 limits the number of affected schools to
the first 75 statewide; excludes schools with an API of 800 or
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higher; and specifies that a LEA is not required to comply with
the petition request if the reason for the request is not
related to academic achievement or pupil safety.
PEP petitions . There have only been two successful conversions
under the PEP. In January, the governing board of the Adelanto
School District in San Bernardino County approved the conversion
of Desert Trails Elementary School to a charter school. The PEP
process was contentious up until the vote. The governing board
initially rejected the petition over the validity of the
signatures. A lawsuit filed by the petitioners led to a
Superior Court judge decision that parents were prohibited from
withdrawing their signatures. The law and regulations adopted
by the SBE are silent on this issue. This month, parents who
signed the PEP petition at the 24th Street Elementary School in
the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted to divide
the governance of the school allowing LAUSD to oversee
kindergarten through fourth grade while a charter school would
manage fifth through eighth grades.
The first PEP petition was submitted to the Compton Unified
School District and was rejected by the governing board in 2011.
A lawsuit was filed with charges of intimidation and coercion
lofted from both supporters and opponents. The charter school
proposed for McKinley Elementary School in Compton opened nearby
but not at the schoolsite targeted for the PEP. In all three
efforts, parents were organized by an outside organization that,
according to a Los Times article, was founded by Green Dot
Charter school operator Steve Barr. The organization also
pushed for the passage of the PEP bill.
PEP eligibility . The PEP was designed to allow parents and
guardians at schools that are not considered persistently
lowest-achieving the opportunity to reform a low achieving
school based on the criteria that the school is in PI year 4,
had not met the AYP and has an API under 800. However,
California did not receive a RTTT grant. The California
Department of Education (CDE) did establish a list of
persistently lowest-achieving schools that was used for awarding
federal School Improvement Grants (SIG). According to the CDE,
the purpose of the SIG is to enable LEAs with persistently
lowest-achieving schools to implement intervention models as
described above. According to the CDE, 135 schools have been
awarded SIG funds.
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This bill removes the requirement that schools that are not
considered persistently lowest-achieving are eligible for the
PEP. This bill would enable schools that are considered
persistently lowest-achieving to be subject to the PEP. This
bill also adds schools ranked in deciles 1-3 to the eligibility
list. The deciles are based on the API scores from highest to
lowest based on school type and divided into 10 equal ranks.
Conceivably, adding deciles 1-3 makes the lowest 30 percent
eligible for the PEP. However, according to the CDE, of the
2,671 schools ranked in deciles 1-3, 1,352 are in PI years 4 and
5, but none of the school has an API above 800, which means they
are likely already eligible for the PEP.
The Committee may wish to consider whether changes need to be
made when there are only three schools that have been subjected
to a takeover of the school under the PEP. According to the
CDE, there are 412 schools that are eligible for the PEP under
current law. This bill will expand the universe of schools
subject to the PEP to almost 3200 schools. Should the Committee
decide to pass this bill, staff recommends two amendments. One
amendment to clarify that schools that are in the process of
reform, such as those schools receiving SIG funds, are excluded
from the provisions of this bill. Another amendment to clarify
that parents have the opportunity to withdraw their names from a
petition. With the exception of the LAUSD, this process has
been contentious. In both Compton and Adelanto, there have been
parents who signed the petitions initially who said they did not
fully understand what they were signing. A process should be
established to allow parents an opportunity to withdraw their
names within a specified time period.
Arguments in Support . The author states, "While the Parent
Empowerment Act has benefited communities in Adelanto, Compton
and Los Angeles (by petitioning to convert their schools into
public charters), it needs to be expanded to include some of the
lowest performing schools in California. Unfortunately, a
number of California's lowest performing schools are not
eligible for the program. These are [the] state's poorest, most
vulnerable communities and concentrated in the neighborhoods,
which the students are predominantly African American, Latino
and immigrant. There is a dire need to allow any school ranked
in the bottom 30 percent to be allowed to benefit from Parent
Empowerment. In fact, it is crucial to their success."
Arguments in Opposition . The California Teachers Association
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(CTA) states, "The implementation of the parent trigger law has
been disruptive to the education process. Parent trigger laws
ignite controversy, not parent-school-community collaboration?.A
January 2011 Los Angeles Times editorial concluded the 'parent
trigger must not become a means for private charter groups to
get free school buildings through secret proceedings.' However,
current implementation of this deeply flawed law has lacked
transparency, and resulted in many parents feeling lied to and
deceived?.CTA believes that public schools of choice should
provide the resources and information necessary to ensure that
every parent understands and is able to gain access to the
choices available."
Related legislation . SB 452 (Huff), pending in the Senate
Education Committee, is an identical bill.
Prior related legislation . AB 203 (Brownley), vetoed by
Governor Schwarzenegger in 2011, would have made various
clarifications to the PEP.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
EdVoice
Opposition
Association of California School Administrators
California School Boards Association
California Teachers Association
Analysis Prepared by : Sophia Kwong Kim / ED. / (916) 319-2087