BILL ANALYSIS
SB 1 X1
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Date of Hearing: March 17, 1999
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Carole Migden, Chairwoman
SB 1 X1 (Alpert) - As Amended: March 15, 1999
Policy Committee:
EducationVote:17-2
Urgency: Yes State Mandated Local
Program:YesReimbursable: Yes
SUMMARY :
This bill establishes the Public School Performance
Accountability Act of 1999 through three major components: 1)
creation of an Academic Performance Index (API) to rank all
schools, 2) establishment of a intervention program to assist
low-performing schools, and 3) establishment of a reward program
for high-performing schools. Specifically, this bill :
1)Creates the API to rank all schools and measure progress, as
follows:
a) Requires the State Superintendent of Public Instruction
(SPI), with approval from the State Board of Education
(SBE), to develop (API) by July 1, 1999.
b) Specifies that test scores on statewide exams make up at
least 60 percent of the value of the API.
c) Uses the API to rank all schools. The API includes
other indicators like student and teacher attendance rates
and graduation rates for high schools.
d) Establishes a minimum annual improvement rate of five
percent in the API from school base scores. The SBE may
establish higher improvement rates when it adopts rules and
regulations for this legislation.
e) Requires the API to be disaggregated by gender,
ethnicity, special education status, and english language
proficiency.
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f) Requires the SPI (Beginning June 2000) to use the API to
measure the progress of schools and to select schools for
participation in the Intermediate
Intervention/Underperforming School Program (IIUS) or in
the High Achieving/Improving Schools Program (HAIS).
g) Specifies that the ranking applies only to districts
with more than 100 Average Daily Attendance (ADA).
2) Establishes the IIUS Program to assist low-achieving
schools, as follows:
a) Requires the SPI to invite schools that score below the
50th percentile on the Standardized Testing and Reporting
(STAR) test to participate in the IIUS program.
b) Limits participation to 430 schools, with no more than
86 schools from each decile (each tenth percentile) below
the 50th percentile. If fewer than 430 schools volunteer,
the SPI may randomly select schools to fill the remaining
slots in each decile. The SPI must notify schools of their
participation by September of each year.
c) Provides planning grants ranging from $25,000 to $50,000
to participating schools beneath the 50th percentile.
d) Requires the SPI, with SBE approval, to develop a list
of qualified external evaluators to help low-performing
schools develop an action plan as part of the planning
grant process.
e) Requires underperforming schools to complete an action
plan by April 15th in the year following their selection
for participation.
f) Authorizes participating schools to submit a request for
funding of up to $150 per pupil with a minimum grant of
$25,000 per school site to implement the school action plan
by June 15th.
g) Requires school districts to hold a public hearing if
its underperforming school fails to meet the minimum
improvement rate after one year of implementing the action
plan.
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h) Requires that school to continue to participate in the
IIUS program, if an underperforming school shows
significant improvement after one year of implementing the
action plan.
i) Requires the SPI and the SBE, along with the local
school board to reassign the principal, if an
underperforming school fails to make any improvement after
two years . The SPI may reassign the school to a college or
other educational institution with approval from the SBE.
The SPI may not assume the management of the school.
3)Establishes the HAIS Program to reward high-performing
schools with monetary and non-monetary awards for success, as
follows:
a) Requires the SPI, starting June 2000, to rank all
schools based on the API by grade level and type of school.
Starting June 2001, the rankings must also include the
target annual improvement for each school compared to its
actual improvement rate for the past year with a comparison
to schools with similar characteristics.
b) Requires the SPI, starting June 2001, to list the annual
improvement targets for each school.
c) Requires local school boards to hold annual public
hearings to discuss the results of the rankings.
d) Requires the SPI to identify all schools eligible to
receive monetary or non-monetary rewards. Schools may
receive an award of up to $150 per pupil, subject to
funding in the annual budget act, or receive additional
flexibility from the Education Codes.
FISCAL EFFECT :
1)GF (Prop 98) costs of $160 million annually, beginning in FY
1999-00, by appropriating $63.85 million for the IIUS
program, and $96.15 million for the HAIS program.
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While funds for the HAIS program are appropriated in FY
1999-00 they likely will not be expended until FY 2000-01,
because the ranking will not be available until June 2000.
2)Federal fund costs of $32.3 million annually for the IIUS
program. These funds are proposed in the governor's budget.
3)GF (non-Prop 98) costs of $3 million annually beginning in FY
1999-00 to the California Department of Education to collect,
analyze, and report data for the API, and to implement the
IIUS program and the HAIS program. The bill does not specify
funding to cover these costs.
COMMENTS :
1) Purpose . This bill, along with three others, represents
the governor's effort in the special session to reform the
public schools. The other three bills are:
a) SB 2x (O'Connell), which establishes a high school exit
exam. This bill is before the committee today.
b) AB 1x (Villaraigosa), which creates the Teacher Peer
Review and Assistance Program. This bill is currently in
the Senate.
c) AB 2x (Mazzoni), which establishes new reading programs
and staff training programs. This bill is also currently
in the Senate.
2) Brief History . There have been several past efforts aimed
at initiating or creating an accountability system
statewide, as follows:
a) Focus Schools . SB 171 (Watson, 1992) required the SPI to
identify low-performing schools (or Focus Schools) and
appoint an external consultant to intervene in the
management of the school. This statute was never
implemented because no funding was ever appropriated. The
Focus Schools statute became inoperative on July 1, 1998.
b) Standards . The SBE is in the process of setting
academic standards, clearly defined statements of what
students should be able to know and do at various grade
levels. Thus far, the SBE has approved content standards
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for language arts, mathematics, science and social
science/history. However, the SBE has not adopted
performance standards in any subject, which has delayed the
development of the curriculum frameworks necessary to set
guidelines for the preparation of textbooks and other
instructional materials, as well as direction for the
training of teachers to use them.
c) Testing . The SBE is in the process of developing a
testing system that is aligned with the standards. The
recent enactment and first-time administration last spring
of the STAR test, a nationally normed exam for determining
individual student performance in grades 2-11, and the soon
to be developed statewide matrix testing program aligned
with the state's new standards in grades 4, 5, 8, and 10,
are part of the emerging accountability program.
d) School Accountability Report Card . Under the Classroom
Instructional Improvement and Accountability Act
(Proposition 98), the governing board of each school
district is required to implement a school accountability
report card for each school in the district, to issue the
card annually, and to provide a copy to parents upon
request. Existing law requires the school accountability
report card must provide data to parents to help them
decide at which school to enroll their children.
e) The 1998 Conference Committee on Public School
Accountability. During the 1998 Regular Session, a number
of bills with varying approaches to public school
accountability were introduced, leading to the creation of
the Conference Committee on Public School Accountability.
Beginning in April 1998, a process began wherein workgroups
were created to examine the various elements of a public
school accountability system, drawing on the perspectives
of the various parties of interest and studying the
activities of school districts and other states that were
either developing or implementing their own accountability
systems. Particular attention was paid to the efforts
underway at the time in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas, as
well as in San Diego, which was developing a system based
on the model utilized in Texas. What resulted was the
development of a two-stage process, an Immediate Short Term
Voluntary Program, and the Long Term Public Schools
Accountability System. These proposals were amended into
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SB 1561 (Leslie), which became the vehicle for the work of
the conference committee. SB 1561 was vetoed.
3) Concerns
a) Minimum Growth Rate May Be Too High . The Association of
California School Administrators (ACSA) is concerned with
the ability of school districts to maintain an annual
growth rate of 5 percent. ACSA performed a statistical
estimate based on a local school district and found that
more than half of the schools in that district could not
sustain the five percent improvement rate. ACSA is
concerned that "preliminary estimates are that 66% to 100%
of the schools may fail to meet the standard." ACSA and
the California Teachers Association (CTA) suggest deleting
the five-percent figure, and leaving it up to the SPI and
the SBE to adopt the appropriate improvement rate.
b) Additionally, CTA indicates that it opposes any
legislation that ranks every school in the state, because
such ranking may have an unintended consequence of hurting
morale at a school site, resulting in teachers and students
leaving those sites.
The governor's office contends the SBE has the ability to
adjust the improvement rate for low-performing schools.
For high-achieving schools, the administration indicates
that the bill allows schools to choose between meeting the
target improvement rate or meeting the yet-to-be-adopted
performance standards.
c) Existing Data Imperfect or Nonexistent for the API.
Current data for the proposed API either are not precise or
do not exist. The development and the requirement that
local school districts report such data may present a
logistical problem in implementing this legislation. The
API is based on test scores and student and teacher
attendance. Currently student attendance information is
based on estimates of average attendance. Moreover, the
state does not currently collect data for teacher
attendance.
The governor's office is aware of the lack of data, and plans to
develop the appropriate data and the method to collect the data
through the SPI and the SBE. In the meantime, the API ranking
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will likely be based solely on the results of the STAR test.
Analysis Prepared by : Jai Sookprasert / APPR. / (916)
319-2081