BILL NUMBER: SB 1357CHAPTERED BILL TEXT CHAPTER 704 FILED WITH SECRETARY OF STATE SEPTEMBER 30, 2010 APPROVED BY GOVERNOR SEPTEMBER 30, 2010 PASSED THE SENATE AUGUST 26, 2010 PASSED THE ASSEMBLY AUGUST 25, 2010 AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY AUGUST 20, 2010 AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY AUGUST 16, 2010 AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 23, 2010 AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY JUNE 10, 2010 AMENDED IN SENATE APRIL 5, 2010 INTRODUCED BY Senators Steinberg and Alquist (Principal coauthor: Senator Romero) (Principal coauthor: Assembly Member Brownley) FEBRUARY 19, 2010 An act to amend Section 48070.6 of, and to add Section 60901 to, the Education Code, relating to pupil data. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST SB 1357, Steinberg. California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System. Existing law establishes the California Education Information System, which consists of the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) and the California Longitudinal Teacher Integrated Data Education System. Existing law requires the State Department of Education under CALPADS to contract for the development of proposals that will provide for the retention and analysis of longitudinal pupil achievement data. Existing law requires local educational agencies to retain individual pupil records for each test taker, including other data elements deemed necessary by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with approval of the State Board of Education, to comply with federal reporting requirements delineated in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This bill would require the department, contingent on federal funding for this purpose and in consultation with the Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst's Office, to prepare CALPADS to include data on a quarterly rate of pupil attendance. The bill would require that CALPADS be capable of issuing to local educational agencies periodic reports on district, school, class, and individual pupil rates of absence and chronic absentees, as defined. The bill would state the intent of the Legislature to support the development of early warning systems to identify and support individual pupils who are at risk of academic failure or of dropping out of school. Existing law requires the Superintendent annually to submit to the Governor, the Legislature, and the State Board of Education a report on dropouts using the data produced by CALPADS. This bill would require the report to include chronic absentee rates when that data is available. The bill would make implementation of the provisions regarding the inclusion of pupil attendance data in CALPADS contingent upon the appropriation of federal funds specifically for the purposes of those provisions. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS: SECTION 1. (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: (1) The number of pupils dropping out of California middle and high schools is unacceptably high and has negative consequences for those dropouts, their communities, and the health of the California economy. (2) Research suggests that before they abandon school, many pupils who drop out display clear early warning signs including chronic absenteeism, failing grades, and behavior problems. (3) States and school districts across the country employ early warning systems to accurately identify pupils who are at risk of dropping out and provide timely dropout prevention. (4) Chronic absence, defined as missing 10 percent or more of schooldays for any reason over the course of the academic year, even in the earliest of grades, is one of the best indicators of dropout risk and is a critical element in any early warning system. (5) California is one of only seven states that do not collect pupil level data on attendance according to the Data Quality Campaign, a national, collaborative effort to encourage and support state policymakers to improve the availability and use of high-quality education data to improve pupil achievement. (6) Existing state law clearly recognizes the importance of attendance for pupils by making education compulsory for children between 6 and 18 years of age, with few exceptions. State law also encourages local educational agencies to adopt pupil attendance policies, to notify parents when pupils are absent, to establish alternative programs for pupils in special circumstances, and to work with law enforcement agencies to address truancy. (7) Existing state law also requires 8th and 9th grade dropout rates and cohort graduation rates to be included as factors in the Academic Performance Index (API), the state's accountability measure for public schools. As these factors are incorporated into the API, and as local educational agencies attend more closely to them, the state's education data system must be improved to support schools and districts to identify pupils at risk of dropping out and prevent that outcome. (b) (1) It is therefore the intent of the Legislature to improve the state's ability to support local educational agencies in their efforts to increase academic achievement and prevent dropouts by making the state's education data system capable of collecting pupil level data on chronic absenteeism. (2) It is further the intent of the Legislature to support the development of early warning systems that will better enable schools and communities to identify pupils who signal clearly that they are at risk of dropping out and to develop interventions to improve pupil attendance, retention, and achievement. SEC. 2. Section 48070.6 of the Education Code is amended to read: 48070.6. (a) On or before August 1, 2011, and annually thereafter, utilizing data produced by the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System pursuant to Section 60900 and other available data, the Superintendent shall submit to the Governor, the Legislature, and the state board, a report that shall be called the Annual Report on Dropouts in California. The report shall include, but not be limited to, all of the following: (1) One-year dropout rates for each of grades 7 to 12, inclusive. (2) Four-year cohort dropout rates for grades 9 to 12, inclusive. (3) Two- or three-year cohort dropout rates, as appropriate, for middle schools. (4) Grade 9 to grade 10 promotion rates. (5) Percentage of high school pupils for each of grades 9 to 12, inclusive, who are on track to earn sufficient credits to graduate. (6) The average number of nonpromotional school moves that pupils make between grades 6 to 12, inclusive. (7) "Full-year" dropout rates for alternative schools, including dropout recovery high schools, calculated using a methodology developed by the Superintendent to appropriately reflect dropout rates in each type of alternative school. (8) An explanation of the methodology or methodologies used to calculate "full-year" dropout rates for alternative schools pursuant to paragraph (7). (9) Passage rates on the high school exit examination adopted pursuant to subdivision (a) of Section 60850. (10) Other available data relating to dropout or graduation rates or pupil progress toward high school graduation. (b) When cohort dropout rates can be calculated accurately using longitudinal data, the rates described in paragraph (3) of subdivision (a) shall be replaced by dropout rates for cohorts of pupils entering middle school. (c) When data is available, the report shall also include all of the following: (1) Rates at which pupils graduate in four, five, and six years, pursuant to subparagraph (A) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (a) of Section 52052. (2) Percentage of high school graduates and dropouts who completed courses that are certified by the University of California as meeting admission requirement criteria for the University of California and California State University systems. (3) Percentage of high school graduates and dropouts who completed two or more classes in career technical education. (4) Percentage of high school graduates and dropouts who completed both course sequences described in paragraphs (2) and (3). (5) Behavioral data by school and district, including suspensions and expulsions. (6) Truancy rates. (7) GED earning rates. (8) Chronic absentee rates, as defined in Section 60901. (d) If possible, the data listed in subdivisions (a) and (b) shall be presented in the report, organized as follows: (1) By state. (2) By county. (3) By district, both including and excluding charter schools. (4) By school. (e) The report shall include data from alternative middle and high schools, including continuation high schools, community day schools, juvenile court schools, special schools, opportunity schools, and schools attended by wards of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Division of Juvenile Justice. (f) The report may include relevant data on school climate and pupil engagement from the California Healthy Kids Survey. (g) If possible, the data listed in subdivisions (a) and (b) shall be presented for the following subgroups, if the subgroup consists of at least 50 pupils, and the subgroup constitutes at least 15 percent of the total population of pupils at a school: (1) Grade level. (2) Ethnicity. (3) Gender. (4) Low socioeconomic status. (5) English learners. (6) Special education status. (h) The first Annual Report on Dropouts in California shall include data from the most recent year. Subsequent annual reports shall include data from the most recent year and, at a minimum, the two prior years, so that comparisons can be made easily. (i) The Superintendent or his or her designee shall make an oral presentation of the contents of the report to the state board at a regularly scheduled meeting of the board. (j) The Superintendent shall make the contents of the report available on the department's Internet Web site in a format that is easy for the public to access and understand. (k) If inclusion of school-level data would render the written report unwieldy, the data may be omitted from the written report and posted on the department's Internet Web site. (l) It is the intent of the Legislature that the report prepared by the Superintendent be usable by schools, districts, policymakers, researchers, parents, and the public, for purposes of identifying and understanding trends, causal relations, early warning indicators, and potential points of intervention to address the high rate of dropouts in California. (m) For purposes of this section, dropouts shall be defined using the exit/withdrawal codes developed by the department. (n) For purposes of this section, "dropout recovery high school" has the same meaning as defined in subparagraph (C) of paragraph (4) of subdivision (a) of Section 52052. SEC. 3. Section 60901 is added to the Education Code, to read: 60901. (a) Contingent upon the receipt of federal funds for this purpose, the department, in consultation with the Department of Finance and the Legislative Analyst's Office, shall prepare the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System established pursuant to Section 60900 to include data on a quarterly rate of pupil attendance. Preparation shall include all of the following: (1) The addition of fields to facilitate the transfer of data. (2) System development activities including any business rules and definitions that would be needed to improve the quality and consistency of the data. (3) Processes for the transfer of data from local educational agencies. (4) Consultation with organizations representing school, district, and county education administrators, classified and certified staff, and parents in order to develop the criteria and frequency of reports on pupil attendance data and other indicators as may be submitted by local educational agencies. (b) The system shall support local educational agencies in their efforts to identify and support pupils at risk of dropping out and shall be capable of issuing to local educational agencies periodic reports that include, but may not be limited to, district, school, class, and individual pupil reports on both of the following: (1) Rates of absence. (2) Chronic absentees. (c) (1) For purposes of this section, "chronic absentee" means a pupil who is absent on 10 percent or more of the schooldays in the school year when the total number of days a pupil is absent is divided by the total number of days the pupil is enrolled and school was actually taught in the regular day schools of the district, exclusive of Saturdays and Sundays. (2) Once available, chronic absentee rates shall be incorporated into the annual report on dropouts required pursuant to Section 48070.6. (d) It is the intent of the Legislature to support the development of early warning systems to enable the identification and support of individual pupils who are at risk of academic failure or dropping out of school. The systems shall encompass the following characteristics: (1) The utilization of highly predictive indicators, including attendance, course grades or completion, performance on assessments of pupil achievement, suspensions, and expulsions. (2) A thorough validation process to ensure the predictive reliability of the systems. (3) Periodic reports that inform principals, teachers, and parents in a manner that enables timely identification and support of individual pupils who are at risk of academic failure or dropping out. (e) When the system established pursuant to Section 60900 is prepared to accept data on a quarterly rate of pupil attendance, a local educational agency may submit data to the department on a quarterly rate of pupil attendance and other indicators as identified by the department. It is the intent of the Legislature that schools identified on the list of persistently lowest-achieving schools will fully utilize the early warning systems described in subdivision (d). (f) A local educational agency that reports attendance data for pupils to the system established pursuant to Section 60900 may request, and the department shall provide, the early warning report described in subdivision (d) up to four times each school year. (g) The department shall notify local educational agencies that reporting pupil attendance and chronic absentee data pursuant to this section is voluntary. The notice shall include a description of the benefits of reporting pupil attendance and chronic absentee data in fostering the development of effective supports and interventions for at-risk pupils. (h) This section shall not be implemented unless federal funds are appropriated specifically for the purposes of this section.