Legislation
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
Last updated:Thursday, August 21, 2008
As of this writing, a state budget still has not been passed.
The governor has threatened to veto all bills that make it
to his desk until a budget is passed. Although a few pieces
of legislation affecting science education made it out of
both houses of the legislature, it's unknown how they will
fare once the governor gets them.
Content Standards
Two bills would require the content standards to be periodically
reviewed and revised as necessary.
SB
1097 (Torlakson) would require the appointment of content
standards review panels for English/language arts and history/social
science to review and revise the standards as deemed necessary
and forward them to the State Board of Education. The bill
requires the State Board of Education to adopt or reject the
standards within 120 days of receiving the standards from
the review panels. The bill specifies the make-up of the panels
and how they are to be appointed.
The original bill included all subject areas in the standards
review and specified that panel members were to be appointed
by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. CSTA supported
that bill. The state's calendar for adopting instructional
materials calls for the science framework and the instructional
materials evaluation criteria to be revised by 2010. The framework
and evaluation criteria are based on the current science standards,
which were adopted in 1998, and will control the next textbook
adoption in 2012. As the bill now excludes science from possible
review prior to the 2010 updating of the framework, the1998
standards will form the basis of instructional materials to
be adopted in 2012. Those materials will remain in effect
until 2018, fully 20 years after the standards
were adopted. Our students will be learning
science content that is 20 years old. To say we are disappointed
by the removal of the science standards from potential review
is an understatement.
STATUS: The bill has passed the Senate the
Assembly and is being sent to the governor for signature.
SB
1269 (Wyland) "encourages" the Superintendent of Public
Instruction and the State Board of Education to consider ways
to increase the number of students who go to college and graduate
with degrees in science and engineering and to consider teaching
careers. The bill also requires the SBE and SPI to
revise the science frameworks, and standards if necessary,
to reflect the model curriculum developed by organizations
such as the National Academy of Sciences; incorporate
in the science curriculum math, reading comprehension, and
writing in describing observations and experiments; incorporate
analytical, intellectual, and creative skills required to
pose and investigate scientific questions; and incorporate
engineering elements in the science curriculum in a manner
designed to engage students.
Interestingly, the requirement in this bill that the science
standards and frameworks be revised to reflect the "model
curriculum" developed by the NAS runs completely counter to
the intentions of the developers of California's framework,
which expressly prohibits any mention of national standards.
STATUS: The bill has passed the Senate and
the Assembly Education Committee, and is in the Assembly Appropriations
Committee suspense file.
Instructional Materials
AB
2315 (Mullin) would revise the instructional materials
adoption process by 1) extending the time that districts have
to supply students with standards-aligned books from 24 months
to 36months; 2) requiring that the evaluations and recommendations
of the teacher and expert review panels be made public; 3)
eliminating the role of the Curriculum Commission from the
adoption process; 4) requiring districts, as a condition of
receiving instructional materials funds, to submit the names
of individuals being considered to serve on the evaluation
and review of instructional materials submitted for grades
K-8.
This bill attempts to implement some of the recommendations
of the Legislative Analyst's office with regard to the adoption
of instructional materials.
STATUS: The bill has passed both the Assembly
and Senate and is being sent to the governor for signature.
Testing
SB
1111 (Scott), as amended, would require the State Board
of Education to revise testing requirements so that any federal
testing requirements can be met through the administration
of a state test, and it would prohibit the State Board of
Education from requiring the administration of any pupil achievement
test based solely on federal requirements. The bill would
instead require the administration of a federally required
pupil achievement test to be authorized by a state statute.
The original bill would have changed the requirement that
all students be tested in 10th grade on the biology and life
science standards and would have allowed districts to test
students in those subjects by the end of 12th grade. NCLB
requires that all students be tested at least once in science
in high school; a minimum of 95 percent of students must be
tested on the same subject in order to comply with NCLB. The
State Board of Education mandated that, for California, the
NCLB test would be a biology/life sciences test administered
at grade 10; the board believed that that would be the only
way to achieve a 95 percent participation rate. This original
bill required that the state board revise the 10th grade requirement
and allow districts to satisfy the high school testing requirement
through administration of the life science/biology test by
the end of grade 12. Using the California Longitudinal Pupil
Achievement Data System, in which students are assigned unique
identification numbers, student test scores could be accumulated
over a span of grades, through grade 12, to meet the 95 percent
requirement. Under the current mandate, many districts which
did not require biology until later in high school had to
revise their science program to accommodate the NCLB requirement;
this bill would return the flexibility to districts to structure
science programs in a way that works best for their students.
CSTA has long supported such a revision of the 10th grade
test (see our position
on this and other issues). Although we are disappointed
that the bill was amended to make it more generic and does
not single out the 10th grade NCLB test for special scrutiny,
we nonetheless support the amended bill.
STATUS: The bill has passed both the Senate
and Assembly and is being sent to the governor for signature.
Science Teacher Salaries
SB
1660 (Romero) would allow districts to negotiate with
unions a different salary schedule for math, science, and
special ed. teachers in schools in decile 1, 2, or 3 on the
API. CSTA opposes differentiated salaries for teachers within
a district and urges that the funds being made available for
this bill be redirected to improved science labs and equipment,
guaranteed instructional minutes for science, and professional
development for science teachers.
STATUS: Passed both the Senate and Assembly
and is in unfinished business in the Senate.
(See
recent legislation for more information on these bills and
bills that didn't make it through the legislature last year.)
Full texts of these and other bills can be found at Leg.
Info.
For Senate and Assembly education committees, and to find
your legislator, see Legislators
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