Existing law requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, among other duties, to establish standards for the issuance and renewal of credentials, certificates, and permits. Existing law requires a county superintendent of schools to monitor and review school district certificated employee assignment practices, as provided. Existing law requires a county superintendent of schools to submit an annual report to the commission and the State Department of Education summarizing the results of all assignment monitoring and reviews. Existing law requires the commission to submit biennial reports to the Legislature concerning teacher assignments and misassignments based, in part, on the annual reports of the county superintendents of schools.

This bill would repeal those provisions relating to teacher assignment monitoring. The bill would require the commission to administer a State Assignment Accountability System to provide local educational agencies with a data system for assignment monitoring. The bill would require the commission to annually use data it receives from the department to produce an initial data file of vacant positions and assignments that do not have a clear match of credential to assignment. The bill would identify the monitoring authority for a local educational agency, and would require a monitoring authority to review and determine any potential misassignments reported in and identified through the system for local educational agencies within its authority, as provided. The bill would grant the commission the authority to make a final determination for all potential misassignments. The bill would require the data generated from the system for the 201920 school year to be used for informational purposes only. The bill would require, commencing with the 202021 school year, the commission to make annual misassignment and vacant position data publicly available on its internet website.

The bill would require a certificated employee who has attained permanent status to notify specified entities if the certificated employee is required by the local educational agency to accept an assignment for which the certificated employee has no legal authorization, as provided. The bill would prohibit a local educational agency from taking adverse action against a certificated employee who provides that notice. To the extent the bill imposes additional duties on local educational agencies, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.

This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state, reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to the statutory provisions noted above.

CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS

CSA1 Bill Id:AB 1219

Author:(Jones-Sawyer)

As Amended Ver:September 6, 2019

Majority vote

SUMMARY:

Requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to develop and implement a statewide automated State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for annual monitoring of teacher misassignment in schools, including charter schools, and revises local responsibilities for the monitoring of teacher misassignments.

The Senate Amendments:

1. Make charter authorizers the misassignment monitors for charter school assignments, instead of county offices of education.
2. Authorize, commencing in the 2020–21 school year, a chartering authority to request technical assistance to assist in its determination of potential misassignments and vacant positions from the county office of education.
3. Require the CTC, by December 1, 2022, to report to the appropriate policy and fiscal committees of the Legislature on the development of the CalSAAS, as specified.
4. Require county superintendents of schools to advise school districts to correct teacher misassignments within 30 calendar days, and require charter school authorizers to do the same for charter schools. Exempt charter school authorizers from the requirement to advise charter schools to correct misassignments of teachers who were employed during the 2019-20 school year from this requirement, until July 1, 2025.
5. Delete a requirement that district superintendents use monitoring results for compliance with statutes related to the Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs), and School Accountability Report Cards (SARCs).

COMMENTS:

Why does teacher misassignment matter? Research has established that teacher preparation and certification are by far the strongest correlates of student achievement in reading and mathematics, even when controlling for student poverty and language status. (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Teachers who are misassigned are by definition teaching content which they have not been certified to teach.

The intersection between high poverty schools, new teachers, high turnover, and misassignment is notable. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2000), new teachers tend to be concentrated in high poverty schools. Misassignment is also more likely to occur at high poverty schools (Ingersoll, 2002), and misassignment appears to occur more often for new teachers. High poverty schools experience high turnover rates - on average losing over 20% of their faculty each year (Ingersoll, 2004). According to the Education Commission of the States (2005), "there is strong evidence that teacher attrition is most severe among beginning teachers." There are many reasons why teachers leave high poverty schools, but in one longitudinal study, new teachers reported that "misassignment was a major source of…dissatisfaction, eventually leading them out of teaching" (Johnson and Birkeland, 2003).

Recognizing the importance of the proper assignment of teachers to the achievement of students, this bill is intended to require that the state implement a new, annual and automated system for monitoring and reporting on teacher misassignments. This bill will also ensure that the public has a clear picture of misassignments in school districts and at charter schools, including among those charter school teachers who may not be required to hold credentials appropriate to their assignments until 2025, and ensure that, as of July 2, 2025, charter authorizers will be required to advise charter schools to correct misassignments within 30 days, as required for county superintendents and school districts.

According to the Author:

"In the historic civil rights victory, Williams v. California, the court ruled that all students have a fundamental right to an equal education, and that the state is responsible for providing all students with the basic resources they need to learn – this includes qualified teachers. The Williams settlement required the state to monitor that teachers have the appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching. However, only the lowest performing schools at the time were required to be monitored for misassignments annually. The rest of the schools are currently monitored on a four-year cycle, with only a quarter of schools being monitored every year. AB 1219 will uphold the fundamental right of students to have qualified teachers by requiring teacher assignments in all schools to be reviewed annually. This bill will provide advocates and lawmakers the ability to hold schools accountable for failing to provide students with the quality education guaranteed by our state Constitution."

Arguments in Support:

The CTC writes, "Under current law, California monitors one quarter of all certificated assignments in the state each year. Additionally, schools ranked in the lowest three deciles of the now-obsolete Academic Performance Index are monitored annually. However, the state's federal reporting obligations under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) require annual monitoring of all certificated assignments statewide. This bill would leverage the Commission's new California Statewide Assignment Accountability System, authorized in last year's budget act, to create a modernized assignment monitoring process that will fulfil these federal requirements while also providing greater transparency to the public."

Arguments in Opposition:

None on file

FISCAL COMMENTS:

According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:

1. The CTC indicates that any costs resulting from this bill regarding the continued development and implementation of the CalSAAS system would be minor and absorbable within existing resources because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. Staff notes that the 2018-19 budget included $380,000 in one-time funds for the CTC to contract to develop the system.
2. This bill could result in additional, unknown Proposition 98 General Fund costs, potentially in the low millions of dollars per year, related to teacher assignment monitoring activities for school districts and county offices of education (COEs). Given the lack of clarity in law about which charter school teachers must hold certificates and what the equivalent of a certificate required by a public school teacher means, this process could be difficult and costly. Additionally, because the new system would produce information on misassignments annually, school districts and COEs would also be required to monitor all assignments each year. Currently, COE's are only currently required to monitor and review district assignment practices every four years. Further, the monitoring entities would be required to undergo a 90-day review period each year to determine potential misassignments and vacancies based on documentation or additional assignment information submitted by a school district or charter school. However, the automated processes through CalSAAS could provide efficiencies to help reduce these costs as districts and COEs would no longer need to manually verify all assignments.
3. Including charter school teachers in the CalSAAS could create new workload for charter schools in identifying teacher assignments, certificates, permits, or other equivalent documents, resulting in potentially significant local costs for these schools. For example, the bill requires a new process for employees who are required to accept a teaching assignment in a teaching or services position for which the employee has no legal authorization, including the filing of various written notifications. This provision also applies to traditional public school districts, which could result in additional, unknown state reimbursable mandated costs.

VOTES:

ASM EDUCATION: 5-0-1

YES: O'Donnell, Kalra, McCarty, Smith, Weber

ABS, ABST OR NV: Kiley

ASM APPROPRIATIONS: 15-1-2

YES: Gonzalez, Bloom, Bonta, Calderon, Carrillo, Chau, Diep, Eggman, Gabriel, Eduardo Garcia, Maienschein, Obernolte, Petrie-Norris, Quirk, Robert Rivas

NO: Brough

ABS, ABST OR NV: Bigelow, Fong

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 68-0-12

YES: Aguiar-Curry, Arambula, Bauer-Kahan, Berman, Bloom, Boerner Horvath, Bonta, Burke, Calderon, Carrillo, Cervantes, Chau, Chen, Chiu, Choi, Chu, Cooper, Cunningham, Daly, Eggman, Flora, Frazier, Friedman, Gabriel, Cristina Garcia, Gipson, Gloria, Gonzalez, Gray, Grayson, Holden, Irwin, Jones-Sawyer, Kalra, Kamlager-Dove, Lackey, Levine, Limón, Low, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Mullin, Nazarian, O'Donnell, Obernolte, Petrie‑Norris, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Reyes, Luz Rivas, Robert Rivas, Rodriguez, Blanca Rubio, Salas, Santiago, Smith, Mark Stone, Ting, Voepel, Waldron, Weber, Wicks, Wood, Rendon

ABS, ABST OR NV: Bigelow, Brough, Cooley, Dahle, Diep, Fong, Gallagher, Eduardo Garcia, Kiley, Melendez, Muratsuchi, Patterson

SENATE FLOOR: 31-5-4

YES: Allen, Archuleta, Atkins, Beall, Bradford, Caballero, Chang, Dodd, Durazo, Galgiani, Glazer, Lena Gonzalez, Hertzberg, Hill, Hueso, Hurtado, Jackson, Leyva, McGuire, Mitchell, Monning, Pan, Portantino, Roth, Rubio, Skinner, Stern, Umberg, Wieckowski, Wiener, Wilk

NO: Bates, Borgeas, Grove, Jones, Morrell

ABS, ABST OR NV: Dahle, Moorlach, Nielsen, Stone

UPDATED:

VERSION: September 6, 2019

CONSULTANT: Tanya Lieberman / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN: 0002408

 THIRD READING  

Bill No: AB 1219

Author: Jones-Sawyer (D)

Amended: 9/6/19 in Senate

Vote: 21

SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE: 5-0, 7/10/19

AYES: Leyva, Wilk, Chang, Durazo, Pan

NO VOTE RECORDED: Glazer, McGuire

SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 5-2, 8/30/19

AYES: Portantino, Bradford, Durazo, Hill, Wieckowski

NOES: Bates, Jones

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 68-0, 5/29/19 - See last page for vote

SUBJECT: Teacher credentialing: certificated employee assignment monitoring

SOURCE: Commission on Teacher Credentialing

DIGEST:

This bill requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to implement the State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for annual monitoring of teacher misassignments in all public schools.

Senate Floor Amendments of 9/6/19 (1) require, for a school district, the county superintendent of school to notify a school administrator of the misassignment, and advise the administrator to correct the assignment within 30 calendar days; (2) require, for a charter school, the monitoring authority to notify a charter school administrator of the misassignment, and advise the administrator to correct the assignment within 30 calendar days; (3) provide that, for teachers employed by charter schools during the 2019-20 school year, the monitoring authority is not required to advise the charter school to correct a misassignment until July 1, 2025.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Requires each county superintendent of schools to monitor and review school district certificated employee assignment practices.
2. Requires each county superintendent of schools to investigate school and district efforts to ensure that credentialed teachers are properly assigned. (Education Code 44258.9)
3. Requires county superintendents to submit an annual report to the CTC and the California Department of Education (CDE) which summarizes the results of all assignment monitoring and reviews.
4. Requires the CTC to submit biennial reports to the Legislature concerning teacher assignments and misassignments based, in part, on the annual reports of the county superintendents of schools.
5. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify a certificated school administrator responsible for assignments of a misassignment, and advise him or her to correct the assignment within 30 calendar days.
6. Requires the county superintendent to notify the CTC of the misassignment if the certificated school administrator has not corrected the misassignment within 30 days of the initial notification, or has not described in writing the extraordinary circumstances which make the correction impossible.
7. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify the superintendent of a school district in which five percent or more of all certificated teachers in the secondary schools are found to be misassigned to advise him or her to correct the misassignments within 120 calendar days.
8. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify the CTC of the misassignments if the school district superintendent has not corrected the misassignments within 120 days of the initial notification, or has not described in writing to the county superintendent the extraordinary circumstances which make the correction impossible.
9. Authorizes the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to submit a summary of the reports submitted by county superintendents to the Legislature, and authorizes the Legislature to hold hearings on the findings.
10. Requires that teachers in charter schools hold a CTC certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold.
11. Establishes, through regulations, a process for the CTC to use to compel compliance with statute on misassignments, including, as a final step, the option to take adverse action against the credentials of individuals found to be responsible. (CCR Title 5 80339.1-80339.5)

This bill requires the CTC to administer the CalSAAS as follows:

1. Requires the CTC and CDE to enter into a data sharing agreement to provide the CTC with employee assignment data necessary to annually identify misassignments and vacant positions at LEAs and support reporting consistent with the state plan required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Acts (ESSA).
2. Requires the CTC to use the data provides by CDE to produce an initial data file of vacant positions and certificated employee assignments that do not have a clear match of credential to assignment. The CTC shall notify LEAs and monitoring authorities of the opportunity to access the system and review the data.
3. Requires a monitoring authority to access the CalSAAS to review the initial data file and any additional information submitted by LEAs and make a determination of potential misassignments and vacant positions within 90 days of the CTC’s notification.
4. Requires the CTC to report on the monitoring authority’s determination for a given year and, when identifying misassignments, to identify an employee as correctly assigned when the employee holds the certificate or credential required by the CTC for that assignment.
5. Prohibits LEAs from using CalSAAS data for evaluating certificated employee performance or making employment decisions.
6. Specifies that if an employee is required by an LEA to accept an assignment for which the employee has no legal authorization, both of the following shall occur:
   1. An employee of a school district or a charter school shall notify the district superintendent or charter administrator in writing.
   2. If no action is taken, the employee shall notify the county superintendent of schools or the chartering authority in writing.
7. Prohibits an LEA from taking adverse action against an employee who files a notice of misassignment and nullifies the performance evaluation of the misassigned teacher.
8. Provides that, commencing with the 2020-21 school year, following the 90 day review period described above, the CTC shall do the following:
   1. Make annual CalSAAS employee misassignment and vacant position data publicly available in a searchable format online.
   2. Ensure that charter school data is distinguishable from traditional public school data.
   3. Maintain each year’s data for no less than five years.
   4. Provide CDE with annual data on the total number of misassignments at the schoolsite, school district, and county level.
   5. Ensure that the publicly available misassignment data reported from CalSAAS not include personally identifiable information of employees.
9. Provides that, for teachers employed by charter schools during the 2019-20 school year, the monitoring authority is not required to advise the charter school to correct a misassignment until July 1, 2025.

Comments

1. Need for the bill. According to the author, “In the historic civil rights victory, Williams v. California, the court ruled that all students have a fundamental right to an equal education, and that the state is responsible for providing all students with the basic resources they need to learn – this includes qualified teachers. The Williams settlement required the state to monitor that teachers have the appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching. However, only the lowest performing schools at the time were required to be monitored for misassignments annually. The rest of the schools are currently monitored on a four-year cycle, with only a quarter of schools being monitored every year.

“AB 1219 will uphold the fundamental right of students to have qualified teachers by requiring teacher assignments in all schools to be reviewed annually. This bill will provide advocates and lawmakers the ability to hold schools accountable for failing to provide students with the quality education guaranteed by our state Constitution.”

1. Teacher assignment monitoring basics. Monitoring assignments of teachers involves reviewing all certification and assignment records for all certificated staff in the public schools of California. The monitoring is necessary to determine if educators hold the appropriate credential and authorization for the instruction they are providing or if they are otherwise legally authorized to serve via a permit, waiver, or other local assignment option.

County Superintendents of Schools must annually report the results of assignment monitoring activities conducted for approximately one-quarter of all certificated staff in each county throughout the state. The term “teacher misassignment” refers to the placement of certificated staff in a teaching or services position for which the educator does not hold a valid and legally recognized certificate, credential, permit, or waiver with an appropriate authorization for the assignment or is not otherwise legally authorized for the assignment under another section of statute or regulation.

1. Teacher misassignments in California. Under current law, the CTC must submit biennial reports to the Legislature on the misassignment of teachers in California. The December, 2017 report, which draws on data from the four academic years between 2011 and 2015, included the following findings:
   1. Misassignment data sensitive to changes in monitoring, but also policy changes. Significant changes in misassignment are sometimes due to changes in definitions of compliance. A change in the requirements for teaching children on the Autism spectrum, for example, resulted in significant numbers of misassignments. But improved compliance monitoring, for example in the case of qualifications to teach English learners required by the Williams settlement, also led to major improvements in assignments.
   2. Significant overall decrease in misassignments. There was an overall decrease of 28 percent in teaching misassignments for all schools in California when comparing the report cycles of 2007-11 and 2011-15. In total, a reduction of 9,027 teaching misassignments was achieved.
   3. English learner misassignments declined significantly. The total number of English learner instruction misassignments decreased by almost 84 percent between the 2007-11 and 2011-15 report cycles. The Williams settlement created additional emphasis on the review of the English learner instruction assignments. The unauthorized assignment of teachers for English learner students rose more than an 88 percent increase during the 2003-07 monitoring cycle compared to 1999-2003, and has since declined in the subsequent two cycles.
   4. Misassignments are concentrated in special education, elective courses, and “other” courses. Special education misassignments comprised 27 percent of the total. Following legislation regarding students on the Autism spectrum and changes in special education certification, there was an increased focus after 2008 on training how to monitor and identify special education misassignments based on disability. The CTC is currently engaged in a number of changes to special education credentials which may have the effect of reducing misassignments, including embedding the existing Physical and Health Impairments and Language and Academic Development specialty credentials into the Mild/Moderate and Significant Support needs specialty areas, leaving fewer credentials.
   5. Misassignments concentrated in middle and high schools. Likely connected to the higher rate of misassignment in elective courses, over 84 percent of all teaching misassignments were found to occur at the secondary school level (middle and high schools), with approximately 49 percent of misassignments identified at the high school level.
2. The state’s ESSA plan already commits to using the data system established by this bill. In April of 2018, the State Board of Education approved a plan for reporting to the federal government regarding the “equity gap” in teacher qualifications and experience for low-income and minority children enrolled in schools assisted under Title I, including “ineffective teachers,” and those teaching “out-of-field.” In this plan, an ineffective teacher is defined as either meeting the definition of a misassigned teacher teaching without a credential. “Out-of-field” teachers are defined as those who are credentialed but have not yet demonstrated subject matter competence in the subject area or for the student population to which they are assigned.
3. There is little evidence that charter school teacher assignments have ever been systematically monitored. Current law requires that teachers in charter schools hold a certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold and expresses the intent of the Legislature that charter schools be given flexibility with regard to noncore, non-college preparatory courses. While current law does not define what noncore, non-college preparatory courses include, the CTC indicates that it means courses taught not in core subjects (not in English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science), courses that are not approved as meeting the admissions criteria for the University of California and the California State University (known as “A-G” courses), and courses not labeled as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate.

Based on sample data of specific charter schools, it appears that charter school teacher misassignments have never been monitored in a meaningful or systematic way.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: Yes

According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:

• The CTC indicates that any costs resulting from this bill regarding the continued development and implementation of the CalSAAS system would be minor and absorbable within existing resources because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. Staff notes that the 2018-19 budget included $380,000 in one-time funds for the CTC to contract to develop the system.
• This bill could result in additional, unknown Proposition 98 General Fund costs, potentially in the low millions of dollars per year, related to teacher assignment monitoring activities by county offices of education. First, this bill expands their role and establishes them as the monitoring authority of the CalSAAS for charter schools, who were previously monitored by their authorizers. Given the lack of clarity in law about which charter school teachers must hold certificates and what the equivalent of a certificate required by a public school teacher means, this process could be difficult and costly. Additionally, because the new system would produce information on misassignments annually, the COEs would also be required to monitor all assignments each year. Currently, COE’s are only currently required to monitor and review school district assignment practices every four years. Further, the COEs would be required to undergo a 90-day review period each year to determine potential misassignments and vacancies based on documentation or additional assignment information submitted by a school district or charter school. However, the automated processes through CalSAAS could provide efficiencies to help reduce these costs as the COEs would no longer need to manually verify all assignments.
• Including charter school teachers in the CalSAAS could create new workload for charter schools in identifying teacher assignments, certificates, permits, or other equivalent documents, resulting in potentially significant local costs for these schools. For example, this bill requires a new process for employees who are required to accept a teaching assignment in a teaching or services position for which the employee has no legal authorization, including the filing of various written notifications. This provision also applies to traditional public school districts, which could result in additional, unknown state reimbursable mandated costs.

SUPPORT: (Verified 9/6/19)

Commission on Teacher Credentialing (source)

California Teachers Association

Education Trust-West

OPPOSITION: (Verified 9/6/19)

California Charter Schools Association

Charter Schools Development Center

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 68-0, 5/29/19

AYES: Aguiar-Curry, Arambula, Bauer-Kahan, Berman, Bloom, Boerner Horvath, Bonta, Burke, Calderon, Carrillo, Cervantes, Chau, Chen, Chiu, Choi, Chu, Cooper, Cunningham, Daly, Eggman, Flora, Frazier, Friedman, Gabriel, Cristina Garcia, Gipson, Gloria, Gonzalez, Gray, Grayson, Holden, Irwin, Jones-Sawyer, Kalra, Kamlager-Dove, Lackey, Levine, Limón, Low, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Petrie-Norris, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Reyes, Luz Rivas, Robert Rivas, Rodriguez, Blanca Rubio, Salas, Santiago, Smith, Mark Stone, Ting, Voepel, Waldron, Weber, Wicks, Wood, Rendon

NO VOTE RECORDED: Bigelow, Brough, Cooley, Dahle, Diep, Fong, Gallagher, Eduardo Garcia, Kiley, Melendez, Muratsuchi, Patterson

Prepared by: Ian Johnson / ED. /

9/9/19 18:40:16

**** END ****

 THIRD READING  

Bill No: AB 1219

Author: Jones-Sawyer (D)

Amended: 8/30/19 in Senate

Vote: 21

SENATE EDUCATION COMMITTEE: 5-0, 7/10/19

AYES: Leyva, Wilk, Chang, Durazo, Pan

NO VOTE RECORDED: Glazer, McGuire

SENATE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE: 5-2, 8/30/19

AYES: Portantino, Bradford, Durazo, Hill, Wieckowski

NOES: Bates, Jones

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 68-0, 5/29/19 - See last page for vote

SUBJECT: Teacher credentialing: certificated employee assignment monitoring

SOURCE: Commission on Teacher Credentialing

DIGEST:

This bill requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to implement the State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for annual monitoring of teacher misassignments in all public schools.

ANALYSIS:

Existing law:

1. Requires each county superintendent of schools to monitor and review school district certificated employee assignment practices.
2. Requires each county superintendent of schools to investigate school and district efforts to ensure that credentialed teachers are properly assigned. (Education Code 44258.9)
3. Requires county superintendents to submit an annual report to the CTC and the California Department of Education (CDE) which summarizes the results of all assignment monitoring and reviews.
4. Requires the CTC to submit biennial reports to the Legislature concerning teacher assignments and misassignments based, in part, on the annual reports of the county superintendents of schools.
5. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify a certificated school administrator responsible for assignments of a misassignment, and advise him or her to correct the assignment within 30 calendar days.
6. Requires the county superintendent to notify the CTC of the misassignment if the certificated school administrator has not corrected the misassignment within 30 days of the initial notification, or has not described in writing the extraordinary circumstances which make the correction impossible.
7. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify the superintendent of a school district in which 5 percent or more of all certificated teachers in the secondary schools are found to be misassigned to advise him or her to correct the misassignments within 120 calendar days.
8. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify the CTC of the misassignments if the school district superintendent has not corrected the misassignments within 120 days of the initial notification, or has not described in writing to the county superintendent the extraordinary circumstances which make the correction impossible.
9. Authorizes the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to submit a summary of the reports submitted by county superintendents to the Legislature, and authorizes the Legislature to hold hearings on the findings.
10. Requires that teachers in charter schools hold a CTC certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold.
11. Establishes, through regulations, a process for the CTC to use to compel compliance with statute on misassignments, including, as a final step, the option to take adverse action against the credentials of individuals found to be responsible. (CCR Title 5 80339.1-80339.5)

This bill requires the CTC to administer the CalSAAS as follows:

1. Requires the CTC and CDE to enter into a data sharing agreement to provide the CTC with employee assignment data necessary to annually identify misassignments and vacant positions at LEAs and support reporting consistent with the state plan required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Acts (ESSA).
2. Requires the CTC to use the data provides by CDE to produce an initial data file of vacant positions and certificated employee assignments that do not have a clear match of credential to assignment. The CTC shall notify LEAs and monitoring authorities of the opportunity to access the system and review the data.
3. Requires a monitoring authority to access the CalSAAS to review the initial data file and any additional information submitted by LEAs and make a determination of potential misassignments and vacant positions within 90 days of the CTC’s notification.
4. Requires the CTC to report on the monitoring authority’s determination for a given year and, when identifying misassignments, to identify an employee as correctly assigned when the employee holds the certificate or credential required by the CTC for that assignment.
5. Prohibits LEAs from using CalSAAS data for evaluating certificated employee performance or making employment decisions.
6. Specifies that if an employee is required by an LEA to accept an assignment for which the employee has no legal authorization, both of the following shall occur:
   1. An employee of a school district or a charter school shall notify the district superintendent or charter administrator in writing.
   2. If no action is taken, the employee shall notify the county superintendent of schools or the chartering authority in writing.
7. Prohibits an LEA from taking adverse action against an employee who files a notice of misassignment and nullifies the performance evaluation of the misassigned teacher.
8. Provides that , commencing with the 2020-21 school year, following the 90 day review period described above, the CTC shall do the following:
   1. Make annual CalSAAS employee misassignment and vacant position data publicly available in a searchable format online.
   2. Ensure that charter school data is distinguishable from traditional public school data.
   3. Maintain each year’s data for no less than five years.
   4. Provide CDE with annual data on the total number of misassignments at the schoolsite, school district, and county level.
   5. Ensure that the publicly available misassignment data reported from CalSAAS not include personally identifiable information of employees.

Comments

1. Need for the bill. According to the author, “In the historic civil rights victory, Williams v. California, the court ruled that all students have a fundamental right to an equal education, and that the state is responsible for providing all students with the basic resources they need to learn – this includes qualified teachers. The Williams settlement required the state to monitor that teachers have the appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching. However, only the lowest performing schools at the time were required to be monitored for misassignments annually. The rest of the schools are currently monitored on a four-year cycle, with only a quarter of schools being monitored every year.

AB 1219 will uphold the fundamental right of students to have qualified teachers by requiring teacher assignments in all schools to be reviewed annually. This bill will provide advocates and lawmakers the ability to hold schools accountable for failing to provide students with the quality education guaranteed by our state Constitution.”

1. Teacher assignment monitoring basics. Monitoring assignments of teachers involves reviewing all certification and assignment records for all certificated staff in the public schools of California. The monitoring is necessary to determine if educators hold the appropriate credential and authorization for the instruction they are providing or if they are otherwise legally authorized to serve via a permit, waiver, or other local assignment option.

County Superintendents of Schools must annually report the results of assignment monitoring activities conducted for approximately one-quarter of all certificated staff in each county throughout the state. The term “teacher misassignment” refers to the placement of certificated staff in a teaching or services position for which the educator does not hold a valid and legally recognized certificate, credential, permit, or waiver with an appropriate authorization for the assignment or is not otherwise legally authorized for the assignment under another section of statute or regulation.

1. Teacher misassignments in California. Under current law, the CTC must submit biennial reports to the Legislature on the misassignment of teachers in California. The December, 2017 report, which draws on data from the four academic years between 2011 and 2015, included the following findings:
   1. Misassignment data sensitive to changes in monitoring, but also policy changes. Significant changes in misassignment are sometimes due to changes in definitions of compliance. A change in the requirements for teaching children on the Autism spectrum, for example, resulted in significant numbers of misassignments. But improved compliance monitoring, for example in the case of qualifications to teach English learners required by the Williams settlement, also led to major improvements in assignments.
   2. Significant overall decrease in misassignments. There was an overall decrease of 28 percent in teaching misassignments for all schools in California when comparing the report cycles of 2007-11 and 2011-15. In total, a reduction of 9,027 teaching misassignments was achieved.
   3. English learner misassignments declined significantly. The total number of English learner instruction misassignments decreased by almost 84 percent between the 2007-11 and 2011-15 report cycles. The Williams settlement created additional emphasis on the review of the English learner instruction assignments. The unauthorized assignment of teachers for English learner students rose more than an 88 percent increase during the 2003-07 monitoring cycle compared to 1999-2003, and has since declined in the subsequent two cycles.
   4. Misassignments are concentrated in special education, elective courses, and “other” courses. Special education misassignments comprised 27 percent of the total. Following legislation regarding students on the Autism spectrum and changes in special education certification, there was an increased focus after 2008 on training how to monitor and identify special education misassignments based on disability. The CTC is currently engaged in a number of changes to special education credentials which may have the effect of reducing misassignments, including embedding the existing Physical and Health Impairments and Language and Academic Development specialty credentials into the Mild/Moderate and Significant Support needs specialty areas, leaving fewer credentials.
   5. Misassignments concentrated in middle and high schools. Likely connected to the higher rate of misassignment in elective courses, over 84 percent of all teaching misassignments were found to occur at the secondary school level (middle and high schools), with approximately 49 percent of misassignments identified at the high school level.
2. The state’s ESSA plan already commits to using the data system established by this bill. In April of 2018, the SBE approved a plan for reporting to the federal government regarding the “equity gap” in teacher qualifications and experience for low-income and minority children enrolled in schools assisted under Title I, including “ineffective teachers,” and those teaching “out-of-field.” In this plan, an ineffective teacher is defined as either meeting the definition of a misassigned teacher teaching without a credential. “Out-of-field” teachers are defined as those who are credentialed but have not yet demonstrated subject matter competence in the subject area or for the student population to which they are assigned.
3. There is little evidence that charter school teacher assignments have ever been systematically monitored. Current law requires that teachers in charter schools hold a certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold and expresses the intent of the Legislature that charter schools be given flexibility with regard to noncore, non-college preparatory courses. While current law does not define what noncore, non-college preparatory courses include, the CTC indicates that it means courses taught not in core subjects (not in English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science), courses that are not approved as meeting the admissions criteria for the University of California and the California State University (known as “A-G” courses), and courses not labeled as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate.

Based on sample data of specific charter schools, it appears that charter school teacher misassignments have never been monitored in a meaningful or systematic way.

FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal Com.: Yes Local: Yes

According to the Senate Appropriations Committee:

• The CTC indicates that any costs resulting from this bill regarding the continued development and implementation of the CalSAAS system would be minor and absorbable within existing resources because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. Staff notes that the 2018-19 budget included $380,000 in one-time funds for the CTC to contract to develop the system.
• This bill could result in additional, unknown Proposition 98 General Fund costs, potentially in the low millions of dollars per year, related to teacher assignment monitoring activities by county offices of education. First, this bill expands their role and establishes them as the monitoring authority of the CalSAAS for charter schools, who were previously monitored by their authorizers. Given the lack of clarity in law about which charter school teachers must hold certificates and what the equivalent of a certificate required by a public school teacher means, this process could be difficult and costly. Additionally, because the new system would produce information on misassignments annually, the COEs would also be required to monitor all assignments each year. Currently, COE’s are only currently required to monitor and review school district assignment practices every four years. Further, the COEs would be required to undergo a 90-day review period each year to determine potential misassignments and vacancies based on documentation or additional assignment information submitted by a school district or charter school. However, the automated processes through CalSAAS could provide efficiencies to help reduce these costs as the COEs would no longer need to manually verify all assignments.
• Including charter school teachers in the CalSAAS could create new workload for charter schools in identifying teacher assignments, certificates, permits, or other equivalent documents, resulting in potentially significant local costs for these schools. For example, this bill requires a new process for employees who are required to accept a teaching assignment in a teaching or services position for which the employee has no legal authorization, including the filing of various written notifications. This provision also applies to traditional public school districts, which could result in additional, unknown state reimbursable mandated costs.

SUPPORT: (Verified 8/29/19)

Commission on Teacher Credentialing (source)

California Teachers Association

Education Trust-West

OPPOSITION: (Verified 8/29/19)

California Charter Schools Association

Charter Schools Development Center

ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 68-0, 5/29/19

AYES: Aguiar-Curry, Arambula, Bauer-Kahan, Berman, Bloom, Boerner Horvath, Bonta, Burke, Calderon, Carrillo, Cervantes, Chau, Chen, Chiu, Choi, Chu, Cooper, Cunningham, Daly, Eggman, Flora, Frazier, Friedman, Gabriel, Cristina Garcia, Gipson, Gloria, Gonzalez, Gray, Grayson, Holden, Irwin, Jones-Sawyer, Kalra, Kamlager-Dove, Lackey, Levine, Limón, Low, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, O'Donnell, Petrie-Norris, Quirk, Quirk-Silva, Ramos, Reyes, Luz Rivas, Robert Rivas, Rodriguez, Blanca Rubio, Salas, Santiago, Smith, Mark Stone, Ting, Voepel, Waldron, Weber, Wicks, Wood, Rendon

NO VOTE RECORDED: Bigelow, Brough, Cooley, Dahle, Diep, Fong, Gallagher, Eduardo Garcia, Kiley, Melendez, Muratsuchi, Patterson

Prepared by: Ian Johnson / ED. /

9/3/19 11:30:49

**** END ****

SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Senator Anthony Portantino, Chair

2019 - 2020 Regular Session

AB 1219 (Jones-Sawyer) - Teacher credentialing: certificated employee assignment monitoring

Bill Summary:

This bill requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to implement the State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for the annual monitoring of teacher misassignments in all public schools.

*********** ANALYSIS ADDENDUM – SUSPENSE FILE ***********

The following information is revised to reflect amendments

adopted by the committee on August 30, 2019

Fiscal Impact:

• The CTC indicates that any costs resulting from this bill regarding the continued development and implementation of the CalSAAS system would be minor and absorbable within existing resources because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. Staff notes that the 2018-19 budget included $380,000 in one-time funds for the CTC to contract to develop the system.
• This bill could result in additional, unknown Proposition 98 General Fund costs, potentially in the low millions of dollars per year, related to teacher assignment monitoring activities for school districts and county offices of education (COEs). Given the lack of clarity in law about which charter school teachers must hold certificates and what the equivalent of a certificate required by a public school teacher means, this process could be difficult and costly. Additionally, because the new system would produce information on misassignments annually, school districts and COEs would also be required to monitor all assignments each year. Currently, COE’s are only currently required to monitor and review district assignment practices every four years. Further, the monitoring entities would be required to undergo a 90-day review period each year to determine potential misassignments and vacancies based on documentation or additional assignment information submitted by a school district or charter school. However, the automated processes through CalSAAS could provide efficiencies to help reduce these costs as districts and COEs would no longer need to manually verify all assignments.
• Including charter school teachers in the CalSAAS could create new workload for charter schools in identifying teacher assignments, certificates, permits, or other equivalent documents, resulting in potentially significant local costs for these schools. For example, the bill requires a new process for employees who are required to accept a teaching assignment in a teaching or services position for which the employee has no legal authorization, including the filing of various written notifications. This provision also applies to traditional public school districts, which could result in additional, unknown state reimbursable mandated costs.

Author Amendments:

Require charter school authorizers to be the monitoring entity for charter schools, allow authorizers to request technical assistance, and add a reporting requirement.

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Senator Anthony Portantino, Chair

2019 - 2020 Regular Session

AB 1219 (Jones-Sawyer) - Teacher credentialing: certificated employee assignment monitoring

Bill Summary:

This bill requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to implement the State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for the annual monitoring of teacher misassignments in all public schools.

Fiscal Impact:

• The CTC indicates that any costs resulting from this bill regarding the continued development and implementation of the CalSAAS system would be minor and absorbable within existing resources because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. Staff notes that the 2018-19 budget included $380,000 in one-time funds for the CTC to contract to develop the system.
• This bill could result in additional, unknown Proposition 98 General Fund costs, potentially in the low millions of dollars per year, related to teacher assignment monitoring activities by county offices of education. First, the bill expands their role and establishes them as the monitoring authority of the CalSAAS for charter schools, who were previously monitored by their authorizers. Given the lack of clarity in law about which charter school teachers must hold certificates and what the equivalent of a certificate required by a public school teacher means, this process could be difficult and costly. Additionally, because the new system would produce information on misassignments annually, the COEs would also be required to monitor all assignments each year. Currently, COE’s are only currently required to monitor and review school district assignment practices every four years. Further, the COEs would be required to undergo a 90-day review period each year to determine potential misassignments and vacancies based on documentation or additional assignment information submitted by a school district or charter school. However, the automated processes through CalSAAS could provide efficiencies to help reduce these costs as the COEs would no longer need to manually verify all assignments.
• Including charter school teachers in the CalSAAS could create new workload for charter schools in identifying teacher assignments, certificates, permits, or other equivalent documents, resulting in potentially significant local costs for these schools. For example, the bill requires a new process for employees who are required to accept a teaching assignment in a teaching or services position for which the employee has no legal authorization, including the filing of various written notifications. This provision also applies to traditional public school districts, which could result in additional, unknown state reimbursable mandated costs.

Background:

Monitoring assignments of teachers involves reviewing all certification and assignment records for all certificated staff in the public schools of California. The monitoring is necessary to determine if educators hold the appropriate credential and authorization for the instruction they are providing or if they are otherwise legally authorized to serve via a permit, waiver, or other local assignment option.

County Superintendents of Schools must annually report the results of assignment monitoring activities conducted for approximately one-quarter of all certificated staff in each county throughout the state. At the end of a four-year cycle, all certificated staff assignments in California are monitored for all schools, districts, and county offices of education. As a result of the Williams v. State of California settlement, additional annual monitoring and data collection is conducted for schools previously ranked in the lowest three deciles of the 2012 API.

The term “teacher misassignment” refers to the placement of certificated staff in a teaching or services position for which the educator does not hold a valid and legally recognized certificate, credential, permit, or waiver with an appropriate authorization for the assignment or is not otherwise legally authorized for the assignment under another section of statute or regulation. The term “teacher vacancy” refers to certificated positions for which a single designated employee has not been assigned within the first twenty working days after the first day of class for students for the entire year or if it is a one-semester course, then for the entire semester.

For charter schools, there is come lack in clarity related to teacher misassignment requirements and teacher assignment monitoring. Current law provides that teachers in charter schools must hold a certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold and expresses the intent of the Legislature that charter schools be given flexibility with regard to noncore, non-college preparatory courses. And while the law does not define what noncore, non-college preparatory courses include, the CTC indicates that it refers to courses that are not core subjects such as English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science, courses that are not approved as meeting the admissions criteria for the University of California and the California State University (known as “A-G” courses), and courses not labeled as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate.

For monitoring purposes, existing law requires that the appropriate documents be maintained on file at the charter school and be subject to periodic inspection by the chartering authority, but does not specify how frequently this is to occur. The CDE is responsible for monitoring of misassignments at charter schools authorized by the SBE. However, it does not appear that charter school teacher misassignments have never been monitored in a systematic way.

The CalSAAS system automates misassignment monitoring by creating an automated process to merge course offering data kept at CDE with credential data housed at CTC using the unique teacher identifier already authorized in statute. The information from the merged data would be sent to a school district and COE. In addition, instead of the typical four year misassignment review, this system would produce information about all misassignments annually.

Proposed Law:

This bill repeals the existing statutes related to annual monitoring and review of school district certificated employee assignment practices, priorities, report on misassignments and vacancies, and sanctions for misassignments.

This bill requires the CTC to administer the CalSAAS and includes the following provisions:

• Requires the CTC and CDE to enter into a data sharing agreement to provide the CTC with employee assignment data necessary to annually identify misassignments and vacant positions at local educational agencies (LEAs) and support reporting consistent with the state plan required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Acts (ESSA).
• Allows the CTC to engage in activities designed to inform school administrators and other personnel at county offices of education of regulations and statutes affecting employee assignments.
• Requires the CTC to use the data provided by CDE to produce an initial data file of vacant positions and certificated employee assignments that do not have a clear match of credential to assignment. The CTC shall notify LEAs and monitoring authorities of the opportunity to access the system and review the data.
• Allows LEAs to do any of the following within 60 days of being notified by the CTC:
  • Access the initial data file to determine if each employee included in the file is otherwise legally authorized for the assignment.
  • Submit electronic documentation to the CTC and monitoring authority showing that the employee is otherwise legally authorized for the assignment.
  • Submit electronic documentation to the CTC and monitoring authority showing that a position identified as vacant was miscoded.
• Requires a monitoring authority to access the CalSAAS to review the initial data file and any additional information submitted by LEAs and make a determination of potential misassignments and vacant positions within 90 days of the CTC’s notification.
• Requires the CTC to report on the monitoring authority’s determination for a given year and, when identifying misassignments, to identify an employee as correctly assigned when the employee holds the certificate or credential required by the CTC for that assignment.
• Prohibits LEAs from using CalSAAS data for evaluating certificated employee performance or making employment decisions.
• Specifies that if an employee is required by an LEA to accept an assignment for which the employee has no legal authorization, both of the following shall occur: an employee of a school district or a charter school shall notify the district superintendent or charter administrator in writing; and if no action is taken, the employee shall notify the county superintendent of schools or the chartering authority in writing.
• Prohibits an LEA from taking adverse action against an employee who files a notice of misassignment and nullifies the performance evaluation of the misassigned teacher.
• Specifies that the final data generated by the CalSAAS for 2019-20 shall be nonconsequential and for information purposes only.
• Commencing with the 2020-21 school year, following the 90 day review period described above, the CTC shall perform specified functions, including making annual CalSAAS employee misassignment and vacant position data publicly available in a searchable format online and maintaining each year’s data for no less than five years.
• Allows the CTC to promulgate regulations defining standards for LEAs that consistently misassign employees, including what sanctions to impose.

Related Legislation:

AB 1505 (O’Donnell) would make various changes to the charter petition authorization, renewal, and appeals process. This bill is scheduled to be heard by this Committee on August 19, 2019.

Staff Comments:

The 2018-19 budget included $380,000 for the CTC to develop CalSAAS. The CTC already has selected a contractor to build its new system and will pilot the system using volunteer schools districts in the summer of 2019, when data from the 2018-19 school year becomes available. Should this bill take effect in 2020, the system would be operational statewide and monitoring would begin in the 2019-20 school year. Beginning in 2021, 2019-20 school year data would be available on CTC’s website. The CTC indicates that any costs resulting from this bill regarding the continued development and implementation of the system would be minor and absorbable within existing resources.

-- END --

SENATE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

Senator Connie Leyva, Chair

2019 - 2020 Regular

Bill No: Hearing Date: July 10, 2019

Subject:

SUMMARY

This bill requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to implement the State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for annual monitoring of teacher misassignments in all public schools.

BACKGROUND

Existing law:

1. Requires each county superintendent of schools to monitor and review school district certificated employee assignment practices, as follows:
2. Annually monitor and review schools and school districts that are likely to have problems with teacher misassignments and teacher vacancies, based on past experience or other available information.
3. Annually monitor and review schools ranked in deciles 1 to 3 of the Academic Performance Indicator (API) if those schools are not currently under review through a state or federal intervention program. If a review finds that a school has no teacher misassignments or teacher vacancies for two consecutive years, permits the next review to occur on a four year cycle, unless the school is believed to be likely to have problems with misassignment, based on past experience.
4. Annually monitor and review all other schools on a four-year cycle.
5. Requires each county superintendent of schools to investigate school and district efforts to ensure that credentialed teachers are properly assigned. (Education Code 44258.9)
6. Makes the CTC responsible for the monitoring and review of those counties or cities and counties in which there is a single school district.
7. Requires county superintendents to submit an annual report to the CTC and the California Department of Education (CDE) which summarizes the results of all assignment monitoring and reviews.
8. Requires the CTC to submit biennial reports to the Legislature concerning teacher assignments and misassignments based, in part, on the annual reports of the county superintendents of schools.
9. Requires the CTC to establish reasonable sanctions for the misassignment of credential holders, after engaging in activities to inform administrators, teachers, and other personnel about the regulations and statutes affecting the assignment of certificated personnel.
10. Establishes certain procedures and requirements with respect to certificated employees who are misassigned, as follows:
11. Requires a certificated person who has been misassigned, after exhausting existing local remedies, to notify the county superintendent of schools in writing of the illegal assignment.
12. Requires county superintendent of schools, within 15 working days, to advise the affected certificated person concerning the legality of his or her assignment.
13. Prohibits adverse action taken against a certificated person who files a notification of misassignment with the county superintendent of schools, and nullifies any performance evaluation during the misassignment.
14. Nullifies any performance evaluation of an employee during a period of the misassignment.
15. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify a certificated school administrator responsible for assignments of a misassignment, and advise him or her to correct the assignment within 30 calendar days.
16. Requires the county superintendent to notify the CTC of the misassignment if the certificated school administrator has not corrected the misassignment within 30 days of the initial notification, or has not described in writing the extraordinary circumstances which make the correction impossible.
17. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify the superintendent of a school district in which 5 percent or more of all certificated teachers in the secondary schools are found to be misassigned to advise him or her to correct the misassignments within 120 calendar days.
18. Requires the county superintendent of schools to notify the CTC of the misassignments if the school district superintendent has not corrected the misassignments within 120 days of the initial notification, or has not described in writing to the county superintendent the extraordinary circumstances which make the correction impossible.
19. Authorizes the Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI) to submit a summary of the reports submitted by county superintendents to the Legislature, and authorizes the Legislature to hold hearings on the findings.
20. Provides for a number of “local assignment options” which school districts may use to assign a teacher outside of their authorization. (EC 44256(b), 44258.2, 44258.7(c) and (d), 44263)
21. Requires that teachers in charter schools hold a CTC certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold. Requires that these documents be maintained on file at the charter school and be subject to periodic inspection by the chartering authority. States the intent of the Legislature that charter schools be given flexibility with regard to noncore, non-college preparatory courses.
22. Requires teachers in countywide charter schools to be required to hold a CTC certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold.
23. Requires that these documents be maintained on file at the charter school and be subject to periodic inspection by the chartering authority. (EC 47605.6(l))
24. Authorizes complaints concerning vacancies and misassignments to be submitted through the Uniform Complaint Procedures. (EC 35186)
25. Requires the CTC to establish a non-personally identifiable educator identification number for each educator to whom it issues a credential, certificate, permit, or other document authorizing that individual to provide a service in the public schools.
26. Establishes, through regulations, a process for the CTC to use to compel compliance with statute on misassignments, including, as a final step, the option to take adverse action against the credentials of individuals found to be responsible. (CCR Title 5 80339.1-80339.5)
27. Defines, for purposes of the SARC, a “misassignment” to mean the placement of a certificated employee in a teaching or services position for which the employee does not hold a legally recognized certificate or credential, or the placement of a certificated employee in a teaching or services position that the employee is not otherwise authorized by statute to hold. (EC 33126)
28. Defines, for purposes of the SARC, a “vacant teacher position” to mean a position to which a designated certificated employee has not been assigned at the beginning of the year for an entire year or, if the position is for a one-semester course, a position of which a single-designated certificated employee has not been assigned at the beginning of a semester for an entire semester. (EC 33126)
29. Requires the SARC to include information on the school’s total number of fully credentialed teachers, the number of teachers relying upon emergency credentials, the number of teachers working without credentials, any assignment of teachers outside their subject areas of competence, misassignments, including misassignments of teachers of English learners, and the number of vacant teacher positions for the most recent three-year period. (EC 33126)
30. Requires LCAPs to include information on the degree to which the teachers of the school district are appropriately assigned and fully credentialed. (EC 52060).

ANALYSIS

This bill:

1. Repeals the existing statutes related to annual monitoring and review of school district certificated employee assignment practices, priorities, report on misassignments and vacancies, and sanctions for misassignments.
2. Requires the CTC to administer the State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) as follows:
   1. Defines LEA to include a school district, county office of education, charter school, or state special school.
   2. Defines “monitoring authority” to mean:
      1. The county office of education for school districts in the county, programs operated by the county office of education, and any charter school site within the county, except for a resource center.
      2. The CTC for a school district or county office of education that operates within a city or county in which there is a single school district and the state special schools.
   3. Defines “vacant position” to mean a position to which a single-designated certificated employee has not been assigned at the beginning of the year or semester.
   4. Requires the CTC and CDE to enter into a data sharing agreement to provide the CTC with employee assignment data necessary to annually identify misassignments and vacant positions at LEAs and support reporting consistent with the state plan required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Acts (ESSA).
   5. Allows the CTC to engage in activities designed to inform school administrators and other personnel at county offices of education of regulations and statutes affecting employee assignments.
   6. Requires the CTC to use the data provides by CDE to produce an initial data file of vacant positions and certificated employee assignments that do not have a clear match of credential to assignment. The CTC shall notify LEAs and monitoring authorities of the opportunity to access the system and review the data.
   7. Allows LEAs to do any of the following within 60 days of being notified by the CTC:
      1. Access the initial data file to determine if each employee included in the file is otherwise legally authorized for the assignment.
      2. Submit electronic documentation to the CTC and monitoring authority showing that the employee is otherwise legally authorized for the assignment.
      3. Submit electronic documentation to the CTC and monitoring authority showing that a position identified as vacant was miscoded.
   8. Requires a monitoring authority to access the CalSAAS to review the initial data file and any additional information submitted by LEAs and make a determination of potential misassignments and vacant positions within 90 days of the CTC’s notification.
   9. Requires the CTC to report on the monitoring authority’s determination for a given year and, when identifying misassignments, to identify an employee as correctly assigned when the employee holds the certificate or credential required by the CTC for that assignment.
   10. Prohibits LEAs from using CalSAAS data for evaluating certificated employee performance or making employment decisions.
   11. Specifies that if an employee is required by an LEA to accept an assignment for which the employee has no legal authorization, both of the following shall occur:
       1. An employee of a school district or a charter school shall notify the district superintendent or charter administrator in writing.
       2. If no action is taken, the employee shall notify the county superintendent of schools or the chartering authority in writing.
   12. Prohibits an LEA from taking adverse action against an employee who files a notice of misassignment and nullifies the performance evaluation of the misassigned teacher.
   13. Specifies that the final data generated by the CalSAAS for 2019-20 shall be nonconsequential and for information purposes only.
   14. Commencing with the 2020-21 school year, following the 90 day review period described above, the CTC shall do the following:
       1. Make annual CalSAAS employee misassignment and vacant position data publicly available in a searchable format online.
       2. Ensure that charter school data is distinguishable from traditional public school data.
       3. Maintain each year’s data for no less than five years.
       4. Provide CDE with annual data on the total number of misassignments at the schoolsite, school district, and county level.
       5. Ensure that the publicly available misassignment data reported from CalSAAS not include personally identifiable information of employees.
   15. Allows the CTC to promulgate regulations defining standards for LEAs that consistently misassign employees, including what sanctions to impose.

STAFF COMMENTS

1. Need for the bill. According to the author, “In the historic civil rights victory, Williams v. California, the court ruled that all students have a fundamental right to an equal education, and that the state is responsible for providing all students with the basic resources they need to learn – this includes qualified teachers. The Williams settlement required the state to monitor that teachers have the appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching. However, only the lowest performing schools at the time were required to be monitored for misassignments annually. The rest of the schools are currently monitored on a four-year cycle, with only a quarter of schools being monitored every year.

AB 1219 will uphold the fundamental right of students to have qualified teachers by requiring teacher assignments in all schools to be reviewed annually. This bill will provide advocates and lawmakers the ability to hold schools accountable for failing to provide students with the quality education guaranteed by our state Constitution.”

1. Teacher assignment monitoring basics. Monitoring assignments of teachers involves reviewing all certification and assignment records for all certificated staff in the public schools of California. The monitoring is necessary to determine if educators hold the appropriate credential and authorization for the instruction they are providing or if they are otherwise legally authorized to serve via a permit, waiver, or other local assignment option.

County Superintendents of Schools must annually report the results of assignment monitoring activities conducted for approximately one-quarter of all certificated staff in each county throughout the state. At the end of a four-year cycle, all certificated staff assignments in California are monitored for all schools, districts, and county offices of education. As a result of the Williams v. State of California settlement, additional annual monitoring and data collection is conducted for schools previously ranked in the lowest three deciles of the 2012 API.

The term “teacher misassignment” refers to the placement of certificated staff in a teaching or services position for which the educator does not hold a valid and legally recognized certificate, credential, permit, or waiver with an appropriate authorization for the assignment or is not otherwise legally authorized for the assignment under another section of statute or regulation. The term “teacher vacancy” refers to certificated positions for which a single designated employee has not been assigned within the first twenty working days after the first day of class for students for the entire year or if it is a one-semester course, then for the entire semester.

1. Teacher misassignments in California. Under current law, the CTC must submit biennial reports to the Legislature on the misassignment of teachers in California. The December, 2017 report, which draws on data from the four academic years between 2011 and 2015, included the following findings:
   1. Misassignment data sensitive to changes in monitoring, but also policy changes. Significant changes in misassignment are sometimes due to changes in definitions of compliance. A change in the requirements for teaching children on the Autism spectrum, for example, resulted in significant numbers of misassignments. But improved compliance monitoring, for example in the case of qualifications to teach English learners required by the Williams settlement, also led to major improvements in assignments.
   2. Significant overall decrease in misassignments. There was an overall decrease of 28 percent in teaching misassignments for all schools in California when comparing the report cycles of 2007-11 and 2011-15. In total, a reduction of 9,027 teaching misassignments was achieved.
   3. English learner misassignments declined significantly. The total number of English learner instruction misassignments decreased by almost 84 percent between the 2007-11 and 2011-15 report cycles. The Williams settlement created additional emphasis on the review of the English learner instruction assignments. The unauthorized assignment of teachers for English learner students rose more than an 88 percent increase during the 2003-07 monitoring cycle compared to 1999-2003, and has since declined in the subsequent two cycles.
   4. Misassignments are concentrated in special education, elective courses, and “other” courses. Special education misassignments comprised 27 percent of the total. Following legislation regarding students on the Autism spectrum and changes in special education certification, there was an increased focus after 2008 on training how to monitor and identify special education misassignments based on disability. The CTC is currently engaged in a number of changes to special education credentials which may have the effect of reducing misassignments, including embedding the existing Physical and Health Impairments and Language and Academic Development specialty credentials into the Mild/Moderate and Significant Support needs specialty areas, leaving fewer credentials.

20 percent of misassignments are in elective courses, which include a wide variety of classes which do not fall directly within one of the statutory single subjects. The third highest content area for misassignments was “Other,” which accounted for 14 percent of the total. The “Other” category includes subjects such as Health, Home Economics, and Industrial Technology Education as well as non-traditional education settings and content such as Adult Education, Career Technical Education (CTE), and the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).

• 1. Misassignments concentrated in middle and high schools. Likely connected to the higher rate of misassignment in elective courses, over 84 percent of all teaching misassignments were found to occur at the secondary school level (middle and high schools), with approximately 49 percent of misassignments identified at the high school level.
  2. Vacancies on the rise? While the number of vacancies reported has decreased significantly since 2007-08, vacancy data for the last two years shows the totals increasing again. The total teacher vacancies doubled in the final year of the report to a total of 617 vacancies, possibly a result of the statewide teacher shortage.
  3. Similar patterns for API decile 1-3 schools. For the schools ranked in the lowest three deciles on the API in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 (using the 2012 base API) misassignment was similar to other schools. There was a total decrease of 33.4 percent in the number of misassignments between 2013-14 and 2014-15. Similar patterns of concentration in middle and high schools, special education were reported. Large declines in misassignment in special education and core subjects were reported. More than 99 percent of classrooms with an EL student population of 20 percent or more were taught by an appropriately EL authorized teacher. There was also a significant increase in the use of local assignment options, as well as reported vacancies.

1. The state’s ESSA plan already commits to using the data system established by this bill. In April of 2018, the SBE approved a plan for reporting to the federal government regarding the “equity gap” in teacher qualifications and experience for low-income and minority children enrolled in schools assisted under Title I, including “ineffective teachers,” and those teaching “out-of-field.” In this plan, an ineffective teacher is defined as either meeting the definition of a misassigned teacher teaching without a credential. “Out-of-field” teachers are defined as those who are credentialed but have not yet demonstrated subject matter competence in the subject area or for the student population to which they are assigned.

The state’s ESSA plan commits to using data generated by the automated system this bill proposes, for federal reporting: “No later than spring 2019, the CDE will use data collected via the CALPADS, data collected by the CTC, and CalEdFacts to create data profiles that provide information regarding the rates at which low-income and minority children are taught by teachers in the credential and assignment statuses recognized by state law, consistent with the ineffective teacher definition, out-of-field teachers, and inexperienced teachers.” Data will also be provided to the SBE and posted on the CDE website.

1. There is little evidence that charter school teacher assignments have ever been systematically monitored. Current law requires that teachers in charter schools hold a certificate, permit, or other document equivalent to that which a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold and expresses the intent of the Legislature that charter schools be given flexibility with regard to noncore, non-college preparatory courses. While current law does not define what noncore, non-college preparatory courses include, the CTC indicates that it means courses taught not in core subjects (not in English language arts, mathematics, history-social science, and science), courses that are not approved as meeting the admissions criteria for the University of California and the California State University (known as “A-G” courses), and courses not labeled as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate.

For monitoring purposes, existing law requires that the appropriate documents be maintained on file at the charter school and be subject to periodic inspection by the chartering authority, but does not specify how frequently this is to occur. The CDE is responsible for monitoring of misassignments at charter schools authorized by the SBE.

Based on sample data of specific charter schools, it appears that charter school teacher misassignments have never been monitored in a meaningful or systematic way. Given that current law is unclear about which charter school teachers must hold certificates, what the equivalent of a certificate required by a public school teacher means, and how often charter school authorizers must verify charter school teacher assignments, the Committee should consider whether including all charter school course assignments in CalSAAS immediately strikes the right balance of charter school accountability and autonomy. If a clear definition of “noncore, non-college preparatory” were codified, would the number of teacher misassignments at charter schools go down? If so, by how much, and how would that compare to the number of misassignments at traditional public schools?

1. Should the role of county offices of education be expanded? As currently drafted, this bill would make county offices of education the monitoring authority of CalSAAS for school districts, county office of education programs, and charter schools. The CTC would monitor single-district counties and state special schools. Currently, if there is a teacher misassignment issue at a school, the county works with the school district to resolve the issue. For charter schools, the charter authorizer, the entity responsible for overseeing all other compliance of the school, is responsible for oversight. Given the existing relationship that a charter school has with its authorizer, the Committee may wish to consider whether the bill as currently drafted is the most effective way of ensuring charter school compliance.

SUPPORT

Commission on Teacher Credentialing (sponsor)

California Teachers Association

OPPOSITION

California Charter Schools Association

-- END --

ASSEMBLY THIRD READING

ATR Bill Id:AB 1219

Author:(Jones-Sawyer)

As Amended Ver:April 3, 2019

Majority vote

SUMMARY:

Requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to continue to develop and implement a statewide automated State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for annual monitoring of teacher misassignment in schools, including charter schools, and revises local responsibilities for the monitoring of teacher misassignments.

Major Provisions

1. Establishes the CalSAAS for the purpose of annual monitoring of teacher misassignment in schools, including charter schools. Requires the CTC to enter into a data sharing agreement with the California Department of Education (CDE) for this purpose.
2. Requires the CTC, when identifying misassignments using the system, to identify all public school teachers employed in any teaching assignment, including those teaching at charter schools, as correctly assigned only when they hold the credentials, authorizations, or permits required by the CTC for that assignment in any public school, taking into account local assignment options.
3. Establishes county offices of education (COEs) as the assignment monitors for all schools, including charter schools located in their county, except for assignments monitored by the CTC.
4. Requires the CTC, commencing January 1, 2021, to make annual certificated employee assignment data generated from the system publicly available in a searchable format for the 2019–20 school year, and annually thereafter.

COMMENTS:

Why does teacher misassignment matter? Research has established that teacher preparation and certification are by far the strongest correlates of student achievement in reading and mathematics, even when controlling for student poverty and language status. (Darling-Hammond, 2000). Teachers who are misassigned are by definition teaching content which they have not been certified to teach.

The intersection between high poverty schools, new teachers, high turnover, and misassignment is notable. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2000), new teachers tend to be concentrated in high poverty schools. Misassignment is also more likely to occur at high poverty schools (Ingersoll, 2002), and misassignment appears to occur more often for new teachers. High poverty schools experience high turnover rates - on average losing over 20% of their faculty each year (Ingersoll, 2004). According to the Education Commission of the States (2005), "there is strong evidence that teacher attrition is most severe among beginning teachers." There are many reasons why teachers leave high poverty schools, but in one longitudinal study, new teachers reported that "misassignment was a major source of …dissatisfaction, eventually leading them out of teaching" (Johnson and Birkeland, 2003).

According to the Author:

"In the historic civil rights victory, Williams v. California, the court ruled that all students have a fundamental right to an equal education, and that the state is responsible for providing all students with the basic resources they need to learn – this includes qualified teachers. The Williams settlement required the state to monitor that teachers have the appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching. However, only the lowest performing schools at the time were required to be monitored for misassignments annually. The rest of the schools are currently monitored on a four-year cycle, with only a quarter of schools being monitored every year. AB 1219 will uphold the fundamental right of students to have qualified teachers by requiring teacher assignments in all schools to be reviewed annually. This bill will provide advocates and lawmakers the ability to hold schools accountable for failing to provide students with the quality education guaranteed by our state Constitution."

Arguments in Support:

The CTC writes, "Under current law, California monitors one quarter of all certificated assignments in the state each year. Additionally, schools ranked in the lowest three deciles of the now-obsolete Academic Performance Index are monitored annually. However, the state's federal reporting obligations under the Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) require annual monitoring of all certificated assignments statewide. This bill would leverage the Commission's new California Statewide Assignment Accountability System, authorized in last year's budget act, to create a modernized assignment monitoring process that will fulfil these federal requirements while also providing greater transparency to the public."

Arguments in Opposition:

The California Charter Schools Association writes, "Currently, credentialing assignment for noncore and non-college prep is not required of public charter schools, which was thoroughly discussed and ultimately rejected by the Legislature in AB 544 (1999) when charter schools were included within teacher credentialing laws. As stated by the CTC on its website, the "statute provides that it is the intent of the Legislature that charter schools be given flexibility with regard to noncore, noncollege preparatory courses. Teachers in core or college preparatory courses must hold a valid credential equivalent to that which would be required of a teacher in a non-charter public school." We believe CTC would not have distinguished "core and college preparatory" subjects if the interpretation is that all teachers must hold valid teacher credentials."

FISCAL COMMENTS:

According to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, "1) Minor and absorbable GF costs to the CTC to continue to develop and implement the CalSAAS system. According to the CTC, it requires no additional staffing for this bill's requirements, because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. 2) Unknown Proposition 98 GF cost pressures to school districts and charter schools to the extent more misassignments are identified by CalSAAS and the CTC or California Department of Education (CDE) levy sanctions on schools. Sanctions have not been imposed in the past despite identifications of teacher misassignments. 3) Ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund cost pressures for COEs to begin monitoring the teacher misassignments annually and to begin monitoring charter schools within their county boundaries. Costs to COEs for annual monitoring likely would be offset because the process would be automated through CalSAAS. State costs for COEs to monitor charter schools would be offset because these activities currently reside with charter school authorizers, who are typically school districts.

VOTES:

ASM EDUCATION: 5-0-1

YES: O'Donnell, Kalra, McCarty, Smith, Weber

ABS, ABST OR NV: Kiley

ASM APPROPRIATIONS: 15-1-2

YES: Gonzalez, Bloom, Bonta, Calderon, Carrillo, Chau, Diep, Eggman, Gabriel, Eduardo Garcia, Maienschein, Obernolte, Petrie-Norris, Quirk, Robert Rivas

NO: Brough

ABS, ABST OR NV: Bigelow, Fong

UPDATED:

VERSION: April 3, 2019

CONSULTANT: Tanya Lieberman / ED. / (916) 319-2087 FN: 0000739

Date of Hearing: May 1, 2019

ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

Lorena Gonzalez, Chair

ABPCA Bill Id:AB 1219

Author:(Jones-Sawyer) – As Amended Ver:April 3, 2019

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

SUMMARY:

This bill requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) to continue to develop and to implement a statewide automated State Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) for annual monitoring of teacher misassignment in schools. In addition, the bill requires annual monitoring of misassignments through the new system, allows sanctions on schools with persistent misassignments and requires county offices of education (COEs) to monitor charter school misassignments.

FISCAL EFFECT:

1. Minor and absorbable GF costs to the CTC to continue to develop and implement the CalSAAS system. According to the CTC, it requires no additional staffing for this bill’s requirements, because automation will simplify teacher misassignment monitoring. (Funding was provided in last year’s budget to contract to develop CalSAAS, as described in more detail below.)
2. Unknown Proposition 98 GF cost pressures to school districts and charter schools to the extent more misassignments are identified by CalSAAS and the CTC or California Department of Education (CDE) levy sanctions on schools. Sanctions have not been imposed in the past despite identifications of teacher misassignments.
3. Ongoing Proposition 98 General Fund cost pressures for COEs to begin monitoring the teacher misassignments annually and to begin monitoring charter schools within their county boundaries. Costs to COEs for annual monitoring likely would be offset because the process would be automated through CalSAAS. State costs for COEs to monitor charter schools would be offset because these activities currently reside with charter school authorizers, who are typically school districts.

COMMENTS:

1. Purpose. According to the author:

In the historic civil rights victory, Williams v. California, the court ruled that all students have a fundamental right to an equal education, and that the state is responsible for providing all students with the basic resources they need to learn – this includes qualified teachers. The Williams settlement required the state to monitor that teachers have the appropriate credentials for the courses they are teaching. However, only the lowest performing schools at the time were required to be monitored for misassignments annually. The rest of the schools are currently monitored on a four-year cycle, with only a quarter of schools being monitored every year.

AB 1219 will uphold the fundamental right of students to have qualified teachers by requiring teacher assignments in all schools to be reviewed annually.

1. Background. Under current law, “misassignment” refers to the placement of certificated employee in a teaching or services position for which the educator does not hold a valid and legally recognized certificate, credential, permit or waiver.

Current law requires each COE to monitor and review school district assignment practices every four years, unless the school is considered to have persistent academic or misassingment problems. Current law also requires COEs to submit an annual report to the CTC and CDE summarizing the results of the monitoring. Law requires CTC to submit a report every other year to the Legislature on teacher misassignments. After engaging in activities with school districts on misassignment, current law requires CTC to establish sanctions for persistent misassignment problems. That is, CTC may take action against a credential. In addition, in these situations, the CDE may withhold funds or take other actions.

This bill requires the CTC to continue to develop and implement the CalSAAS system. The 2018-19 budget included $380,000 for the CTC to develop CalSAAS. The CTC already has selected a contractor to build its new system and will pilot the system using volunteer schools districts in the summer of 2019, when data from the 2018-19 school year becomes available. Should this bill take effect in 2020, the system would be operational statewide and monitoring would begin in the 2019-20 school year. Beginning in 2021, 2019-20 school year data would be available on CTC’s website. Because the data may still be imperfect, this bill specifies that the data generated in the 2019-20 school year will not be used as a basis for any penalty.

The CalSAAS system automates misassignment monitoring by creating an automated process to merge course offering data kept at CDE with credential data housed at CTC using the unique teacher identifier already authorized in statute. The information from the merged data would be sent to a school district and COE. In addition, instead of the typical four year misassignment review, these system would produce information about all misassignments annually. Because the system would produce information about all misassignments annually, the bill also requires COEs to monitor all assignments annually. However, this would eliminate the requirement for COEs to manually verify all assignments, so they could focus on the misassignments identified by CalSAAS. The bill removes the requirement that CTC establish sanctions for school districts with persistent misassignment problems. (The sanctions have not been used in the past.) The bill would provide information to school districts on teacher misassignment to include in their federal and state accountability reporting.

As with many areas of charter school law, there is some lack of clarity in current law related to teacher misassignment requirements and teach assignment monitoring at charter schools. This bill proposes to explicitly include charter schools in CalSAAS and to establish authority for COEs to monitor charter teacher assignments. It also extends the same protections held by other teachers to charter school teachers. The bill requires all teachers, including those teaching at charter schools, be counted as correctly assigned only when they hold the correct credentials, authorizations and permits for their assignment.

1. Prior and Related Legislation. SB 840 (Mitchell) Chapter 29, Statutes of 2018, (the Budget Act of 2018), provided $380,000 for the development of CalSAAS.

AB 190 (Ting), the proposed Budget Act of 2019-20, requires the CTC and the CDE to maintain a data-sharing agreement to provide the CTC with certificated employee assignment data necessary to annually identify misassignments and to use the nonpersonally identifiable educator identification number for the purpose of sharing data with local educational agencies and the CDE.

The trailer bill to the 2019-20 Governor’s Budget proposes similar language as this measure to implement the automated teacher assignment monitoring system.

AB 3048 (Irwin), of the 2017-18 Legislative Session, would have required the CTC to develop and implement a statewide automated Teacher Assignment Monitoring Data System, for annual monitoring of teacher misassignments. The bill was held on this committee’s Suspense File.

Analysis Prepared by: Natasha Collins / APPR. / (916) 319-2081