SECTIONS 60600-60603 - California Statutes

EDUCATION CODE

SECTION 60600-60603

60600. This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the Leroy
Greene California Assessment of Academic Achievement Act.

60601. This chapter shall become inoperative on July 1, 2013, and
as of January 1, 2014, is repealed, unless a later enacted statute
that is enacted before January 1, 2014, deletes or extends the dates
on which it becomes inoperative and is repealed.

60602. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this
chapter to provide a system of individual assessment of pupils that
has the primary purpose of assisting teachers, administrators,
pupils, and their parents, to improve teaching and learning. In order
to accomplish these goals, the Legislature finds and declares that
California should adopt a coordinated and consolidated testing
program to do all of the following:
(1) First and foremost, provide information on the academic status
and progress of individual pupils to those pupils, their parents,
and their teachers. This information should be designed to assist in
the improvement of teaching and learning in California public
classrooms. The Legislature recognizes that, in addition to statewide
assessments that will occur as specified in this chapter, school
districts will conduct additional ongoing pupil diagnostic assessment
and provide information regarding pupil performance based on those
assessments on a regular basis to parents or guardians and schools.
The Legislature further recognizes that local diagnostic assessment
is a primary mechanism through which academic strengths and
weaknesses are identified.
(2) Develop and adopt a set of statewide academically rigorous
content standards and performance standards in all major subject
areas to serve as the basis for assessing the academic achievement of
individual pupils, as well as for schools, school districts, and for
the California education system as a whole. The performance
standards shall be designed to lead to specific grade level
benchmarks of academic achievement for each subject area tested
within each grade level and shall be based on the knowledge and
skills that pupils will need in order to succeed in the
information-based, global economy of the 21st century.
(3) Ensure that all assessment procedures, items, instruments, and
scoring systems are independently reviewed to ensure that they meet
high standards of statistical reliability and validity and that they
do not use procedures, items, instruments, or scoring practices that
are racially, culturally, or gender biased.
(4) Provide information to pupils, parents or guardians, teachers,
schools, and school districts on a timely basis so that the
information can be used to further the development of the pupil and
to improve the educational program.
(5) Develop assessments that are comparable to the National
Assessment of Educational Progress and other national and
international assessment efforts, so that California's local and
state test results are reported in a manner that corresponds to the
national test results. Test results should be reported in terms
describing a pupil's academic performance in relation to the
statewide academically rigorous content and performance standards
adopted by the State Board of Education and in terms of employment
skills possessed by the pupil, in addition to being reported as
numerical or percentile scores.
(6) Assess pupils for a broad range of academic skills and
knowledge including both basic academic skills and the ability of
pupils to apply those skills.
(7) Include an appropriate balance of types of assessment
instruments, including, but not limited to, multiple choice
questions, short answer questions, and assessments of applied
academic skills.
(8) Minimize the amount of instructional time devoted to
assessments administered pursuant to this chapter.
(b) It is the intent of the Legislature, pursuant to this article,
to begin a planning and implementation process to enable the
Superintendent of Public Instruction to accomplish the goals set
forth in this section as soon as feasible.
(c) It is the intent of the Legislature that parents, classroom
teachers, other educators, governing board members of school
districts, and the public be involved, in an active and ongoing
basis, in the design and implementation of the statewide pupil
assessment program and the development of assessment instruments.
(d) It is the intent of the Legislature, insofar as is practically
feasible and following the completion of annual testing, that the
content, test structure, and test items in the assessments that are
part of the Standardized Testing and Reporting Program become open
and transparent to teachers, parents, and pupils, to assist all the
stakeholders in working together to demonstrate improvement in pupil
academic achievement. A planned change in annual test content,
format, or design, should be made available to educators and the
public well before the beginning of the school year in which the
change will be implemented.
(e) It is the intent of the Legislature that the results of the
California Standards Tests be available for use, after appropriate
validation, academic credit, or placement and admissions processes,
or both, at postsecondary educational institutions.

60603. As used in this chapter:
(a) "Achievement test" means any standardized test that measures
the level of performance that a pupil has achieved in the core
curriculum areas.
(b) "Assessment of applied academic skills" means a form of
assessment that requires pupils to demonstrate their knowledge of,
and ability to apply, academic knowledge and skills in order to solve
problems and communicate. It may include, but is not limited to,
writing an essay response to a question, conducting an experiment, or
constructing a diagram or model. An assessment of applied academic
skills may not include assessments of personal behavioral standards
or skills, including, but not limited to, honesty, sociability,
ethics, or self-esteem.
(c) "Basic academic skills" means those skills in the subject
areas of reading, spelling, written expression, and mathematics that
provide the necessary foundation for mastery of more complex
intellectual abilities, including the synthesis and application of
knowledge.
(d) "Content standards" means the specific academic knowledge,
skills, and abilities that all public schools in this state are
expected to teach and all pupils expected to learn in each of the
core curriculum areas, at each grade level tested.
(e) "Core curriculum areas" means the areas of reading, writing,
mathematics, history-social science, and science.
(f) "Diagnostic assessment" means interim assessments of the
current level of achievement of a pupil that serves both of the
following purposes:
(1) The identification of particular academic standards or skills
a pupil has or has not yet achieved.
(2) The identification of possible reasons that a pupil has not
yet achieved particular academic standards or skills.
(g) "Direct writing assessment" means an assessment of applied
academic skills that requires pupils to use written expression to
demonstrate writing skills, including writing mechanics, grammar,
punctuation, and spelling.
(h) "End of course exam" means a comprehensive and challenging
assessment of pupil achievement in a particular subject area or
discipline.
(i) "Performance standards" are standards that define various
levels of competence at each grade level in each of the curriculum
areas for which content standards are established. Performance
standards gauge the degree to which a pupil has met the content
standards and the degree to which a school or school district has met
the content standards.
(j) "Publisher" means a commercial publisher or any other public
or private entity, other than the department, which is able to
provide tests or test items that meet the requirements of this
chapter.
(k) "Statewide pupil assessment program" means the systematic
achievement testing of pupils in grades 2 to 11, inclusive, pursuant
to the standardized testing and reporting program under Article 4
(commencing with Section 60640) and the assessment of basic academic
skills and applied academic skills, administered to pupils in grade
levels specified in subdivision (c) of Section 60605, required by
this chapter in all schools within each school district by means of
tests designated by the state board.