Sacramento, CA — AB 356 by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley) passed the Assembly Education Committee by a vote of 7-1. This measure is designed to ease some of the fiscal pressures the state puts on school districts by making several changes in pupil testing.

AB 356 removes the requirement that a student must pass the California High School Exit Exam (HSEE) in order to graduate from high school. Last year, 46% of all students statewide taking the HSEE failed the English portion of the test, and 68% failed the Math portion. Pending a final decision from the State Board of Education, the class of 2003-04 will be the first group of students required to pass the exit exam in order to receive a high school diploma. Hancock notes, “We can still administer the test, but give more local control so school districts can decide how they want to use it. We are trying to remove the pressures on students, teachers, and schools at a time when we are cutting back funding support to them.”

The bill will align the state STAR program with federal guidelines by exempting pupils in grade 2 from the testing requirement. Federal law in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act does not require statewide accountability testing until grade 3. “Testing second graders simply starts the ‘teaching to the test’ process one year earlier. We don’t need to formalize this process by mandating a test as early as second grade,” said Assemblywoman Hancock.

In addition, AB 356 removes the rewards and sanctions components from the Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999. Presently, teachers are granted merit pay rewards or are sanctioned based on scores for tests that may not accurately reflect what is being taught in the classroom. As chair of the Select Committee on Bridging the Achievement Gap, Assemblywoman Hancock also points out that an assessment system favoring English speakers cannot accurately address the needs of English learners. “Until we can fully fund the cost of an excellent education for every child, we should not have sanctions for students and teachers.”

“If we are going to reduce funding to local school districts, we should reduce the bureaucratic requirements we place on them. We need to let teachers teach,” concluded Hancock.

The 330,000-member California Teachers Association is sponsoring the bill.