Schools: low-achieving schools.

The Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction, with the approval of the State Board of Education, to develop the Academic Performance Index (API) consisting of a variety of indicators currently reported to the State Department of Education to track the achievement of schools and their pupils. Existing law requires the API to be used for specified purposes, including, but not limited to, ranking all public schools in the state. The Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program, the High Priority Schools Program, and the Quality Education Investment Act of 2006 are intended to provide support to schools ranked in the lower deciles of the API. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires the state accountability system to ensure that all local educational agencies and public schools make adequate yearly progress, as defined. The State Department of Education is required to identify local educational agencies that are in danger of being identified within 2 years as program improvement local educational agencies under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education to identify the persistently lowest achieving schools, as defined, for purposes of implementing the federal Race to the Top program established by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5) . Existing law requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to establish an advisory committee to advise on all appropriate matters relative to the creation of the API and the implementation of the Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program and the High Achieving/Improving Schools Program. Existing law requires the committee to make recommendations to the Superintendent on the appropriateness and feasibility of a methodology for generating a measurement of academic performance by using unique pupil identifiers and annual academic achievement growth to provide a more accurate measure of a school's academic achievement growth over time. This bill would require the Legislative Analyst's Office to convene a working group to identify a single formula that defines, to the greatest extent possible, persistently lowest performing schools and that can be used in both state and federal accountability programs. The bill would require the working group to include representatives from the Legislative Analyst's Office, the Department of Finance, the State Department of Education, the advisory committee described above, the state board, the staffs of the fiscal and policy committees of the Legislature, and stakeholder groups. The bill would require the working group to develop and report its recommendations to the state board and the education policy committees of the Legislature by July 1, 2012.