Instructional materials.

Existing law requires the State Board of Education to adopt basic instructional materials for use in kindergarten and grades 1 to 8, inclusive, and authorizes the state board to establish criteria for that purpose. Existing law requires the state board in reviewing and adopting instructional materials to use specified criteria and ensure that, in its judgment, the submitted instructional materials meet all of the specified criteria. Existing law establishes the Academic Content Standards Commission and requires the commission to develop academic content standards in language arts and mathematics and to present its recommended academic content standards to the state board. Existing law requires at least 85% of these standards to be the common core academic standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative consortium or any associated or related interstate collaboration. Existing law requires the state board to adopt or reject the academic content standards. This bill would require the State Department of Education to recommend, and the state board to approve, evaluation criteria to guide the development and review of supplemental instructional materials. The bill also would require the department, on a one-time basis, to develop a list, on or before July 1, 2012, of supplemental instructional materials for use in kindergarten and grades 1 to 8, inclusive, that are aligned with the California common core academic content standards for language arts and for use in kindergarten and grades 1 to 7, inclusive, that are aligned with the California common core academic content standards for mathematics. The bill would require the state board to perform specified reviews and to approve or reject all, or a portion, of the list of supplemental instructional materials proposed by the department and would authorize the state board to add an item to that list, as specified. The bill also would permit the governing board of a school district to approve supplemental instructional materials other than those approved by the state board if the governing board performs specified reviews and determines that other supplemental instructional materials are aligned with the California common core academic content standards and meet the needs of the pupils of the district. The bill would require supplemental instructional materials approved by the state board and the governing board of a school district in the subject areas of mathematics and English language arts to be reviewed by content review experts, as specified. The bill also would require supplemental instructional materials to comply with specified social content review requirements. The bill would require the department to maintain on its Internet Web site a list of supplemental instructional materials approved by the state board. The bill would require the department to use certain federal funds to implement the provisions of the bill. The provisions of the bill would become inoperative on July 1, 2014, and would be repealed on July 1, 2015.