Pupil assessment: grade 2 diagnostic assessments.

Existing law, the Leroy Greene California Assessment of Academic Achievement Act, requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to design and implement a statewide pupil assessment program that includes numerous elements, including, among other things, a plan for producing valid, reliable, and comparable individual pupil scores in grades 2 to 11, inclusive. The act also requires school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education to administer to each of its pupils in grades 2 to 11, inclusive, certain achievement tests, including a standards-based achievement test pursuant to the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program. Existing law makes all provisions of the act inoperative on July 1, 2014. Assembly Bill 484 of the 2013–14 Regular Session, if enacted, would, among other things, suspend the STAR Program achievement test for pupils in grade 2 commencing with the 2013–14 school year. This bill would require the State Department of Education, by November 1, 2014, to identify and make available to school districts information regarding existing assessments in language arts and mathematics aligned to the adopted common core academic content standards for pupils in grade 2 for diagnostic use by classroom teachers. The bill would require the savings realized from the elimination of the grade 2 standards-based achievement testing to be used by local educational agencies to administer the identified assessments. The bill would require the department to ensure that the selected grade 2 diagnostic assessments are valid for purposes of identifying particular knowledge or skills a pupil has or has not acquired, but the assessments would not be valid measures for purposes of pupil, personnel, or local educational agency accountability. This bill would become operative only if AB 484 of the 2013–14 Regular Session is also enacted and takes effect on or before January 1, 2014.