The Academic Performance Index (API) is a measure calculated and reported by the California Department of Education to reflect the academic achievement of a public school, a public school district, or a group of students.  API scores range from a possible low of 200 to a high of 1,000, with a score of 800 set as the target to be met by all schools.  API scores are used not only to reflect performance at a particular moment, but to gauge improvement from year to year. 

Every public school in the state has an annual API target, as do various groups of students within schools (e.g. English Learners, minority groups), and public school districts.  The API targets are used to determine whether or not schools, districts and student groups are making "adequate yearly progress" as required by the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  While the federal government has, since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, required the demonstration of adequate yearly progress, the law left it to the states to create separate plans detailing how such progress was to be measured and reported.  Because serious consequences ensue from persistent failure to demonstrate adequate yearly progress, API scores possess considerable significance.
 
Scores on the California Standards Tests (CSTs) have served as the primary determinant of API numbers.  With the advent of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), however, California's public schools will abandon the CSTs in favor of a new set of tests developed by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium that have been specifically designed to accompany the CCSS.    But the new assessments, known as the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, are substantially different.  For one, they're quite literally not paper-and-pencil tests, but are administered on-line, a factor that introduces a host of technical considerations and potential snafus ranging from basic hardware malfunctions to connectivity challenges, to potential hacking issues.  More importantly, the content of the tests is considerably more sophisticated.  Some questions call upon students to complete a literary passage as they think an author may have done.  Others require test-takers to create graphs or produce geographic shapes.  Some questions are open ended.
 
Transitioning from paper-and-pencil multiple-choice tests to the new assessment format will require substantial training and practice on the part of teachers and students, alike.  For that reason, California and other states have designated the current year as a trial run for the administration of the new assessment.  As such, test scores won't count.  But this raised the question of how California would satisfy the federal law's requirement concerning the annual reporting of test scores and progress.  That hurdle was surmounted when, at the 11th hour, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan granted California a waiver, without penalty, freeing the state from reporting 2014 test scores in exchange for field testing the new assessment.

Of course, absent test scores there can be no API, and to accommodate the phase-in of the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced assessments the State Board of Education has suspended the "score card" for a period of two years.  A newly constituted Academic Performance Index will make its appearance in 2015-16.

The State Board was wise to have granted schools additional time to prepare for a return to "high stakes" testing.  As this Los Angeles Times article reports, the initial administration of the new, online assessment was accompanied by a multitude of technical glitches:

Technology-savvy teachers were often able to solve problems more quickly than others, but student's scores ought not reflect variability in teachers' technical competence, slow connect times, or random hardware issues.  Clearly, more training will be necessitated, and as many bugs as possible must be identified and resolved prior to next year's administration of the full assessment package.  When that happens, controversy is almost certain to follow, as test scores can be expected to disappoint. 

One need only recall the state's short-lived experimentation with the California Learning Assessment System tests in the early 1990s.  The state invested tens of millions of dollars in developing the cutting edge criterion-assessment tests, only to see them scrapped just a couple of years after their introduction.  While technical difficulties were blamed - the tests did suffer from certain addressable technical issues - many believed that poor performance and political backlash were the real sources of their demise.  The cautionary tale is told in an American Institutes for Research report titled, "Learning from the Past: Drawing on California's CLAS Experience to Inform Assessment of the Common Core."

Stay Tuned!

Each May, the governor releases a revised form of the California state budget initially proposed in January. The so-called "May Revise" enables the state's chief executive to update the fiscal blueprint for the coming year taking actual revenue receipts and interim political developments into account. The issuance of the document occasions considerable political fanfare, as various interests eagerly seek to ascertain what's in, and what's out, which line items were increased and which were reduced.  A complete package of May-Revise budget documents can be accessed, here.
 
This year's revised budget was accompanied by good news and bad news.  On the plus side, the Governor reported that projected revenue is expected to surpass January's figure by a very healthy $2.4 billion.  However, Mr. Brown was quick to describe the surplus as "largely a one-time bump in 2013-14" owing to "higher than expected personal income tax withholding, partnership income, and dividend income."  On the other side of the ledger, several developments have necessitated corresponding adjustments in projected outlays:

• The minimum guarantee for public education funding under terms established by Proposition 98 - which are sensitive to factors that include changes in projected revenue, property tax receipts, and enrollment - has increased by $659 million. 
• California's adoption of the optional expansion of Medi-Cal under the federal Affordable Care Act has produced greater-than- anticipated cost to the state.  The state now projects a 46 percent increase in Medi-Cal enrollment, from 7.9 million Californians to 11.5 million in 2014-15, a figure representing 30 percent of the state's population.  Even though the federal government currently shares the cost of additional coverage on a 50-50 basis, the surge in coverage is now expected to cost the state $1.2 billion more than what was initially budgeted in January.
• Not long after the original budget was released, drought conditions caused Governor Brown to declare a state of emergency, accompanied by the allocation of $687 in new expenditures.  To this amount, the May-Revise assigns an additional $142 million reflecting higher costs in "...firefighting, emergency response, enforcement, monitoring, wildlife preservation, food assistance, and other critical activities."
• In February, the  California Public Employees' Retirement System Board adopted new assumptions regarding the life expectancy of retired state employees.  The new calculations resulted in $1 billion of additional obligation, to be phased in over three years.

While the May-Revise shows that spending on public K-12 education will increase by a whopping 8.4 percent, with an infusion of $10 billion of new Proposition 98 funding, the updated budget contains no money for the expansion of Transitional Kindergarten to include all four-year-old children, as proposed by SB 837 (Steinberg).  As the introduction to the updated budget document notes:

California Department of Education staff member Lesley Taylor has been named the first ever recipient of the U.S. Department of Education's Director's Award for Green Ribbon Schools.  The honor is bestowed upon the state education agency official who does the most to advance green schools in their state.  A copy of a letter penned by Andrea Suarez Falken, Director of the USDE's Green Ribbon Schools Program, in which Ms. Taylor is named as the charter recipient of the Director's Award can be viewed, here.

Editors Note:  It has been both a professional and personal privilege to have counted Rick Sexton as a colleague and friend over a good portion of the 26 years of service he has devoted to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fresno as its Superintendent of Schools.  Rick, who has also served with distinction as a CAPSO board member and officer, is about to embark upon the next stage of his life's journey when he retires at the end of the coming month.

The following letter was written to Rick's fellow Catholic superintendents.  He was kind enough to have given me a copy, and I am delighted he has agreed to permit the letter to appear as a guest column in the E-Mailer.  As you will see, it contains a powerful, eloquent and universal message that captures the way so many of us feel about those who share our calling as educators and are more to us than mere colleagues.

The next edition of the CAPSO Midweek E-Mailer will be published June 25, 2014.