Credit: Sarah Tully/EdSource

John Marsh, Garden Grove Unified'due south cess director, shows Vivian Nguyen how to take a sample Smarter Counterbalanced Assessment test on the figurer, while her mother Hang Luong and grandmother Quyen Truong sentinel during a parent night Oct. 7, 2015.

Credit: Sarah Tully/EdSource

John Marsh, Garden Grove Unified'due south assessment director, shows Vivian Nguyen how to take a sample Smarter Balanced Cess exam on the computer, while her mother Hang Luong and grandmother Quyen Truong watch during a parent night Oct. vii, 2015.

This year brought several changes to public schools in California, start with a robust economy that added billions of dollars to boost K-12 per-student spending. In a yr of multiple developments, EdSource has selected its height five stories of 2015.  Equally lawmakers in Sacramento crafted the state budget in the spring, more than than 3 1000000 students took on a new challenge — the Smarter Counterbalanced assessments aligned with the Mutual Cadre. This month a partisan Congress united in the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed by President Barack Obama. The new police replaces the No Child Left Behind Act and gives local schoolhouse districts more control while reducing the number of standardized tests.

Two laws passed in the waning days of the 2022 Legislature, and signed by Gov. Jerry Chocolate-brown, volition accept an touch on on students and parents. Under 1, former loftier school students who failed the land exit exam can receive their diplomas retroactively, beginning Jan. 1, 2016, if they met all other graduation requirements. The other law, which besides goes into event on Jan. 1, passed despite protests from hundreds of parents and eliminated the "personal belief exemption" that had immune parents to enroll their children in school without having them vaccinated.

Students take Smarter Counterbalanced assessments for showtime time

California joined 16 other states around the country in administering assessments in the spring of 2022 to measure educatee achievement based on the new Common Core State Standards in math and English language language arts/literacy. The standards, which stress critical thinking and problem-solving, aim to ensure that students learn 21st century skills in grades K-12 and graduate college and career-ready.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium created the computer-adaptive tests, which adapted questions based on students' answers, to more accurately pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. Questions were more hard for students who answered them correctly and less difficult for those who did non. Students in 11 other states and the District of Columbia took a different set of tests aligned to the Common Core that were created through the Partnership for Cess of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. California's tests are part of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress that besides includes science tests and alternative assessments. Students' scores will be used when measuring future growth.

The country released the scores in September for the more than iii meg California students in grades 3-8 and 11 who took the tests for the outset time following a field test in 2014. The results revealed an ongoing achievement gap betwixt white and Asian students and those in other racial or ethnic groups, as well as between students who authorize for complimentary and reduced price lunches and their peers who did not and between English language learners and fluent English language speakers.

Every Student Succeeds Deed approved by Congress to replace the No Child Left Backside Police

Final summer, it looked similar California would be stuck with the No Kid Left Behind Act until President Barack Obama left the White Business firm. The U.Southward. House and Senate had passed very different rewrites of the nation's primary education law, President Obama threatened to veto either version, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appear he was resigning.

Simply, led by skilled consensus builders Sens. Lamar Alexander, D-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Launder., negotiations came together quickly last month, and on December. 11, President Obama signed NCLB'due south successor, the Every Educatee Succeeds Deed.

A wide range of state educators and advocacy groups have given thumbs upward to the new law's framework. The new law will let the Legislature and the Land Board of Education to downplay the role of standardized tests in measuring school progress and, in keeping with the shift to local control, requite school districts flexibility in setting schoolhouse improvement goals and suggest their own fixes to issues they identify.

Just state leaders are also worried in that location may exist trap doors in the complex blueprint. Among their initial questions: Will ESSA, as the new police force will be called, require the state to re-create the Bookish Performance Index, the 3-digit measure of school performance that the State Board of Educational activity would like to impale? And volition California have to keep giving a standardized examination based on old science standards until the state creates a new exam based on new standards, which may be three or four years from at present?

Look for some clues in the coming months.

EdSource stories on passage of Every Student Succeeds Act:

No Child Left Behind rewrite works for California, Dec. 3, 2015

In bipartisan vote, Congress overwhelmingly approves new federal education constabulary, Dec. 9, 2015

President Obama signs Every Pupil Succeeds Act, December. ten, 2015

State Capitol the scene of vaccine showdown

A protest confronting school public health measures erupted this year after the introduction of state Senate Bill 277, a proposal to eliminate the "personal conventionalities exemption" that allowed parents to enroll their children in school without having them vaccinated.

The number of parents whose kindergartners hold a personal belief exemption to state-mandated vaccinations is minor — 2.5 pct in 2014-15 — but they organized a song opposition. Hundreds of parents queued upwards at microphones at legislative hearings to say they should accept the correct not to vaccinate their children, a position that the U.South. Supreme Courtroom has rebuked. The court has ruled twice that the regime's interest in protecting the public from communicable diseases overrides individual decision-making.

Dozens of education and medical groups supported the measure, including the California School Nurses Organization, the California Schoolhouse Boards Association, Children At present and the Los Angeles Unified School District. Supporters noted that the rate of students holding personal belief exemptions rose from less than 1 pct in 2000 to 3.2 percent in 2013-14, with the ascent in unvaccinated population clusters linked to disease outbreaks, including the Disneyland measles outbreak that began in December 2014.

Senate Nib 277 passed the Legislature and was signed into law by Brown. The longstanding immunization requirements stand up: Children will non be admitted to public or private kid care or schools unless they are immunized confronting x diseases — diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type b (known every bit bacterial meningitis), measles, mumps, pertussis (known as whooping cough), polio, rubella, tetanus, hepatitis B and chickenpox.  The law, which goes into effect January. 1, likewise eliminated a religious belief exemption.

Two exemptions exist: a medical exemption and a homeschooling exemption, which includes students enrolled in independent study with no classroom instruction. As of last week, it is notwithstanding uncertain whether students who receive special education services, and are thereby federally entitled to those services, are required to exist fully vaccinated. The California Department of Public Health says parents should consult their local school districts for information.

Diplomas at concluding for students who failed loftier school exit exam

Tens of thousands of former high school students who failed the California High School Exit Examination learned in October 2022 they would at last receive their diplomas.

Brown signed into law Senate Neb 172, which requires that school districts beyond the state retroactively award diplomas to students who met every other graduation requirement, simply failed the leave examination. The new law goes into effect Jan. one.

"My reaction is just pure joy and happiness," sometime Santa Rosa Loftier School student Telesis Radford, who failed the test in 2006, said following the governor's signing of the beak. "I volition be able to take the phlebotomy course that I want to take and go the job I want to become afterward. I'll be living my dream now."

Information technology'south estimated that at least 40,000 students statewide will qualify for the retroactive diplomas, including at to the lowest degree 8,000 from the Los Angeles Unified Schoolhouse District.

The new police also suspended the leave exam through the end of the 2017-18 school year, while lawmakers and educators determine if the land should create a new version of the test that'south aligned with the Mutual Core State Standards, or eliminate it birthday as a graduation requirement in the futurity.

"The high school go out exam is outdated and does not reflect California'south new, more than rigorous academic standards that emphasize skills needed to succeed in college and careers in the 21st century," state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said in October. "I look frontward to convening a task strength of teachers, parents, students, and educational activity leaders to find a more than thoughtful approach to high schoolhouse graduation requirements that better suits California's modern education system."

Nearly 5 million students took the exit exam since it debuted in 2001. It became a requirement for graduation starting with the course of 2006.

Students who failed the exit test but met all other graduation requirements were often awarded certificates of achievement, which are diploma-similar documents. Even so, many were prevented from applying to iv­-yr colleges, vocational training programs, military service or for jobs that required a high school diploma.

Supporters of the exam said it ensured that more students graduated with basic skills in English and math, helping close the achievement gap. Meanwhile, opponents argued that the exit exam discouraged some students from staying in school and that it disproportionately punished some low-­income children and English learners who were unable to pass the examination.

Schools reap benefit of strong economy

If EdSource were to name a Person of the Year for 2015, it would be The Taxpayer.

Revenue from taxes on capital gains, dividends  and top income earners connected to feed state coffers this year, and Proposition 98'southward rules for funding education in loftier-revenue years steered well-nigh of the increase to M-12 schools and community colleges. Spending under Prop. 98, the primary source of revenue for educational activity, rose $7.6 billion in the 2015-16 upkeep, to $68.four billion.

Gov. Jerry Brown, in turn, gave his Local Control Funding Formula an extra $6 billion. That helped heighten per-pupil funding an average of eleven percent, or $one,011 per educatee, although, under the formula, districts with few depression-income children and English language learners saw less and those with loftier proportions of those students received an increase of xv percent or more than. In addition, Chocolate-brown sent districts nearly $five.5 billion in one-fourth dimension money with few strings attached. He did dedicate nearly $1 million over three years in competitive grants for career technical didactics partnerships between districts and businesses.

Brown budgets conservatively; the Legislative Analyst'south Office predicts  there will be $2 billion more in revenue than the governor included in the state upkeep. That money will period to  schools in 2016-17, starting in July. Adjacent yr, while not promising to bring as dandy a fiscal bonanza, the LAO predicts an average increase of $530 per student.

EdSource stories on school finance:

2015-16 land education budget past the numbers, June 23, 2015

State to spend a half-billion dollars to promote instructor effectiveness, June 19, 2015

Budget deal confirms record M-12 spending, June 16, 2015

New school funding formula gets huge boost in land budget program, June ix, 2015

http://edsource.org/2015/legislators-propose-boosting-preschool-funding/80682

Legislators proposed boosting preschool funding, May 29, 2015

To get more reports like this i, click hither to sign upwardly for EdSource's no-toll daily email on latest developments in education.