60602.5
. (a) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this
chapter to provide a system of assessments of pupils that has the
primary purposes of assisting teachers, administrators, and pupils
and their parents; improving teaching and learning; and promoting
high-quality teaching and learning using a variety of assessment
approaches and item types. The assessments, where applicable and
valid, will produce scores that can be aggregated and disaggregated
for the purpose of holding schools and local educational agencies
accountable for the achievement of all their pupils in learning the
California academic content standards. The system includes
assessments or assessment tools for multiple grade levels that cover
the full breadth and depth of the curriculum and promote the teaching
of the full curriculum. In order to accomplish these goals, the
Legislature finds and declares that California should adopt a
coordinated and consolidated testing system to do all of the
following:
(1) Develop and adopt a set of statewide academically rigorous
content standards in all major subject areas to serve as the basis
for modeling and promoting high-quality teaching and learning
activities across the entire curriculum and assessing the academic
achievement of pupils, as well as for schools, school districts, and
for the California education system as a whole. Exclusive of those
assessments established by a multistate consortium, produce
performance standards to be adopted by the state board designed to
lead to specific grade level benchmarks of academic achievement for
each subject area tested within each grade level based on the
knowledge, skills, and processes that pupils will need in order to
succeed in the information-based, global economy of the 21st century.
(2) Provide information and resources to schools and local
educational agencies to assist with the selection of local benchmark
assessments, diagnostic assessments, and formative tools aligned with
the state-adopted California academic content standards. The
Legislature recognizes the importance of local tools and assessments
used by schools and local educational agencies to monitor pupil
achievement and to identify individual pupil strengths and
weaknesses. The Legislature further recognizes the role the state may
play in leveraging resources to provide schools and local
educational agencies with information and tools for use at their
discretion.
(3) Ensure that all assessment procedures, items, instruments,
scoring systems, and results meet high standards of statistical
reliability and validity, and that they do not use procedures, items,
instruments, or scoring practices that are racially, culturally,
socioeconomically, or gender biased.
(4) Provide information to pupils, parents and guardians,
teachers, schools, and local educational agencies on a timely basis
so the information can be used to further the development of the
pupil or to improve the educational program. The Legislature
recognizes that the majority of the assessments in the system will
generate individual pupil scores that will provide information on
pupil achievement to pupils, their parents or guardians, teachers,
schools, and local educational agencies. The Legislature further
recognizes that some assessments in the system may solely generate
results at the school, school district, county, or state level for
purposes of improving the education program and promoting the
teaching and learning of the full curriculum.
(5) When administered as a census administration, results should
be reported in terms describing a pupil's academic performance in
relation to the statewide academically rigorous content and
performance standards and in terms of college and career readiness
skills possessed by the pupil, in addition to being reported as a
numerical. When appropriate, the reports should include a measure of
growth that describes a pupil's current status in relation to past
performance.
(6) Where feasible, administer assessments via technology to
enhance the assessment of challenging content using innovative item
types and to facilitate expedited scoring.
(7) Minimize the amount of instructional time devoted to
assessments administered pursuant to this chapter. It is the intent
of the Legislature that any redundancies in statewide testing be
eliminated as soon as is feasible.
(b) It is the intent of the Legislature, pursuant to this article,
to initiate planning for the implementation process to enable the
Superintendent to accomplish the goals set forth in this section as
soon as feasible.
(c) It is the intent of the Legislature that parents, classroom
teachers, other educators, pupil representatives, institutions of
higher education, business community members, and the public be
involved, in an active and ongoing basis, in the design and
implementation of the statewide pupil assessment system and the
development of assessment instruments. The Legislature recognizes the
important role that these stakeholders play in the success of the
statewide pupil assessment system and the importance of providing
them with information and resources about the new statewide system
including the goals and appropriate uses of the system.
(d) It is the intent of the Legislature, insofar as is practically
and fiscally feasible and following the completion of annual
testing, that the content, test structure, and test items in the
assessments that are part of the statewide pupil assessment system
become open and transparent to teachers, parents, and pupils, to
assist stakeholders in working together to demonstrate improvement in
pupil academic achievement. A planned change in annual test content,
format, or design should be made available to educators and the
public well before the beginning of the school year in which the
change will be implemented.
(e) It is the intent of the Legislature that the results of the
statewide pupil assessments be available for use, after appropriate
validation, for academic credit, or placement and admissions
processes, or both, at postsecondary educational institutions.
(f) This section shall become operative on July 1, 2014.