The State Board is still accepting feedback on updates to the Student Score Report (SSR) that may impact how a student and their parents interpret the student’s results on state standardized tests. At its November meeting, the SBE delayed action on these changes, partially in response to concerns from the public, including CSBA, that the changes could be too vague and confusing.
While the board had suggested at its last meeting the proposed changes would be discussed during this month’s meeting, a new timeline was outlined in a Dec. 19 memo. The California Department of Education (CDE) will now provide the board with a memo in February summarizing the feedback and the proposed revisions to the reporting achievement level descriptors and labels as well as the proposed revisions for the 2025–26 SSRs for the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) assessments and the California Science Test.
The board did approve technical amendments to the SSRs during the January meeting but is now scheduled to take action on any proposed changes at its March meeting.
The board approved the 2025 Accountability Workplan, which includes the incorporation of the Science indicator and the Student-Level Growth Model for Grades 4–8 in English Language Arts and Mathematics into the Dashboard. The workplan also provides a review of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) State Plan, currently adopted College and Career Indicator components, participation rates for academic indicators and science, Dashboard Alternative School Status application/renewal criteria, differentiated assistance eligibility based on California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System submissions, and Priority 1: Teacher Assignment Data.
At its March meeting, the board will further discuss the establishment of Science Indicator status cut points (i.e., very high, high, medium, low and very low); change cut points (i.e., declines significantly, declined, maintained, increased and increased significantly); and a color scheme for the five-by-five color grid.
Adoption of these components to create performance levels will allow the Science Indicator to display colors on the 2025 Dashboard, and the board could take additional action at its July meeting to include science in either state or federal accountability.
With data now available, the board discussed how it could be incorporated into the Dashboard. Options included adopting performance standards for growth; publishing growth score data as additional information on the Dashboard with no accountability implications; and modifying ESSA support and improvement criteria to include the English language arts and math growth scores. Some board members expressed significant hesitancy around reopening the state ESSA Plan at this time.
Other options, such as modifying the components of the existing academic indicators to include growth scores or modifying differentiated assistance criteria to include the growth scores, were discussed. However, CDE staff noted that the 10-week timeline that it would take to produce the growth data files upon receipt of the final testing results in September would impinge on the legislative requirement to publish the Dashboard annually by Oct. 15 beginning in 2026.
The curriculum guide is intended to support implementation of the graduation requirement in personal finance established by AB 2927, which will take effect beginning with the graduating class of 2030–31.
The law calls for the guide to include content related to the fundamentals of banking for personal use, including, but not limited to, savings and checking and managing to minimize fees; principles of budgeting for independent living; uses and effects of credit, including managing credit scores and the relation of debt and interest to credit; uses and costs of loans, including student loans, as well as policies that provide student loan forgiveness; types and costs of insurance, including home, auto, health and life insurance and more.
- David Schapira, a former Arizona state legislator and school board member, and director of Governmental Relations for the California School Employees Association; and Ingrid Roberson, former associate superintendent of Academic Services at the Alameda County Office of Education and senior advisor of Research Learning at the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence, were appointed co-chief deputy superintendents of public instruction.
- The board approved Career Technical Education Incentive Grant allocations for fiscal year 2024–2025, as well as an allocation formula, specific funding amounts and number of grant awards, purposes for grant fund use and allowable and non-allowable expenditures.
