Final Approval Near on Davis’ Education Plan

What began as a campaign promise is poised to become California policy after most of Gov. Gray Davis’ $470-million plan for healing public schools emerged from the Legislature on Monday, just nine weeks after he inaugurated a special session on education.

Two of Davis’ four reform bills cleared the state Senate and Assembly on Monday, in a form slightly different from what Davis proposed when he took office in January. Two more face a final procedural vote in the Senate today before they land on his desk for signature.

Reforms ranging from a graduation exam to enhanced scrutiny of teachers are intended to salve the wounds that provoked public outcry and led the governor to act: consistently bottom of the barrel results on national and international tests of students.

Whether the approach will succeed remains a matter of dispute, to be decided in future years by those same test results. If they improve, Davis will get the credit or, if they fall further, the blame.

In an interview with The Times on Monday, Davis took credit for launching an era in which students are pushed to reach their potential instead of being allowed to languish.

“I think it’s a great disservice to young kids who are just as bright and just as ambitious . . . as we were but are not getting the emotional support and encouragement and are not being stretched,” he said.

The ever-cautious Davis even hinted at the next steps in his plan, saying that he wants to forge public-private partnerships to provide more books for school libraries and more computers for classrooms. “The Internet is essential to leveling the playing field,” he said.

Under the bills, as now written:

* Teachers would receive assistance and review from their peers, to improve the performance of those who have received unsatisfactory evaluations from their principals.

* High school students would take a graduation exam to determine whether they have learned enough to merit a diploma.

* Students would receive enhanced instruction in reading in the early years of elementary school and teachers would receive more training in how to teach reading.

* Schools would be ranked by a combination of academic and other factors and some state support and intervention would be provided to 430 of them annually.

Davis dismissed conservatives’ growing criticism that the reforms approved Monday are weak and doomed to failure.

“That’s their job, to complain; they have no power,” he said. “On balance I believe these bills will be very effective and very substantive and a very strong step in the right direction.”

But the Republican railing continued. Of the school accountability plan, which ranks school performance more generally than originally proposed, Assemblyman Jim Battin (R-La Quinta), a father of three public school students, said “It’s not good enough for my children.”

Although improving an education system takes time, an impatient citizenry could begin to judge Davis based on the release of test scores as early as next year--scores more likely affected by education reforms that predated him.

Under former Gov. Pete Wilson’s watch, class size was reduced to 20 in primary school classrooms, bilingual education was ended by initiative, grade-level standards were established and a statewide skills test was mandated.

But Davis said he views the 2002 gubernatorial election as his judgment day, “which will give these reforms about three years to work. And I believe we’ll see progress.”

Now, education groups are calling for a master plan that would create a logical framework for future education reforms. Too often, they say, changes have been made haphazardly and Davis’ contribution has been no different.

Pro-forma votes in the Senate on last-minute changes to the two bills that originated there are expected today, with four separate governor’s signing ceremonies already scheduled to stretch from Sacramento on Monday morning to San Diego a week later.

The bills went through the legislative process at warp speed in the special session, exceeding Davis’ expectation that his legislation emerge by March 30.

The school ranking bill was the most dramatically changed. Instead of a list of best to worst, ranking will occur in groups of 10 percentage points. And a requirement that troubled schools meet state standards was deleted to give the state Department of Education more flexibility in setting goals.

Such changes appear small, but critics charge that they signal an unease about plunging into the sometimes unpleasant work of overhauling bad schools.

Without the standards requirement, Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) said, poor schools would be left to “float out to sea with no set directions.”

Of the other three bills, which remain largely intact, the reading bill proved the most popular with legislators. On Monday it received unanimous votes in the Senate and Assembly.

Campus reading awards called for in the bill were altered after some Democrats who represent poorer areas worried that their schools would never earn the $5,000 honor. Now the legislation calls for schools to be divided into four groups by socioeconomic status, then compete within their group.

During the amendment process, the governor held firm on the teacher peer review bill, refusing to bow to pressure from teachers’ unions and administrators’ advocates to allow it to be voluntary. Districts that do not start such a program will lose funding for teacher and administrator training.

However, Sen. Dede Alpert (D-Coronado)--who handled that bill for Davis--said on the Senate floor Monday that the governor has agreed to review that link if it proves to be unworkable.

As far as the graduation exam goes, one minor change could prove to be major in the future: The state Department of Education was instructed to suggest alternatives for bright students who do not test well. If adopted later, such an alternative would probably have to be made available to all students, and some suggest that would diminish the exam’s import.

“We’re not sugar-coating it,” Davis insisted. “We’re . . . trying to give kids marketable skills.”

Times staff writers Jenifer Warren and Dave Lesher contributed to this story.