Davis Links Bonuses to Stanford 9 Scores

Gov. Gray Davis told a conference of 6,000 teachers and other educators Saturday that the state will provide $150 bonuses per student to every public school in California that improves its scores five percentile points on next spring’s Stanford 9 test.

The state will also offer cash awards of $5,000 to 400 elementary and middle schools that win a reading contest, based not on performance but on the number of pages their students read, he added.

Speaking at the two-day Reading by 9 conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Davis said the incentives are part of his package of educational initiatives that has focused on setting high standards and applying extra resources, as well as possible sanctions, to schools that fail to meet them.

The conference is being sponsored by The Times as part of its campaign to help ensure that more students can read by the age of 9. It drew teachers and principals from throughout Southern California to hear talks by Davis, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Henry Cisneros, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development. In addition, there were teacher training workshops on reading and numerous booths with educational material for sale.

As part of the new state budget, the Legislature approved spending for the incentives touted by Davis. The details are still being worked out by the state Department of Education.

The Sanford 9 is the state’s mandatory test used to gauge students’ abilities in reading, math and language.

The governor won his warmest applause from the teachers when he ticked off the more than $100 million in new textbook and library funds, which he said should obviate the need for teachers to spend from their own pockets for instructional materials.

Nonetheless, they spent in droves, lugging out armfuls of phonics-based books and educational materials such as the Alphabet Hotel computer game.

Many said that they got the most benefit from the event through exchanging ideas and experiences with other teachers.

“This pumps you up,” said Yvonne Kasinger, a teacher at Cypress Elementary School in Fontana.

“It makes me understand what I’m about and why we’re struggling so hard,” said Principal Dolores Weber of Woodcrest Elementary School in Los Angeles, who came with a contingent of six teachers.

The emotional high point of the day came not from California’s educational or political establishments.

The stars were Ruby Bridges and Barbara Henry, two women who formed a pupil-teacher bond 40 years ago during the turbulent early days of American school integration.

Bridges has written a first-person children’s book on the subject, “Through My Eyes.” It recounts her experience as a 6-year-old girl becoming the first black child admitted to William Frantz Public School in New Orleans in 1960. She has reunited with the white teacher who helped her through that traumatic episode.

Saturday, they held an audience spellbound in a hall so large that their images had to be projected on two giant screens.

On the value of reading, Bridges quoted abolitionist Frederick Douglass in an essay describing his earliest education--at the knee of his owner’s bighearted wife.

When the husband discovered the illicit lessons, he forbade them to continue, but too late, for Douglass had already learned that “knowledge unfits a child to slavery. . . . I was master of the alphabet. . . . I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom.”

Henry addressed the role of teacher, describing her efforts to bond with her frightened young student. Added to Bridges’ own emotional strengths, Henry said, their bond protected both from the “peripheral hurts of our lives. . . . We were able to create our own oasis of love and learning.”

Cisneros, now president and chief executive officer of Univision, pledged that the Spanish-language broadcasting company would join the Reading by 9 campaign to communicate to Latino parents the importance to their children of learning to read in English. “Even as a Spanish-language company, we understand the importance of reading, and reading in English and reading by 9,” Cisneros said.

Riordan lingered two hours, twice as long as his schedule called for.

“By working together we are showing children about the magic of reading,” he said.

But his endurance paled beside that of hundreds of teachers who waited in line up to four hours for a chance to shake hands with Bridges and Henry.

Many passed the time reading Bridges’ book, which only went on sale Saturday.

They persevered, Santa Barbara school Principal Joanne Young said, “because she is such a profound educator.”

Scheduled only from 10 a.m. to noon, the signing continued past 3 p.m. until every book was sold and signed.

Bridges and Henry will return to the conference today, but their publicist said she could not guarantee that there would be more books.

Today’s conference will include workshops on family involvement, reading assessments, an overview of new state funds and the standards-driven approach to teaching.