Schools to Get State Rewards for Boosting Test Scores

Hundreds of schools across Southern California will soon receive financial rewards for boosting scores on state achievement tests, an unexpected windfall that has come as a pleasant surprise for many cash-strapped campuses.

In Ventura County, 87 schools will get a total of $1.6 million for meeting the state’s performance targets on exams taken in spring 2001.

The payout comes months after schools were supposed to receive the cash awards, promised as part of the governor’s 3-year-old public school accountability program.

Budget woes in Sacramento forced education officials to halt disbursement of reward funds in February--and called into question whether the money would come at all.

“We were under the impression there was no money coming, so it’s a great surprise,” said John Wilber, principal at Fillmore High School, which will get $25,000 for increasing its score by 51 points on an academic index. “We were feeling really good about that, so it’s nice to get that recognition.”

Wilber said the money would probably be used to buy new math and science textbooks, as more students in Fillmore, one of the county’s poorest areas, are registering for classes required for UC admission.

Statewide, 3,428 schools will receive $67.3 million in reward money to spend on new teaching materials, technology and other extras, Gov. Gray Davis’ education secretary, Kerry Mazzoni, announced this week.

Most districts in Ventura County will receive at least one reward, according to the state report. The largest chunk in the county will go to Simi Valley Unified, where $202,988 will be distributed among 14 campuses.

Throughout California, schools should receive checks by the end of September, said Ann Bancroft, spokeswoman for the education secretary.

The bonuses amount to $36.88 per student tested. An additional $39 per student is proposed in Davis’ budget, which is still being debated in the Legislature, Bancroft said.

To qualify for the rewards, schools had to achieve a required growth amount on the Academic Performance Index for their campus enrollment. The index represents a public ranking of schools based on test scores.

Schools also had to meet growth targets for specific groups of students, including children from low-income homes and from various ethnic groups, said Bill Padia, director of the policy and evaluation division in the state education office. Although the money that schools will receive this year is much less than initially promised, administrators said they understand the state’s budget crisis and are happy to get something.

“We’re ecstatic to receive anything, really,” said Tom McCoy, principal at Oxnard’s Hueneme High School, which will get the largest reward in the county--about $71,800--for its campus of more than 2,500 students. “We thought we were going to have to tell students in the fall that the award was cut.”

Because the funding is one-time money, it can’t be used to hire counselors or specialists--a critical need for many districts.

That is one reason most said they aren’t worried the rewards program was not reinstituted this year.

“We’re working just as hard this summer as we have the summer before--we’re working harder than ever,” said Wilber of Fillmore High. “We’re not geared to the reward money. We’re figuring out how to get kids to graduate.”