Bruce Taylor is betting that cash can help incentivize kids to learn to read.

All the trappings of the end of the school year are here – graduation parties, cakes, report cards. For 242 third-graders in Salinas City Elementary School District, this school year will also end with $250 in cash.

The funds, awarded through the Golden Ticket Reading Incentive Program (and handed over to parents), are going to the 20 percent of students who meet or exceed the state’s English/language arts standards.

“It’s not a reward, it’s really an investment,” says SCESD Superintendent Rebeca Andrade. “I think the message we send to the children is, ‘We believe in you, we are putting our resources behind you. We are recognizing what you do is work, and your work is valued.’”

The value for this inaugural program is $60,500, paid by Taylor Farms. CEO Bruce Taylor has long fixated on early literacy as a philanthropic focus because of how much it matters. “Success in reading leads to success in everything else,” he says. “It’s just the key.”

He was first alerted to the issue decades ago, recalling a meeting with now-State Sen. Anna Caballero when she was mayor of Salinas, and learning about the correlation between low literacy rates and high incarceration rates.

“I am just shocked that in a very liberal community, we allow the educational outcomes to be as poor as they are,” Taylor says.

A quick look at how poor they are: Countywide, only 27.7 percent of third-graders last year met or exceeded literacy standards, compared to 42.8 percent statewide. Andrade says kids who aren’t reading at grade level by third grade are 4 times more likely to drop out of high school. “It is a strong predictor of future academic success,” she says.

A self-described “middle-of-the-road conservative” in a liberal state, Taylor has grown frustrated over the years with education reform efforts. He says a top-down approach starting with state leadership isn’t working because of influence by teachers unions. Instead, he says, “The way to move the needle is to start at the bottom, start with the kids and the kids’ parents.”

He expects to expand the Golden Ticket program across the entire county, projecting it could become a $2 million a year program. (He hopes to draw other partners, but adds, “We are prepared to fund it ourselves if we need to.”)

You’re not alone if the idea of compensating kids with cash makes you squirm – there’s a lot of literature about child psychology and whether it’s a help or hindrance in developing intrinsic motivation. Andrade acknowledges the concern: “Hopefully this might spark that desire from within,” she says. Taylor himself remembers learning in grade school that other kids were getting cash for their As, and asking his mom if she would oblige. (That was a no – the grades were their own reward, he recalls her saying. Something worked; he’s still a big reader and just completed The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.)

And of course, no number of golden tickets address the systemic issues that track with poor academic performance; for example, poverty is correlated with lower literacy.

Those systems are much harder to fix, but an existing local network of nonprofits provides a range of literacy initiatives. Among other things, they help kids develop a home library; the presence of books in the home is known to help encourage reading.

Taylor and his philanthropic point person, Susie Brusa, hope that the golden tickets are also a motivator to parents to read at home to their future third-graders.

Beyond the golden ticket program, Taylor Farms has funded over $1.5 million in teacher training at Monterey County Office of Education on what’s known as “the science of reading.” He’s also optimistic about pending state legislation to expand the science of reading.

“There are lots of different folks engaged in this, trying to help,” Taylor says. “We don’t seem to be moving the needle.”

So he’s trying something audacious, drawn from what works in the business world. “Let’s try an incentive – it tends to work across a capitalist economy,” he says. “We just want to be a catalyst.”

Taylor and SCESD share a worthy goal: to get 100 percent of third-graders reading at grade level.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com.