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Grade Policy Divides Candidates
But Most Support Expanding All-Day Kindergarten By Linda Perlstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 26, 2004; Page GZ03



All the candidates running for the Montgomery County Board of Education praise the system's efforts to devote extra money to the youngest children at the neediest schools. All want greater access to regular classrooms for special education students, where appropriate. All but one support the recent move toward full-day kindergarten at all schools.


But the six men and two women vying in Tuesday's primary have different ideas about many of the system's basic practices, as indicated in candidate forums and interviews.

Regardless of where they live, county residents may vote for one candidate for each of three seats. Two candidates in each race will advance to the general election in November.

In the District 2 Rockville-Potomac race, Walter Lange, an engineer for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is defending his seat against Bob Astrove, an independent software developer, and Stephen N. Abrams, a venture capitalist and chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party. Abrams previously served on the school board for eight years; Astrove has spent a long time advocating before the board, primarily on special education.

The school system is planning to implement over several years a new policy on how students' grades are determined and reported. Grades are to be based on academic achievement only; homework must be graded for its content for it to count. Study habits won't factor into the letter grade but will be addressed elsewhere on the report card.

Abrams supports that approach. "I am one who wants to see us get away from grade inflation toward more consistency of the value of a grade between schools," he said.

Astrove disagrees. "The workplace doesn't grade based on how they do on some rigid formula," he said. "I think we've gone too far."

Lange voted for the new grading policy. In an interview, he said it is crucial, however, that indicators of a student's work habits are noted clearly by teachers.

The board recently voted to expand all-day kindergarten to 17 more schools each year. Unlike his competitors, Abrams does not favor this. Beyond the schools that have all-day kindergarten now, he prefers it be available at least in each cluster, for children whose poverty or language skills indicate that they would benefit, but not in each school.

Among all eight candidates, Lange expresses the least support for charter schools. Maryland requires that counties consider charter applications, and one such school, part of the Knowledge Is Power Program, is negotiating to open in the Silver Spring area.

Lange said he backs charter schools that can serve as models for other schools in the system, not ones with program elements that could not be replicated. "I would rather see the resources invested in our regular schools," he said.

District 4 Differences

Although both candidates in the District 4 race in Silver Spring come from PTA backgrounds, their race features perhaps the sharpest differences in policy preference. Four candidates will be on the ballot, but only two are running: Sheldon Fishman, an Internet specialist for a D.C. law firm, and Valerie Ervin, chief of staff to County Council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large).

Incumbent Kermit V. Burnett and candidate Roger Patterson pulled out of the race after the deadline to remove names from the ballot.

Ervin said she supports the new grading policy with reservations. "For so long, grades have been used as a punishment or a reward," she said.

Fishman said, "I have serious reservations about a policy that does not give credit and does not value adequately homework, attendance, participation and teamwork."

He believes that progress should be more closely tracked for each student. As long as a student, regardless of level, is making at least one year's progress in a year, "we need to give teachers and schools more flexibility to get the job done," he said.

Ervin said academic program decisions should mostly be made on the school system level, or else education among schools "will be too uneven."

In campaign literature, Ervin says students should not be tested "to punish, label or limit."

She elaborated in an interview that the methods used to teach students designated as gifted and talented should be available to all students in the county.

Fishman said he supports students of different academic levels being taught in different classrooms; his children's elementary school's experiment to try otherwise "was a complete disaster," he said.

Ervin countered that throughout the country one can see "grouping practices that hurt kids ultimately."

"I don't think that's the way this county should run its school system," she said.

Rivals for At-Large Seat

In the race for the at-large seat, Sharon W. Cox, the incumbent, faces Michael Anthony Enriquez Ibañez, a teacher at St. Catherine Laboure School in Wheaton who speaks of board service as "a calling," and Tommy Le, a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineer who said serving would be a way to pay back the community for his children's education.

Cox's statements in candidate forums and campaign literature have focused primarily on accomplishments of the current board. She is board president and Policy Committee chairman.

Still, she would like some changes, such as a smaller regional focus when it comes to magnet and gifted-student programs -- an opinion Le shares. Specialized centers that draw from the whole county "are expensive in terms of transportation and place a burden on the families that live the farthest away," Cox said.

Ibañez said he would like to accommodate all parents who insist their children be placed in such programs. He also said that every student should be required to take at least one honors or Advanced Placement course before graduating.

Le advocates having weather-related school closings decided cluster by cluster, not countywide; Cox and Ibañez said they would be concerned about the safety implications of changing current practice.

Le also is alone among the three in opposing the grading policy, which will require teachers to assess each student on a specific series of academic objectives. "This tedious job of collecting data and filling out spreadsheets will add a burden to already overburdened teachers," he said.

Several candidates -- Lange, Ervin and Cox -- said they oppose the existing policy that restricts students with poor grades from participating in extracurricular activities. Le and Abrams support it.

Astrove and Fishman said a grade standard should remain, with students below it being required to participate in academic intervention if they want to take part in activities.

Ibañez favors mandatory after-school study groups for students who are in extracurricular activities but don't make the academic cutoff. "To kick them out because of low grades," he said, "it actually disengages a student from the school and doesn't motivate them to do better, but to be less motivated."

Among the candidates, Astrove, Fishman, Ibañez and Le believe school should start in September and not August.

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