
DATE: Sunday, September 14, 1997            TAG: 9709140071

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: HERNDON                           LENGTH:  229 lines

TOUGHER STANDARDS SCORE WITH STATE EDUCATION CHIEF

Kids come first.

That, Michelle Easton says, is her credo. As mother, conservative activist and president of the state Board of Education.

That's why she transferred her sons from public schools to Catholic schools - knowing she'd take a big hit among some sectors of the public and press.

That's why she works less than 10 minutes from her house in Northern Virginia - so she can drop by in an instant, as she did the other day, when one son was laid up with a stomach virus.

And that's why she steered through a major overhaul of Virginia's education system, including toughened curriculum standards - judged the best in the nation by the American Federation of Teachers - and new statewide tests, to begin next spring.

In the most recent change, adopted by the board two weeks ago, Virginia will require schools to meet a 70 percent pass rate on the tests to retain accreditation - one of the toughest standards in the country. The revisions also wiped out the requirements that schools must teach sex education and employ elementary guidance counselors.

Easton's goal is ``a total refocusing on the most important things that schools and students need to be doing. . . . Every child should have a basic core of knowledge: This is what you ought to know.

``No child should be allowed to graduate without that knowledge, and schools shouldn't be allowed not to teach it.''

With her first term on the board nearing an end, Easton, 47, has helped engineer a remarkable shift in the way 177,000 youngsters in South Hampton Roads - and 1 million in Virginia - are educated.

Yet her activism and outspokenness - she has also said she supports charter schools and school vouchers - have made her a lightning rod for criticism. Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr., the Democratic candidate for governor, has vowed not to reappoint Easton when her term expires in January if he wins.

She's no shoo-in if Beyer's opponent, Jim Gilmore, wins, either. Spokesman Reed Boatright says Gilmore generally supports the board's directions, but ``Jim is not going to preannounce who he will or will not appoint.''

If Easton says her motto is ``Put kids first,'' detractors say it's more like ``Weaken public schools'' or ``Abandon poor kids.''

Del. Kenneth R. Plum (D-Reston), a retired educator who represents Easton's district, says he believes she is engaged in a ``stealth campaign . . . to discredit public schools. We are about to undertake a testing program that will say to some people that public schools are not successful.''

Beyer, echoing educators' fears, worries that the schools that lose accreditation will mostly be in low-income areas: ``We need to have some way to hold principals and teachers and school systems accountable for helping kids. But if that is done ham-handedly, if that is done in a punitive sense, all they're going to do is destroy schools in the worst neighborhoods.''

Easton, with a characteristic mix of straightforwardness and good cheer, says those critics ought to take a ``self-esteem course.''

``I am appalled at their lack of confidence in the teachers, schools and students. They can do it if they're given the time and the materials. I have more confidence in government schools than they do. . . .''

And if some students don't measure up? ``I disagree with the attitude of just going on pretending that everything is fine. Pouring money into schools that are failing with no changes in what they're doing is no answer.''

Critics and supporters agree on this: Easton is intelligent and powerfully willed, and doesn't compromise her principles.

``She's a woman committed to excellence,'' says Anne Kincaid, a consultant to Republican state attorney general candidate Mark L. Earley of Chesapeake. ``She's not out to please people; she's out to get a job done.''

Easton rejected legislative pressure to delay the accreditation vote.

She rejected the plea by the state's superintendent of public instruction to reconsider the 70 percent mark.

She even stood up to her ally, Gov. George F. Allen, and remained firm in opposing Goals 2000 education funding from the U.S. government after the governor changed his mind. In June, the board sided with Allen to apply for more than $14 million.

What links Easton's stances on guidance, sex ed and Goals 2000 is a rock-solid belief in the value of local control of schools and the fear of federal intrusion - even though she spent 12 years working for the U.S. government.

Walt Barbee, president of the Family Foundation, a Richmond-based conservative group, says she has articulated a winning philosophy on education: The state should set minimum standards in core academics and leave the rest up to school districts.

But Norfolk lawyer Pete Decker, a former state board member who disagrees with Easton on elementary guidance and Goals 2000, says her thinking doesn't always end up putting children first.

``She's one of the most talented women I think I've ever met,'' Decker says, ``. . . but I believe that ideology gets in her way as far as allowing her to be as effective as she could be.''

It's Michelle Easton's New York upbringing, some say, that made her a straight shooter.

``I guess I am a little more direct than some folks,'' she says. ``When I'm with the governor, I talk straight at him. When I'm with fellow board members, I talk straight at them. There's so much to do and so little time.''

She grew up in Westchester County, outside New York City, attending - she emphasizes - strong public schools. Easton graduated from Briarcliff College, a women's college in New York, in 1972. She worked as a substitute teacher for less than a year, then decided it wasn't for her. Politics and public policy beckoned.

So she went to Washington, serving for five years as assistant to the director of Young Americans for Freedom, a group for conservative college students. From there, she spent two years at the National Right to Work Committee, which she says is not ``anti-union, but anti-compulsory union.''

Meanwhile, she took night classes at American University to receive her law degree. It helped open doors after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

For the next 12 years, she worked for the Reagan and Bush administrations, seven of them in the U.S. Department of Education. Among her jobs: special assistant to the general counsel, deputy undersecretary for intergovernmental and interagency affairs, executive assistant to the secretary for private education.

The long titles belie her simple goal: ``I went there because Reagan pledged to abolish the Department of Education.''

It didn't happen - and her time there only confirmed her initial beliefs. ``Everybody in Congress who has a good idea starts a federal education program to promote that idea. There's no way in the world they can know what's best for the people in Richmond.''

Take the Title I program to help disadvantaged kids. Good idea, Easton says. Bad setup. ``It just dribbles small amounts of money, and it is written so that every district can qualify for it.''

Better, Easton says, to give the money to the state to dole out. ``Let us use the money the way we want to. I know they're trying their best, but it's absurd - the notion they can decide for us, sitting up there in Washington.''

So why did she keep working there? She found she was gaining valuable experience and making a difference - such as helping private schools apply for their small piece of the Title I pie.

After Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, Easton started the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, dedicated to encouraging conservative women and countering ``radical feminism.''

``Feminists,'' says one pamphlet, ``are wrong on almost every issue they tackle. Yet time after time, these leftists purport to represent women.'' The institute holds forums and sponsors speakers, including columnist Suzanne Fields and Republican activist Bay Buchanan, Patrick's sister.

Hasn't Easton herself benefited from the cause of feminism? She has pursued both family and career. And she's even kept her maiden name to preserve her professional identity. (Her husband, Ron Robinson, leads the Young America's Foundation, which promotes conservatism on campuses.)

The just cause, she says, was that of the old-time suffragettes, who fought for equality under the law. ``We got all those things,'' she says, ``and they had to keep at it,'' pressing for abortion rights and alleging gender bias in pay. The numbers, Easton says, don't take into account women's time off to have children, raise a family. Other studies, she says, show that ``for similarly situated men and women, there is no pay difference.''

The one thing Easton won't talk much about is her sons - ages 17, 14, 11 - to shield their privacy. But she speaks about her decision to take them out of public schools.

``I kept hoping, I kept trying,'' Easton says, but the schools didn't adequately educate her children. Not even in Fairfax County.

Her middle son, for instance, ``loved it, he adored it. But if he spent an hour a day in core academics, it was a good day. . . .

``I knew I would be better off keeping my kids in public school, but I knew it wasn't the best for them,'' she says.

What's important, she says, is that five of nine board members have school-age children, period. ``Every night I'm talking K-through-12 issues with my kids.''

Under Easton - who was elected vice president in January 1995 and president in January 1996 - the board has become more visible and activist. ``I don't ever speak for this board,'' state Education Secretary Beverly H. Sgro said recently.

The board, not the education department, set the 70 percent accreditation rate and proposed dropping the mandates for guidance and sex ed. Lil Tuttle, vice president of the board, says it's following a national trend of more vocal boards.

Member Rayford L. Harris Sr., a retired professor who unsuccessfully tried to retain the elementary guidance mandate, complains that the board's inner circle - generally considered to be Easton, Tuttle and Cheri Yecke, another former teacher - predetermine decisions. ``There's not much room for compromising.''

Untrue, says Easton. Everyone has his say. And she says she herself compromised by not including permission for charter schools - an issue that has remained stalled in the General Assembly - in the revised accreditation rules.

``There was a way we could have put it in, but I was persuaded we wanted to do it just right,'' she says. ``I could have forced that, but I went with the group.''

Of course, Easton still vigorously supports charter schools - intended to encourage experimentation - as well as vouchers to help parents pay for private school. ``More affluent families have choice,'' she says. ``We should have a much wider variety of choice for all levels. To me, it's a matter of social justice.''

In Easton's office hang her diplomas. A trio of framed photographs of her shaking hands with Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and Dan Quayle. A pen President Bush gave her after he signed a proclamation for Education Week.

Just as important, she says, is a Norman Rockwell print of a kindly looking teacher in a classroom. Easton says it reminds her of her first-grade teacher, Marion Lynch.

``I remember her making me feel so comfortable, and I started to read in six weeks,'' Easton says.

That's the type of education Easton says she's trying to ensure for all Virginians. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Michelle Easton: Children need ``a basic core of knowledge.''

Graphic

AT A GLANCE

State Board of Education

Appointed to board by Gov. George F. Allen, Jan. 1994

Elected vice president, Jan. 1995

Elected president, Jan. 1996

Employment

Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, founder and president, May