Baker offered a different view, however. He said the MCAS should simply be delayed as a graduation requirement until “we get it right.”

Some candidates have emphasized the importance of integrating non-English speaking students into the schools.

Turkel said she is “proud to be one of the active School Committee members” to create AMIGOS, a bilingual immersion program.

Segat supports bilingual education as well as foreign language instruction in kindergarten through third grade. Marla L. Erlien also advocates bilingual education and helped to establish the AMIGOS program as a bilingual school.

On this issue, Baker also diverges from the general opinion of most candidates. While he supports immersion education, he said he strongly opposes bilingual education.

“Wherever it’s been eliminated, test scores have gone up,” he said. “We ought to do [non-native English speakers] a favor and teach them English.”

On the issue of the achievement gap—a perennial problem in the Cambridge schools—the candidates offer a variety of proposals.

Harding has said he wants to improve the educational opportunities for minority and lower-income students, saying that school-choice is unfair for these students.

Grassi also opposes school choice.

“We have to deal with the inequitable system of school choice which separates our students by race, socio-economic status and level of special ed services,” he said.

Baker, however, said he supports the current system of school choice.

“Parents can do a better job of choosing a school than the government,” he said. He explained that when “bad schools” are consistently not picked, they will have to “clean up their acts.”

Price said he wants to improve all schools so that school choice does not remain an issue.

“One of defining issues of this campaign is getting people to focus on

the reality that no amount of shuffling kids addresses fundamental inequalities

building to building,” he said.

Despite their differences, all candidates agree that the quality of Cambridge public education must be improved and that it must be distributed equally among all students.

“[My} prime concern is the achievement gap—making sure kids from different economic, racial and cultural backgrounds are able to achieve in the school system,” Turkel said.

And after one term on the school board, Walser remains optimistic about the power of the School Committee to improve education in Cambridge.

“Cambridge has a reputation for not putting an emphasis on quality, so people don’t expect the best,” she said. “We’re on the verge of changing that.”