Experience Could Help or Hurt Graham

But Graham told The Washington Post last week that a staff member cut out her signature from another document and pasted it onto the memo at Belton's direction. She acknowledges, however, signing another memo addressed to the city's finance office with essentially the same request.

The incident led her to seriously consider, but reject, withdrawing from the race, in which she faces four opponents, including former city administrator Robert C. Bobb.

"I am not a quitter," Graham said. "I did nothing wrong."

Graham was born 60 years ago in rural Mahned, Miss., the eldest of four children. She was raised on the family farm, pitching in by milking cows. Her father left when she was 3 months old. Even today, her mother, Doris Silver, 79, looms large in Graham's eyes: Silver overcame ostracism stemming from a hand deformity and became a special education teacher in Baltimore, Graham said.

"She turned that persecution into an asset by working with special-needs children," Graham said.

In childhood, Graham took long walks in the woods, during which she felt the presence of God, she recalled. Years later, she said, she became a Christian and accepted "a call" into the ministry. Graham, who has nearly completed a doctorate in divinity, is now an associate minister at Israel Baptist Church in Northeast Washington, where she leads a ministry for unwed mothers in foster care and preaches.

"She's quite dynamic," said the Rev. Morris Shearin Sr., Israel's pastor.

Graham said her public service is an extension of her ministry. But the passion Graham has displayed in the pulpit has been largely absent from her presentations at candidates' forums. She acknowledges that she comes across as "policy-wonkish."

A key issue for Graham is dismal student achievement, which she wants to reverse in part through her plan to convert 10 traditional schools into charter schools. But at least partially under her watch, only 28 of 146 schools made adequate yearly progress on the system's new exam this year, down from 75 last year.

Graham wants to modify a plan introduced by Superintendent Clifford B. Janey and the Washington Teachers' Union to establish 10 "innovative schools." Janey and the union would select the schools, which would act semiautonomously in experimenting with new ideas aimed at improving achievement.

Under Graham's proposal, the school board would use its power as a chartering agency to turn the 10 schools into charter schools. The school system, she added, would hire the brightest and most creative educators from across the country to run the campuses.

But the teachers union says that idea would accelerate the demise of a system that has lost more than 10,000 students to charter schools. If 10 schools became charters, the system probably would lose at least 2,000 more students and millions of dollars in city funding. Graham's plan also clashes with Janey's call for a moratorium on new charter schools.

Despite the opposition, Graham is pushing ahead.

"We could use our chartering authority to jump-start reform in the 10 schools," Graham said. "We've got to think creatively about how to speed up the reform efforts."