Joe Enge, chairman of EdWatch, a conservative education reform organization, talks about all-day kindergarten during an interview at a Carson City restaurant on Feb. 9. Enge argued against statewide all-day kindergarten. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

CARSON CITY -- Former teacher Joe Enge is about to become a thorn in the side of Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, and anyone else who wants the Legislature to require full-day kindergarten classes in every Nevada elementary school.

"Why spend $186 million on a program that has a limited and only a short-term effect?" said Enge, a conservative education reformer from Carson City who grew up a fan of Ronald Reagan. "At that age, kids can handle only so much and retain it. Kids need to be with their families. It is critical for a 5-year-old to bond with the mother."

Enge, 44, is a newly elected member of the Carson City School Board. He has formed EdWatch, a conservative education reform organization, and become education policy analyst for a conservative think tank, the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

In this position, he will become the leading advocate for conservative education views at the Legislature.

Pupils in full-day kindergarten classes attend school about six hours a day, compared with slightly more than 2 1/2 hours in half-day kindergarten classes.

Nevada now offers full-day kindergarten only in "at-risk" schools, or those where 55 percent or more of the children qualify for free or reduced cost lunches.

A Clark County School District study released Feb. 22 found second-graders who attended full-day kindergarten performed better on reading tests than those who attended half-day kindergarten classes.

"We haven't seen data over the long term," Enge said. "Look at the timing of the Clark County study. It was released on the first day of the Legislature. It is all politically driven."

It was on that same day that Buckley urged legislators in her inaugural speech to fund full-day kindergarten classes.

He called her speech "the first salvo" in what could be a bitter war in the Legislature between education conservatives and liberals.

Assembly Education Chairwoman Bonnie Parnell said she will welcome Enge to express his views before her committee, but she can't understand how full-day kindergarten would hurt students.

"I think full-day kindergarten is wonderful," added Parnell, D-Carson City. "I don't know how giving children an opportunity to be in an academic environment for a longer period of time could hurt anyone."

Enge cites studies from the Rand Corp. and the Goldwater Institute that show full-day kindergarten initially helps students, but by the fourth grade they begin to fall behind other students in achievement.

Student achievement in Nevada ranks 44th nationally among the states.

He isn't the kind of guy to shy away from a fight. Last March he received a settlement from the Carson City School District to leave his job as a high school history teacher.

Enge had engaged in a year-long dispute with the district's administration. He charged the school curriculum required him to begin teaching U.S. history with the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.

He contended a U.S. history course needed to devote a lot of attention to the American Revolution and the creation of the Constitution.

Superintendent Mary Pierczynski and other administrators maintained that the American Revolution was taught, although the district's course description catalog described the history course as beginning with Reconstruction.

Enge received a poor evaluation. More than 1,300 residents wrote e-mail messages in his support.

At one point in his career, he won a Fulbright scholarship to teach a year in Estonia. He also had been on the team that set the state standards for history teaching and written two history books.

Rather than fading away after accepting the buyout, Enge filed his candidacy for the Carson City School Board. He won a landslide victory last November.

Buckley said she welcomes public discourse on the merits of full-day kindergarten and of Gov. Jim Gibbons' education empowerment plan, in which decisions on running individual schools would be made largely by principals in consultation with teachers and parents.

Buckley added Democrats have analyzed studies on full-day kindergarten and will give details in hearings.

Her goal is to attract teachers by establishing a pay-for-performance system that rewards them when students show increased achievement, according to Buckley. She also wants to reform high schools.

"The curriculum doesn't interest a lot of students," she said. "We need to offer more career and technical education."

Enge also wants a pay-for-performance system.

He said the current pay plan, under which teachers receive the same initial pay and then get increases for each year of service, is a "socialist scheme" that hurts good young teachers and rewards older teachers who just want to stay on the job until they retire.

Enge is a big supporter of Gibbons' empowerment plans and said that in such systems, principals and teachers could decide to offer full-day kindergarten in their schools.

Parents also would have school choice and could decide to send children to that school or one with half-day kindergarten.

"I don't doubt their sincerity," Enge said of full-day kindergarten supporters. "That is why we need greater school choice."

During his 16-year teaching career, Enge said he often met with Gibbons, who would stop by each year to speak in his classes, even when he taught at tiny Round Mountain in Nye County. Gibbons was the 2nd Congressional District representative for 10 years.

"What is so refreshing about Gibbons is his empowerment plan would bring long-term positive change by making decisions from the bottom up," he said. "What we have now is decisions from the top down."

As an example, he said a few years ago teachers in Carson City were instructed to use pens, not pencils, in filling out their attendance books.

"We didn't have the authority to erase the marks for students who were tardy, even if they had good excuses," he said. "Teachers could not make the decision. If that isn't Soviet central planning, then what is?"