Top adviser tapped for education post
Spellings held top school job 6 years in Texas
WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday nominated his domestic policy adviser, Margaret L. Spellings, to become the nation's new secretary of education, tapping a longtime loyalist and close aide to his Cabinet for the third time in a week as he revamps his team for his second term.
Spellings, a Houston native who is expected to gain easy confirmation in the US Senate, is a strong advocate of accountability and raising standards at public schools. She will be charged with working to extend to high schools the testing requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act at a time when the law remains unpopular in many municipalities for forcing them to spend more money on tutoring and busing without sufficient compensation.
''We must ensure that a high school diploma is a sign of real achievement, so that our young people have the tools to go to college and to fill the jobs of the 21st century," Bush said yesterday. ''The issue of education is close to my heart. And on this vital issue, there is no one I trust more than Margaret Spellings."
Spellings served as Bush's top education adviser for six years while he was governor of Texas, and she joined Bush's White House staff as assistant to the president for domestic policy shortly after he took office in 2001. If confirmed by the Senate, she will succeed fellow Texan Rodney Paige as head of the Department of Education.
The 46-year-old Spellings, with two of her daughters by her side, became emotional while accepting Bush's offer.
''Our schools must keep their promise to all our children," Spellings said. ''I am a product of our public schools. I believe in America's schools, what they mean to each child, to each future president or future domestic policy adviser, and to the strength of our great country. If confirmed by the Senate, I commit to work alongside America's educators and my new colleagues at the Department of Education to make our schools the finest in the world."
Spellings was active in education policymaking in Texas before she signed on with Bush for his first campaign for governor, in 1994. While Bush was governor of Texas, she played an integral role in putting together a new, testing-based system of school and student accountability, a sweeping package that became the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, which Bush shepherded through Congress in 2001.
Jim Nelson, a former Texas education commissioner, said Spellings believes strongly that accountability measures are the best way to close the ''achievement gap" that has long existed between white and minority students. Her diligence and intelligence have helped Texas schools improve, and she has begun to have a similar impact nationwide, he said.
''It's caused us to focus on all children," said Nelson, who is now superintendent of schools in the Dallas suburb of Richardson. ''We've done a good job, though there's much more to be done."
The Texas system has drawn criticism for fostering an atmosphere where school districts fudge numbers to avoid sanctions. A recent state audit of Houston schools found that an estimated 3,000 high-school dropouts weren't accounted for in the city. One school reported zero dropouts even though it graduated 300 students in a class that started with 1,000 freshmen.
The nomination of Spellings drew positive reactions from Democrats and Republicans yesterday. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, has been critical of Bush's failure to fully fund No Child Left Behind. But he praised Spellings.
''I look forward to working with her to strengthen our public schools, preschools, and support for college students," Kennedy said in a statement. ''Margaret Spellings is a capable, principled leader who has the ear of the president and has earned strong bipartisan respect in Congress."
Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association, called the appointment of Spellings a ''great opportunity for the administration to change the tone of its discourse with the education community." Teachers' unions have had a contentious relationship with Paige, particularly over funding for No Child Left Behind.
As domestic policy adviser, Spellings has had influence that has been mostly under the radar screen; Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, recently called her ''the most influential woman in Washington that you've never heard of." She has gained recognition, though, for her push for federal aid to go only to sex-education programs that focus exclusively on abstinence, a position that has been criticized by some education and health officials as unrealistic.
Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, defended the position held by Spellings and the White House yesterday as the one that ''sends the right message."
''The president is an advocate of abstinence-education programs, because he wants to focus on what works," McClellan said. ''And we know that they have proven results of working to . . . send the right message to our children."
The president's choice of Spellings is the latest indication that the president is turning to people he knows extremely well to serve in top posts during his second term. Last week, Bush chose his White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general. On Tuesday he turned to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to become his new secretary of state, succeeding Colin Powell.
Spellings and Gonzales have been close to Bush since his days in Texas. Rice has developed into one of the president's closest friends after serving as his top foreign policy adviser in the 2000 presidential campaign. The president has three more Cabinet vacancies to fill -- agriculture, commerce, and energy. White House officials have said others may leave the administration.
Also yesterday, Bush announced that Gonzales's replacement will be Harriet Miers, a White House deputy chief of staff who previously served as Bush's personal lawyer and as chair of the Texas Lottery Commission while Bush was governor. 