NO SOCIAL PROMOTION:

Education pick comes from inside Bush circle: Margaret Spellings has deep Texas roots in educational reform. (Gail Russell Chaddock, 11/18/04, CS Monitor)

"The neat thing about Margaret is that she was open to listening to any idea, as long as you weren't wasting her time," says Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.

She recalls her first meeting with Spellings, then Margaret LaMontagne, early in Bush's second term as governor. "Her first question to me was: 'Other than teachers' rights and money, because we know your position on that, if you could pass a bill that would make a difference for children, what would it be?' "

Ms. Fallon told her the need was to "stop moving them up to higher levels when they can't read." Spellings response: "What would you do?"

By the end of this - and countless other discussions - the Bush team in Texas had settled on a new social promotion policy to test children at critical points (grades 3, 5, and 8), evaluate their progress, and hold children back a grade, if needed. Other new legislation included the Safe Schools Act, which gave teachers the right to remove disruptive students from class, and a focus on early reading. "They liked common-sense ideas and reading programs that had some research base, rather than just giving the principal a new TV," says Fallon.

Focused and absolutely no-nonsense, Spellings was the gatekeeper for Governor Bush on education initiatives. As the governor's senior education adviser for six years, she helped develop the Texas Reading Initiative, the Student Success Initiative to end social promotion, and the Texas assessment and accountability system that was the model for the No Child Left Behind Act.