"Please, Children, Do Not Leave"

By Susan Tifft

When President Reagan chose Lauro Cavazos to replace William Bennett as Secretary of Education last summer, Washington pundits dismissed the move as a political maneuver. A sixth-generation Texan and a highly visible Hispanic American, Cavazos seemed tailor-made to help Republican presidential nominee George Bush woo the Hispanic vote in the candidate's electorally rich adopted home state. Last week, when President-elect Bush announced that he would retain Cavazos as head of the department, some educators made similar remarks. "It was an easy decision for Bush," says Donna Shalala, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "He had a qualified person in place who was a minority."

In fact, it would have been politically foolhardy for Bush to drop Cavazos, who had faithfully stumped for him across the Southwest. The President-elect had promised to name a Hispanic to his Cabinet, making the replacement of the non-controversial Secretary doubly difficult. But Cavazos was probably Bush's top choice anyway. Even at the time of his original appointment in August, there was speculation that Bush had strongly pushed his longtime friend for the post and had vowed to keep him on if he won.

Though vehemently denied, the scenario is a likely one, since Cavazos agrees with most of Bush's views on education, which include support for a strong Education Department (Reagan wanted to abolish it) and an active role for the Federal Government. Regarded as a low-key consensus builder, the new Secretary is a stylistic counterpoint to his pugnacious predecessor.

Former Secretary Bennett, who left the department in September, used his post as a "bully pulpit" to rail against teachers, unions and university administrators -- a group he referred to as "the blob" -- for standing in the way of reform. This did not endear him to educators, and his relations with Congress were similarly frosty. Cavazos, on the other hand, has made an effort to build bridges during his two months in office. "The way I operate is to try to bring people together," he says.

Education officials and many on Capitol Hill were quick to praise the reappointment. "Clearly, this is a man who shares our views about the importance of education," said Senator Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. Lamar Haynes of the National Education Association, a union representing 1.6 million schoolteachers, considered the selection a "hopeful sign that perhaps Mr. Bush will fulfill his campaign promise to become the 'education President.' "

Conservatives were less enchanted. "The education establishment has looked awfully happy lately," says Chester Finn Jr., an Assistant Secretary of Education under Bennett. "We need big changes, and the people running our schools are not inclined to make them." An opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal was blunter: "This is the first major blunder of ((Bush's)) presidency."

Cavazos, 61, professes to agree with the goals of the Reagan Administration, which include holding educators accountable for school improvement, raising standards and giving parents more freedom to choose the schools their children attend. But he has also made it clear that his chief priority is to make education more accessible to the disadvantaged. He favors increases in student aid and is a staunch advocate of bilingual education. In almost every speech he decries the fact that 25% of the nation's teenagers drop out before completing high school and that 40% of Hispanics still have no diploma by age 25. "Por favor, nios, no dejen la escuela" (Please, children, do not leave school), he pleaded at his first press conference in September.

Such sentiments come easily to Cavazos, a cattle foreman's son who grew up on the King Ranch in south Texas and went on to earn a Ph.D. in physiology. Before being named president of Texas Tech University, his alma mater, in 1980, he spent five years as dean of the school of medicine at Tufts University. In both posts Cavazos gained a reputation for relaxed geniality -- and a backbone of steel. "If he gets pushed too far, watch out," says Michael Collins, assistant dean for government and medical affairs at Tufts Medical School. His tenacity was abundantly clear in 1984, when the faculty at Texas Tech approved a no-confidence vote against him in a dispute over a proposed change in tenure requirements. After two years of quiet lobbying, Cavazos managed to get a slightly revised version of the measure adopted.

The same kind of firm resolve will be needed in his Cabinet job, in which he will have a surfeit of needs but very little money. Bush's campaign goals include more funds for Head Start and $500 million for "merit schools" -- dollars that will be hard to find, given the pressures of the budget deficit. Balancing books may be difficult, but getting students to read them is Cavazos' main concern. "We've heard a lot about budget and trade deficits," he says. "We've got one that's equally dangerous -- the education deficit."

With reporting by Gisela Bolte/Washington