Cavazos Flunks Out

When the summons arrived last week, Education Secretary Lauro Cavazos hurriedly climbed into his government car and sped to the White House, where chief of staff John Sununu was waiting. Sununu bluntly informed Cavazos that the President wanted him to step down by the end of the month. The former Texas Tech president replied that he would leave sooner than that. By week's end Cavazos exited, ending a lackluster 2 1/2 years as the nation's top education official.

Cavazos' ouster was long overdue. The genial but ineffectual Reagan holdover -- one of two Hispanics in George Bush's Cabinet -- had long been the most visible symbol of the President's failure to make good on his 1988 campaign pledge to be the "education President." Among those reportedly on the short list to become Cavazos' successor: former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, now president of the University of Tennessee, and Lynne Cheney, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The unceremonious dumping fuels suspicion that the White House is worried that voters will punish the President in 1992 unless he delivers on his promises. "This is a new start to Bush's efforts to become the education President," says Chester Finn Jr., a Reagan-era Assistant Secretary of Education. "The department is waiting for real leadership."

There was little of that during Cavazos' reign. Although he stumped for "choice" -- a favored Bush approach that gives parents more say over which public school their children attend -- Cavazos never became a bully pulpiteer like his predecessor, William Bennett. Cavazos was handicapped further by Bush's desultory leadership. Since the President announced six national education goals last January, he, Congress and the nation's Governors have done little but squabble over who will assess whether the goals are being met. (Among the targets: every adult must be a skilled, literate worker and citizen; every school must be drug free.)

In his 1991 budget, Bush requested a $100 million increase in the education programs of the National Science Foundation and $230 million to help states improve math and science teaching. But such paltry amounts will not catapult U.S. students from last to first place worldwide in math and science by the year 2000, another goal. Unless Bush does much more -- starting with choosing an inspiring Education Secretary -- he deserves no better than an Incomplete on his report card.