Now, as schools scramble to keep up with the law and Bush seeks to expand it, he has nominated his confidante to be education secretary.
"She was his first policy person, ever, in politics," said Sandy Kress, a former Bush education adviser who worked closely with Spellings in the White House. "How many Cabinet members were there when he first started during his run for governor?"
If departing Secretary Rod Paige, who came to Washington as a superintendent from Houston, was the reform-minded outsider, then Spellings is the loyal insider. She was Bush's chief education adviser in Texas and his domestic policy chief inside the White House.
Described as approachable and practical, Spellings even doles out rejection well. She once turned down a date from Karl Rove when both were single in the early 1980s. Rove, now Bush's election architect, later introduced Spellings to Bush.
At her Senate confirmation hearing today, Spellings will probably be pushed on issues from preschool to college. She is expected to easily win confirmation.
If so, Spellings, 47, would become the nation's eighth education secretary and the first woman to hold the job in more than 20 years. She also would be the first secretary in recent history to have school-age children. Her daughter Mary, 17, attends a Catholic high school and her daughter Grace, 12, goes to a public middle school.
When Spellings accepted the nomination, she choked up briefly in describing her belief in America's schools.
Bush is said to admire Paige's hands-on experience and passion for empowering poor and minority children, but observers say Paige was given little leeway to lead the debate. As Bush himself put it, there is no one he trusts more on education than Spellings.
That could allow her to "really shape the thinking of the administration," said Christopher Cross, an assistant education secretary under Bush's father. "She'll cut out the middle man. Clearly, Paige became the middle man between the White House and Congress and the education community."
