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One trial lawyer Bush never took on is Paul Sadler, a soft-spoken litigator from East Texas who is also the lege's leading wonk. As chairman of the house's public-education committee, the Democrat is a longtime player on the issue closest to Bush's heart, education reform, which had been under way in Texas for a decade by the time Bush ran. In 1993, Sadler led the fight to scrap the state's education code, and during Bush's first term, Sadler and others were writing the new code. Sadler says Bush jumped into the reform effort immediately and to great effect."His role in the rewrite was significant," says Sadler. "He met weekly with me at first, and by the end, almost daily--he used to joke that we were joined at the hip." Sadler's task was to push control of the schools to the local level while beefing up the statewide system of standards and accountability. "Bush raised the bar on what was acceptable performance," says Sadler, "and then he used his pulpit to help pass the bill."
For Bush, it was the first win in an education-reform program that came to include new teacher-training initiatives, beefed-up funding and new diagnostic tools to identify problem readers in the earliest grades. Standardized-test scores in the state have been climbing every year, with improvement among blacks and Latinos moving especially fast.
Last year Bush pushed for a controversial program to end social promotion, the practice of passing students who aren't academically qualified. His initiative would have required third-graders to pass a single standardized reading test in order to earn a ticket to fourth grade. That bothered Sadler, whose support Bush needed. At a meeting last year, Bush challenged him: "Sadler, you gonna pass my social-promotion bill?" Sadler replied, "Nah, I don't like it." "What's the problem?" Bush asked. Sadler told him that holding back students because they failed a single test wasn't fair. "You've got the conservative part of this down," he gibed. "Let me give you the compassionate part." Bush laughed. "Where you want to go with it?" Sadler outlined a plan for remediation, second chances, summer school and a grade-placement committee to catch mistakes. Bush was worried about diluting standards. "It was a very detailed discussion," says Sadler. "We talked about philosophy, and we talked about bricks and mortar. It was not just a vision thing--he knows his stuff."
Eventually Bush agreed to most of what Sadler wanted. If he hadn't, Bush admits, Sadler wouldn't have passed his bill. "He's powerful," says Bush. "There's a certain practicality to the political world. You play the hand you're dealt."
DEATH OF A TAX PLAN