President Bush last Friday announced that he would nominate David T. Kearns, Xerox Corporation’s chairman, to be deputy secretary of education.
The current deputy secretary, Ted Sanders, will be nominated for a new position that the Administration will ask the Congress to create, Mr. Bush said.
“I am confident this is a team equal to the task before us,” said Mr. Bush, speaking at the swearing-in ceremony for Lamar Alexander, the new Secretary of Education.
The ceremony took place at the National Air and Space Museum, in front of a replica of the craft that transported astronauts to the moon in 1969, a setting the speakers invoked as a symbol of the achievement of lofty goals.
Mr. Bush said Mr. Alexander had presented him with a proposed strategy for meeting the national education goals set last year by the President and the National Governors’ Association.
“I’m excited about it,” Mr. Bush said, “and I want to say to the Education Department employees: This is priority. I am committed to working with you to meet these national education goals.”
Both Mr. Kearns and Mr. Sanders must be confirmed by the Senate.
Education Department spokesmen said the Administration would ask the Congress to combine the existing position of deputy undersecretary for planning, budget, and evaluation with the new position of chief financial officer, which was created by legislation last year.
Mr. Sanders would then be nominated for the new position of undersecretary, the same title he held before his current post was renamed “deputy secretary” last year. It would be the number-three position in the agency.
Before joining the department in 1989, Mr. Sanders was superintendent of education in Illinois and is a former president of the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Mr. Kearns, a former president and chief executive officer of Xerox, is a leader among the nation’s business executives who have taken a high-profile interest in education in recent years. He serves on Mr. Bush’s education-advisory committee.
