Washington ? President Bush on Wednesday tapped two longtime confidantes from Texas for top positions in his second-term administration, nominating domestic policy adviser Margaret Spellings for education secretary and promoting presidential assistant Harriet Miers to chief White House lawyer.

Both have had Bush’s ear since his earliest political days as Texas governor.

Spellings, a former education lobbyist from Houston who was instrumental in shaping the president’s principal education initiatives, was named to replace outgoing Education Secretary Rod Paige. In a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room, Bush introduced her as an “energetic reformer” who’ll be charged with expanding on the No Child Left Behind Act, which passed early in his first term.

Miers, a former Dallas lawyer whom Bush once described as a “pit bull in size 6 shoes,” currently serves as deputy White House chief of staff and will replace Alberto Gonzales as White House counsel. Bush has nominated Gonzales, another Texan, for attorney general.

The latest appointments spotlighted the president’s reliance on an elite circle of female advisers who also include first lady Laura Bush, Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, who remains his long-distance confidante from her home in Austin, Texas.

Unlike the others, Spellings and Miers are virtually unknown to the general public and keep a low profile. Friends and associates say both are indefatigable, extremely loyal to Bush and combine intelligence with common sense.

Spellings, 46, joined Bush 10 years ago as political director of his first gubernatorial campaign and went on to become his chief education adviser in Austin, helping to get his school initiatives through the Legislature.

After Bush became president in January 2001, Spellings joined the White House team to oversee his domestic agenda. She’s perhaps best known in Washington for her role in helping to craft the No Child Left Behind Act.

The act, which passed Congress in January 2002, requires states to test students annually in reading and math in third through eighth grades and at least once during the 10th through 12th grades. Since winning re-election Bush has made expanding the act a top second-term priority and wants to extend annual testing to high schools.

Margaret Spellings, left, President Bush's nominee to replace outgoing Education Secretary Rod Paige, motions for the audience to stop their applause as Bush looks on Wednesday in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

“We’ve made great progress in our schools, and there is more work to do,” Bush said in nominating Spellings. “We must ensure that a high school diploma is a sign of real achievement, so that our young people have the tools to go to college and to fill the jobs of the 21st century.”

Spellings pledged that she’d vigorously pursue Bush’s goal of ensuring “that each and every child has the skills and qualities necessary to realize the American dream.”

Spellings worked closely with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and other Senate leaders in helping to forge the bipartisan support that led to passing the act. Although Kennedy has since criticized the administration for inadequately funding the initiative, his spokesman, Jim Manley, said Spellings had “strong bipartisan support within the halls of Congress,” suggesting that her nomination will win easy confirmation in the Senate.

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Similarly, the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, sent conciliatory signals after an acrimonious relationship with Paige, who once called it a “terrorist organization.” The group issued a statement saying Spellings’ nomination “offers a great opportunity” for a new accord between the administration and the education community.

The nomination exchanges one former Houstonian for another. Paige served as administrator of the Houston school system before joining the Bush administration as the first black education secretary. Spellings grew up in a middle-class home in Houston and helped finance her education at the University of Houston by working at a supermarket.

“Whatever she takes on she does well,” her mother, Peg Dudar, said in a telephone interview. Spellings is an accomplished pianist and gourmet cook, and she exercises relentlessly. She and her husband, attorney-lobbyist Robert Spellings, each have two children from previous marriages.

“She’s got more common sense than anybody I’ve ever known,” her husband said Wednesday. “I swear there’s not a job she couldn’t do, but I know she has a passion for this job.”

Bush announced his appointment of Miers in a statement shortly after the Spellings nomination, describing the longtime aide as “a trusted adviser, on whom I have long relied for straightforward advice.”

Before teaming with Bush, Miers was president of the Dallas Bar Association, a former member of the Dallas city council and a member of the prestigious Dallas law firm Locke Liddell & Sapp. After winning the gubernatorial race in 1994, Bush named her to his transitional team and later appointed her chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission during a period of turbulence for that agency.

Her appointment to replace Gonzales, which doesn’t require Senate confirmation, will put her in charge of all major legal matters the White House confronts. She also will oversee all judicial nominations, assuming Gonzales’ role in trying to win Senate approval of some of Bush’s more controversial nominees.