Margaret Spellings

Margaret Spellings (born Margaret Dudar, 1958) is the current Secretary of Education under the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and was previously a Domestic Policy Adviser to Bush. She was one of the principal authors of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

The eldest of four daughters, she was born in Michigan and moved with her family to Houston when she was in third grade.

Spellings earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Houston and worked in an education reform commission under Texas Governor William P. Clements and as associate executive director for the Texas Association of School Boards.

Before her appointment to George W. Bush's presidential administration, Spellings was the political director for Bush's first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and later became a senior advisor to Bush during his term as Governor of Texas from 1994 to 2000.

Secretary of Education

Following Rod Paige's departure as Secretary of Education, Spellings was nominated to the post of the Secretary of Education by George W. Bush on November 17, 2004, confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 20, 2005, and sworn in the same day.

PBS

In January 2005, Spellings sent a letter to the head of PBS condemning an episode of the show Postcards From Buster which featured "Buster the Bunny" visting Vermont and interacting with the children of a lesbian couple. The mostly live-action show focuses on real children and in this episode the two moms are never mentioned as being lesbians. Spellings criticized the use of government funds to produce the episode saying "many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode." [1] Rep. Barney Frank publically criticized Spellings in a letter regarding her "degrading comments": "You have said that families should not have to deal with the reality of the existence of same-sex couples, and the strong implication is that this is something from which young children should be shielded." [2] PBS decided not to distribute the episode although independent PBS stations have opted to do so. PBS chairman Pat Mitchell subsequently stepped down. [3]

"No Child Left Behind" & state sovereignty

In April 2005, on PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, she called Connecticut's resistance to the No Child Left Behind Act as the soft bigotry of low expectations. According to the Connecticut Post, she said:

"I think it's regrettable, frankly, when the achievement gap between African-American and Anglo kids in Connecticut is quite large. And I think it's unfortunate for those families and those students that they are trying to find a loophole to get out of the law as opposed to attending to the needs of those kids," Spellings said.

"That’s the notion, the soft bigotry of low expectations, as the president calls it, that No Child Left Behind rejects."

The comment stems from Spellings' basic misunderstanding of Connecticut's objections to NCLB, according to state officials. It might also be related to the fact that Connecticut did not vote for Bush, neither in 2000 nor in 2004.

External links

• U.S Department of Education Biography