The Education of Margaret Spellings: A Year on the Job, School Czar Charges Hard for No Child Left Behind, Other Initiatives

By Robert Dodge, The Dallas Morning News

Feb. 13–WASHINGTON — Margaret Spellings hardly notices the jolts of turbulence on a recent pre-dawn flight to New Orleans. She consumes briefing papers and bios of students and educators, takes a stab at a Sudoku puzzle, then zeroes in on an essay by her 13-year-old daughter, Grace.

“We’ve got some punctuation issues. She can do better than this,” says Ms. Spellings, who has goaded her two daughters into studying by warning: “You cannot be the child left behind.”

One year into her tenure as secretary of education, Ms. Spellings, 48, has set an ambitious agenda for herself as well. As chief architect of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, she wants the program not only to turn out students proficient in reading, math and science, but she wants it to take a firm hold in U.S. schools.

And that’s not all. Ms. Spellings aims to expand the law’s testing and accountability requirements at the high school level. She is leading a commission to study higher education and is looking ahead to 2007, when No Child Left Behind must be reauthorized and is likely to face demands from Congress for revisions.

This year, she will also push Mr. Bush’s latest initiative to boost spending for math and science education by $326 million.

It will not be easy.

The new proposals reopened criticism that the Bush administration has not adequately funded No Child Left Behind.

“The question remains whether the president will fund this,” said Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

The president’s fiscal 2007 budget proposes to hold federal spending on No Child Left Behind flat at about $13 billion, after a 52 percent increase in the previous four years. Critics say now is not the time to curtail spending increases, noting that federal spending still accounts for less than 9 percent of public school budgets.

Mr. Bush proposed cutting the education budget by $3.5 billion, leaving Ms. Spellings to eliminate ongoing programs to pay for new initiatives. Republicans and Democrats already warn there is little appetite on Capitol Hill for expanding No Child Left Behind in high schools.

A lot is at stake: Ms Spellings will be judged on the outcome of the largest set of education initiatives since 1983, when a blue-ribbon commission issued “A Nation at Risk,” a study alerting Americans to the decline in public schools.

“It’s hard to think of anyone who has had as much influence on national education policy. That is a heck of a legacy,” said Frederick Hess, an education expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market research group.

The historic significance of the work is not lost on Ms. Spellings: “We are in the middle of doing something very, very profound.”

Look again

Ms. Spellings is not your typical button-down conservative.

She once described herself as an earth-mother Republican who had her babies without pain medication and nursed both daughters. On the policy front, her drive to expand the federal role in education is heresy to some in her party who once wanted to shutter the department.

A typical day for Ms. Spellings starts about 5 a.m. She might get in a quick workout and then go online to register for cable network HGTV’s dream house contest. “You won’t laugh at me when I win that house,” she said.

She is a self-admitted pop culture junkie. One of her favorite recent films is Brokeback Mountain, the award-winning romance between two cowboys — this from a woman who began her tenure reprimanding a PBS children’s show for featuring a family with same-sex parents.

“I enjoy all sorts of things, and I consider myself to be quite open-minded,” said Ms. Spellings, who contends there is a difference between the personal money she uses to buy a movie ticket and the taxpayer dollars spent on children’s programming.

Ms. Spellings is passionate about education, but it was not a career goal: “Education found me,” she said.

She began working on education as an aide in the Texas Legislature and became a lobbyist for the Texas Association of School Boards. When George W. Bush became governor, he tapped her to push his education initiatives.

Mike Moses, a former Dallas Independent School District superintendent and Texas school chief, said he used to look up Congress Avenue from his Austin office shortly before scheduled meetings. Ms. Spellings would emerge from the back of the Capitol. “I could see the pep in her step,” he said. “Her brain was moving. Her feet were moving. And you could see there was something on her mind.”

Controversial law

When he became president in 2000, Mr. Bush made Ms. Spellings his domestic policy adviser. In that post, she led efforts to enact No Child Left Behind.

The law won bipartisan support, and its principles still have support on Capitol Hill. But it has been controversial with educators, who revolted over the rigid enforcement of her predecessor and fellow Texan Rod Paige.

Ms. Spellings spent much of 2005 cleaning up what he left behind: The department was under fire for paying syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams to produce a video promoting No Child Left Behind. Some states threatened to abandon the program. And the National Education Association sued to block its implementation.

“The law was going to implode,” said Patricia Sullivan with the Center on Education Policy.

Added the House’s Mr. Miller: “She inherited an Education Department that was in absolute chaos.”

Ms. Spellings moved quickly.

She called the 50 state school chiefs together and promised to be more flexible. Some said she headed off a growing revolt.

“She clearly conveyed to the chiefs that she cared,” said Texas Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, who tangled with Ms. Spellings when Texas was fined $800,000 last year for failing to meet testing standards for disabled students.

Ms. Spellings further pacified school chiefs by granting states exceptions and extensions to the law. The National Education Association’s lawsuit was dismissed, though relations with the giant teachers union remain rocky.

“She has made an effort to make some changes,” said association president Reg Weaver, who is still unhappy that Ms. Spellings will not meet with him. “I wish she could feel more comfortable working with us.”

Some former Education Department officials say it is inaccurate to portray Mr. Paige as the villain and Ms. Spellings as the savior of No Child Left Behind.

Eugene Hickok, former deputy secretary, said orders to strictly enforce the law came directly from Ms. Spellings’ White House office.

“What really seemed to be the case was ‘hold the line,’ ” he said.

Ms. Spellings objects to the suggestion that she is cleaning up her own mess. But she allows that it was Bush administration policy to firmly enforce the law.

“I would just say it was right to take a vigilant, hard-line approach to implementing this new law.”

Then came Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which leveled schools along the Gulf Coast. And when floodwaters covered New Orleans, 48,000 students headed for Texas.

“Margaret was one of the first people to call,” Ms. Neeley said. And Ms. Spellings was to the point: “Tell me how we can help.”

Since then, she has visited the Gulf Coast six times and secured $230 million to help schools — though she drew fire from school choice opponents when some of the funds were used to provide vouchers for students displaced from private schools. Ms. Spellings defends the move, denying it was an opportunity to advance school vouchers but rather an effort to get children back in school.

She chose to be on hand recently as colleges and universities resumed classes in New Orleans, moving quickly through tours of Xavier and Tulane universities, a round table with students and a private session with college presidents pleading for more money.

The students made the biggest impression, she said. After hearing them describe being displaced from school and being committed to helping rebuild New Orleans, her voice cracked ever so slightly.

“You have given me a great feeling about what is possible here.”

E-mail rdodge@dallasnews.com

—–

Copyright (c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.