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Volume 70, Issue 82,
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
News Alumna sworn into U.S. cabinet Spellings pledges to 'stay on course' with No Child Left Behind Cougar News Staff Margaret Spellings, a UH alumna, was officially sworn in as the eighth U.S. secretary of education Monday. Spellings, 47, graduated from UH in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in political science and journalism. Her swearing-in ceremony Monday was ceremonial, as she had taken the oath of office Jan. 20, the day the U.S. Senate confirmed her for the position. She may be best known in Washington for the No Child Left Behind plan, which she helped create as President George W. Bush's domestic policy adviser. The law requires annual progress from public schools and penalizes many schools that don't show adequate improvement. On Monday, Spellings pledged to "stay the course" with No Child Left Behind and proposed expanding it to high schools. "Across the nation, test scores in reading and math are rising, with disadvantaged and minority students leading the way," she said. "After long decades, the pernicious achievement gap is beginning to close. We've learned a new equation: Accountability plus high expectations plus resources equals results." Spellings' political career goes back to the 1980s, when she was a member of Ross Perot's commission on schools and a lobbyist for the Texas Association of School Boards. In 1994, she served as political director of Bush's first gubernatorial campaign and was his chief education adviser while he was governor, helping push the Texas Reading Initiative and a plan that kept failing students from being automatically promoted to the next grade level. When Bush took office as president in 2001, Spellings became his domestic policy adviser. She replaces former Houston schools superintendent Rod Paige as education secretary just as questions are rising about whether the Education Department spent public money to promote Bush's agenda. Congress opened an investigation Friday into a $240,000 contract with political commentator Armstrong Williams, who the administration allegedly paid to promote its education policy. Spellings said Friday the deal was based on "errors of judgment" and that she had stopped the contract. "I pledge to run an open, honest and accessible department
-- one that operates with integrity at all levels," she said Monday.
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