Parental Choice

Spellings’ Children Are Enrolled in Public and Private Schools

She is a product of public schools herself, but Margaret Spellings has exercised parental choice when it comes to her own children.

Ms. Spellings, the White House domestic-policy adviser whom President Bush named last week as his choice for the next secretary of education, sends one of her daughters to a public school in Alexandria, Va., the Washington suburb where they live. The other attends a parochial school, a White House spokesman said. She also has two adult stepsons.

Krista Kafer, an education policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank that strongly favors school choice measures such as private school vouchers and charter schools, believes Ms. Spellings is making the smart decision for her daughters,...