In Her Own Words

Education Week Staff Writer Michelle R. Davis sat down with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings on Jan. 9 in the secretary’s office at the U.S. Department of Education. Here are excerpts from that interview.

Q: You have two kids. … Tell me a little bit about how you expected that to influence what you did as secretary.

A: Having a real-time connection with the schools and, interestingly, this year I went through the whole college selection with my oldest daughter, who is now a college freshman, and [I] still obviously have a public school child, who is now in 8th grade. It was influential as [White House] domestic-policy adviser, and now even more so as secretary. I have a feeling for what parents experience when they go into a school and hear about, you know, AYP [adequate yearly progress] and HQT [highly qualified teacher] and Read 180 and Success for All. [It’s a] “what the heck are they talking about” kind of thing, and I’m the secretary of education. I mean obviously I know what they’re talking about, but only because I’ve...