Margaret Spellings

What we know is the workplace is more demanding than ever before.

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

My understanding is that Kansas, Massachusetts, they've been more pioneers on the special education side.

In Connecticut, my understanding, although I haven't seen the actual litigation, is that they want to measure every other year and not provide annual assessment as is required in the statute.

We know that if we're going to remain economically competitive in the world, and viable as a civic democracy, that we're going to have to get more people educated to higher levels.

There's lots of institutions and lots of different cultures, and so that's the kind of thing that parents need to be able to evaluate, and students themselves, when they make a selection.

I think all kinds of parents are different in what they're seeking.

Again, the truth of the matter is we haven't paid that much attention to high school accountability.

We want to obviously foster a relationship that we're a partner with states; that we all share the same goals of closing the achievement gap, just as the Congress does; and that we're practical and sophisticated enough to understand what they're talking about.

I think it'd be useful for parents to know kind of what is the culture of an institution.

Well, one of them is annual assessment in grades 3-8. It's integral to the implementation of everything.

And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality.