ALA: New DOE Chief Is a Plus

Margaret Spellings's close ties to the White House will likely benefit school libraries

By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2005

Library supporters are celebrating President George W. Bush's nomination of Margaret Spellings as the new Secretary of Education, saying that her close ties to the president will likely benefit school libraries. If confirmed, Spellings, 46, who was most recently Bush's domestic policy advisor, will replace Rod Paige, who resigned in November.

"Paige did not have a close, personal, longstanding relationship with the president, and his voice was very weak," says Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Washington office. "But Spellings is a powerful woman, and her voice will be heard in the conversations that go on in the administration."

Spellings was political director of Bush's first gubernatorial campaign in 1994 and served as his senior education adviser when he was governor of Texas. She then followed him to the White House in 2001, where she crafted the president's signature No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law.

Sheketoff describes Spellings as the "driving force" behind NCLB and says there was "nothing in the administration's version of the bill that she didn't approve." As a result of her close relationship with Bush, the Department of Education was never really run by Paige, but from Spellings's office at the White House, Sheketoff adds.

Now with Spellings officially at the helm, ALA hopes that she'll have a more productive relationship with Congress and convince lawmakers to fund the Improving Literacy Through School Libraries program at its authorized amount of $250 million.

The other hope is that she'll get Congress to amend NCLB so that every school has a qualified media specialist who meets individual state certification requirements. "We think she's the kind of person who could accomplish great things," Sheketoff says.