No More Sidewalks: Parenting Today
Sep 17, 2026 · 39 min · 11 segments
On this episode of *No More Sidewalks*, host Abby McCloskey speaks with Margaret Spellings, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center and former secretary of education during the George W. Bush…
Margaret SpellingsGuest
Abby McCloskeyHost
It was a place where you dropped your kids off at 8 a.m. and trusted they were learning the basics of reading, writing, and math.
And as a nation, education has been one of the biggest public investments we've made in our children.
According to the nation's report card, math scores for American 12th graders reached their lowest level on record last year, and reading scores have dropped to 1990s levels.
There's gun violence in schools now, and like so many other areas of our public life, schools feel filled with partisan controversy.
We're fighting about who can go into whose locker rooms and which library books are on the shelves.
How did the baseline promise of public education get off track, academically and otherwise? And how do parents navigate the school system? With us to discuss all of this is the great Margaret Spellings.
I really can't think of anybody else in the country who's better to discuss this.
It's the truth, because she served as secretary of education, a position few people can claim.
She was president of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and she currently serves as president of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, where I'm also a fellow.
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It was a place where you dropped your kids off at 8 a.m. and trusted they were learning the basics of reading, writing, and math.
And as a nation, education has been one of the biggest public investments we've made in our children.
According to the nation's report card, math scores for American 12th graders reached their lowest level on record last year, and reading scores have dropped to 1990s levels.
There's gun violence in schools now, and like so many other areas of our public life, schools feel filled with partisan controversy.
We're fighting about who can go into whose locker rooms and which library books are on the shelves.
How did the baseline promise of public education get off track, academically and otherwise? And how do parents navigate the school system? With us to discuss all of this is the great Margaret Spellings.
I really can't think of anybody else in the country who's better to discuss this.
It's the truth, because she served as secretary of education, a position few people can claim.
She was president of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and she currently serves as president of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, where I'm also a fellow.
