Margaret M. LaMontagne Spellings (née Dudar; born November 30, 1957) is an American government and non-profit executive who has been serving as President and CEO of Texas 2036 since 2019. She previously served as the eighth United States secretary of education from 2005 to 2009. After leaving the government, Spellings served as president of the University of North Carolina System, overseeing the seventeen campus system from 2016 to 2019. Spellings worked in several positions under George W. Bush during his tenure as Governor of Texas and President of the United States. She was one of the principal proponents of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act that aimed at reforming primary and secondary education. She served as education secretary for the entire second term of Bush's administration, during which time she convened the Commission on the Future of Higher Education to recommend reform at the post-secondary level. Early life and education Margaret M. Dudar was born on November 30, 1957 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and moved with her family to Houston, Texas when she was in the third grade. She graduated from Sharpstown High School in 1975. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Houston in 1979 and worked in an education reform commission under Texas Governor William P. Clements and as associate executive director for the Texas Association of School Boards. Before her appointment to George W. Bush's presidential administration, Spellings was the political director for Bush's first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and later became a senior advisor to Bush during his Texas governorship from 1995 to 2000. Secretary of Education Following Rod Paige's departure as Secretary of Education, Spellings was nominated to that position by President George W. Bush on November 17, 2004, confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 20, 2005, which also marked the beginning of Bush's second presidential term, and sworn in on January 31 the same year. She was the second female Secretary of Education. Postcards from Buster controversy On January 21, 2005, one day after being confirmed as Secretary of Education, Spellings wrote a letter to the Public Broadcasting Service warning the network not to air an episode of the children's program Postcards from Buster. In that episode, the animated bunny Buster visits Vermont to learn about maple sugar production and meets real-life children who have lesbian parents. The children tell Buster they have a "mom