and stepmom." A child explains that one of the women is her stepmother whom she loves. No other comment is made about the family. Spellings' letter reminded Pat Mitchell, CEO of PBS that Postcards from Buster was funded in part by the Department of Education and "that many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in the episode." PBS decided not to distribute the episode, but WGBH, the public television station in Boston, said it would air it and offered it to any station "willing to defy the Education Department." Cusi Cram, a writer for Arthur (from which that program was spun-off), later wrote a play titled Dusty and the Big Bad World, based on the controversy. In a 2022 statement about the show's 25th and final season, Spellings told NPR that "the world is very different today" and that the government "now reflects a greater openness to the multi-faceted, diverse stories that Americans can tell about themselves, their lives, and the country we share." No Child Left Behind In April 2005, on PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, she called Connecticut's resistance to the No Child Left Behind Act the "soft bigotry of low expectations." According to the program's transcript, she said: Controversy overseeing student loan programs On May 10, 2007, Spellings testified before the House Education and Labor Committee responding to criticism from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that the Education Department had been "asleep at the switch" in overseeing student loan programs, allowing corruption and conflicts of interest to spread. Spellings has further gone on record to say that she is disregarding the suggestion by the Inspector General to hold the loan companies accountable for their graft. Altha Cravey and Robert Siegel wrote in the News & Observer that Spellings had been "supporting for-profit colleges who prey on students – and then profiting off those same students when they default on their loans." Spellings served on the board of directors for the Apollo Group, the parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, which paid her more than $300,000. Commission on the Future of Higher Education In September 2005, Spellings announced the formation of the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which has also been referred to as the Spellings Commission. The commission was charged with recommending a national strategy for reforming post-secondary education, with a particular