Secretary Spellings: The World Tour

Faced with lack of progress from Congress on the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is threatening to make changes on her own, kicking off a cross-country tour to collect feedback and rally support for some of her ideas. "If Congress doesn't produce a strong bill quickly, I will move forward," she said this month in a Washington, D.C., press conference.

Those changes could include regulations that create different consequences for schools that are persistently low-achieving compared with those for schools with just a few failing students. Spellings also is promoting a new tool on the Department of Education website called the National Dashboard, which allows parents to see how states stack up against one another in some areas.