Practically Fearless with Chris Girata: Episode 4, Margaret Spellings
In this episode, Chris sits down with former US Secretary of Education and CEO of Texas 2036, Margaret Spellings. Margaret is now leading the charge for a better tomorrow as President and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Prepare to be inspired as they delve into the crucial role of education in Texas’ future, discussing data-driven solutions, bridging opportunity gaps, and empowering communities.
Q&A with Margaret Spellings
Chris: Hello, and welcome back to practically fearless with Chris Girata. Today I am honored to welcome someone helping to shape the future of education in Texas. As a former U.S. Secretary of Education and former President of the University of North Carolina system, she understands what it takes to fight for a better future. She’s the President and CEO of Texas 2036, Margaret Spellings. Thank you for taking the time to be with me today.
Ms. Spellings: Chris, thanks for the opportunity. It’s great to see you.
Chris: So what we do here, is investigate what people are doing, personally, to help their community and you are absolutely someone who knows how to help their community. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit of what’s keeping you busy these days and what is passionate for you these days and how that’s motivated you?
Ms. Spellings: Well, what’s keeping me busy these days is the Texas legislature in Texas 2036. Our remit is to put sensible people together to think long-term. 2036 is our Bicentennial as a state about big things like education and health, using lots of data, and that is our calling card.
Chris: Something I love about what you’ve done is you’ve taken a long look at the 2036 Bicentennial. And you did not start this year, you’ve been working on this for a long time. You’re trying to set Texas up to succeed to take advantage of what is happening, the economic gains that we are making so that you don’t leave anyone out exactly behind. One of the things I’ve heard you say a few times is ‘In God, we trust. Everyone else bring data.’ Could you tell us in a little snapshot about Texas’ opportunity and why we need to actually work to be able to seize that opportunity?
Ms. Spellings: Well, we’re about 30 million people in Texas right now. We’re going to grow by Another 10 million by 2040 or so. Our number one asset is our people. We Texans think of ourselves as rich in natural resources and we are with energy agriculture, ports and financial centers. All of that is fantastic, but none of it runs without highly capable, committed people. And I like to say that educated people are healthy people. Healthy people are educated people. Educated healthy people create prosperity in their communities. It’s just a virtuous cycle when we get develop our people.
Chris: What I have found fascinating about talks I’ve heard you give is that you have so much policy background, of course, but it ultimately gets down to, there are amazing economic opportunities for people in Texas. But Texas is not preparing its own children to seize those opportunities. We bring in a ton of talent from outside of the state and I find that extremely compelling. We have so many children. We actually have a pretty young state and it’s a real asset. However, we’re kind of squandering that asset. We’ve got to raise our own kids to take these excellent jobs in the future right here in our own state. I’d like to know why that matters to you. Economically, of course, but there’s got to be something else underneath that, that is really pushing you to make that a priority.
Ms. Spellings: Well, you know, for starters, we just are wasting too much amazing human potential when our kids are under-employed, under-fulfilled. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can triage and have a sense of urgency. Whether you’re a policy maker in Austin or somebody who’s volunteering in a school, or teaching a kid to read, we need to put ourselves on the field of play and make sure that Texas is a prosperous place for all of us. Tom Luce, the founder of Texas 2036 likes to say ‘bottom-up meeting top-down,’ and we can all be part of that.
Chris: The people who watch this are likely not going to be at the same tables with the same opportunities as you, but I bet they’ve got micro-opportunities to make a difference in an individual’s life. Is there a moment where you remember actually making an impact in a single life that just filled you up, and probably compelled you to do the more macro work that you’re doing now?
Ms. Spellings: I remember when I was at the Department of Education as the Secretary, we had a volunteer tutoring program that the staff at the Department of Education was very much engaged in with the groups in Washington, DC, elementary school kids that came after school. I remember tutoring a little girl one day, and she was probably in the fourth or fifth grade. She couldn’t read a lick. She had been moved through the system. She was very restless. Her dad was in jail, her mother was working three jobs. And she was just a struggling kid, and adorable, precious, bright. So, when you see that lost potential, you think, ‘I’ve got to help do something about it.’ As I say, it can be done in a lot of different ways, getting the policy environment right, getting the resources right, supporting our educators, teaching a kid to read, and volunteering. Just finding that human connection, I think, really is important.
Chris: When you think about your prime motivator, it’s obviously making sure people get all of the support they need to be the best that they can be. My guess is that’s not only just a moral imperative. You’re a person of faith. Where do you root that identity? How do you combine that with the almost secular work that you’re trying to do as well, holding those two things in tension?
Ms. Spellings: Our faith teaches us that we’re all equal. Every individual has value. You don’t deserve to have a better pedigree than I do as a human being. We all are full of potential and opportunities that God gives us. We need to help everyone meet that potential by having a heart for others, having expectations, and a sense of urgency. You know, President Bush used to talk about the so-called soft bigotry of low expectations. And I like to think about, well, what do I want for my kids? And why should my expectations for somebody else’s kids be different from those that I want for my own?
Chris: The soft bigotry of low expectations. That’s pretty rich.
Ms. Spellings: Translation, that means somebody else’s kid doesn’t deserve the opportunity, the standards, the resources that my own children have. If my aspirations are for my kids to go and complete college, why would I think that people in southern Dallas want less for their kids? They don’t, they want the same thing.
Chris: Our faith teaches us to love God, love our neighbors, and love yourself. So, when we look at loving our neighbors, I think, too often, people sitting in the pews, so to speak, translate that as ‘do no harm.’ I wonder though, how much the ‘do no harm’ has actually created that low expectation? I hope that people will start to pivot away from ‘I did not hurt that person,’ ‘I am not harming that person,’ or ‘my personal actions are not hurting this entire group of people.’ [Instead] I am actually using my own giftedness to help raise someone else up or to help provide another opportunity. I wonder if you might speak to that idea of it’s not just good enough not to hurt somebody. If you’ve got the capacity, you have to go make sure that you’re defending the people being hurt or giving opportunities to those who seem to be floating out there in the ether. In addition, right here in North Texas, is there something you’ve seen that you would point to and say any person could go there and make an impact?
Ms. Spellings: Well, that is a shameless way for me to plug the work that you all do at Saint Michael and All Angels. I mean, there are millions of ways for people to plug in through every community group in the world. Some of which address basic needs like food security, transportation, basic health needs, all the way to becoming a very proficient volunteer teaching kids to read. Using financial gifts to help give back. There are unending opportunities.
I really liked the way you framed that about doing more than just ‘do no harm’ because our expectations for others have to be as high as they are for ourselves. Make sure somebody has a warm meal, but, what’s their additional potential? That, to me, is why I’m so keen on education because that is how we cure all of society’s ills. We really do. I mean, when people are educated and feel like they have a future, they create that virtuous circle for themselves and their families.
Chris: That fundamental hopefulness that the future has possibility.
Ms. Spellings: And you’re in front, you’re entitled to that you’re empowered, you’re engaged in your future. That’s why you’re sitting here, you know, somebody gave you an opportunity to be educated so that you could give the kind of service that you’re doing.
Chris: ‘Invested in the future.’ I think that that’s part of what we’re losing in a lot of our political rhetoric right now, is this fear that there is no future or the fear that the future is worse than the past? When you have that fear, you almost kind of lose your mind. I mean, you lose civility.
Ms. Spellings: It affects the way you think about yourself, about your neighbor, about your community and it’s really corrosive. We’ve got to get a handle on that. That’s why we at Texas 2036 are orienting toward what’s possible for our future. We’re Texans, we are braggadocios. We’re the ninth-largest economy in the world. We’re growing and young. If anybody can do it, we can,
Chris: Tell me a few things about Texas 2036, that you would want people to know. I would love for it to be kind of within the realm of that hopefulness for the future. So, if you could point to a couple or three data points, you would say, if we got this right, ‘x’ would happen, or if we could move in this particular direction, we could achieve ‘y’.
Ms. Spellings: Well, for starters, our organization is bipartisan, it’s statewide, it’s future-focused and is uniquely connected across all parts of the policy spectrum. I’ve been involved in education for a long time. But if you’re just in that silo, you’re missing housing, health and transportation. We take that broader view. We’re also very data focused. For example, we’re one of the few states that have not expanded Medicaid. We have developed some tools to show the legislature, for very little state money, we can dramatically enhance the number of insured adults and children. We try to elevate people out of their corners and onto the facts and around some shared priorities.
Chris: Some of that you said, kind of triggered something for me. I often say in my role as a pastor, I try to pause in conflict and remind people of who they were made to be and maybe ask them who they wish to be. People find themselves walking down these paths and they hit walls, or they find that they feel lost. They begin to act out because they kind of forget who they are. To give people an opportunity to be reminded of whom they want to be almost always invites people to better behavior, or to more hopefulness.
Ms. Spellings: And humility. That’s not just for high-class people, you know, it’s for all kinds of people.
Chris: If there was something that the average listener could actually do or say in the next month or two to try and move the needle in a positive way, what would you want them to try?
Ms. Spellings: I would want people to understand how local school campuses are doing. Are they teaching all the kids to read? Are they teaching the kids to compute? I’m not talking just about advantaged kids. Look at the data. Where are the problems? Where are the places that invite active solutions and problem-solving? Go talk to the principal about what they’re doing about it, and how you can help. You can break down these problems and issues that we read about in the paper into a micro bite. Go to it yourself, but the first thing is to find out what the state of affairs is. That’s my secretarial assignment to your listeners.
Chris: What about something that you’ve done recently that you thought was a small thing? It was not Secretary Spellings going to do that thing. It was just Margaret that did a nice thing.
Ms. Spellings: Well, I’m not necessarily in education, because I’ve been incapacitated. Since this is a silly thing. I was on a ferry a few months ago, and a gentleman didn’t have the right ticket for the right day. He was a doctor and needed to get to his hospital to do surgery. It was clear he was going to miss the ferry, so I gave him a ticket. It kind of made his day. I mean, that’s just a dumb thing that comes to mind, but I felt a lot better about it than he did. It’s just those little, little things. I’ve injured myself, have a walker and a cane, and have limited mobility. It’s really helped me feel compassion for people who live with limited mobility.
Chris: I love your story about the ticket because it does seem like the problems of the world are so significant. Who am I to make a dent in everything that’s going on? But it’s like the butterfly effect. You could have literally saved a life because you simply gave away the ticket. That’s a remarkable thing to do and we all have those opportunities all the time.
Ms. Spellings: But you have to pay attention to that person in need. You have to, you know, look up from your phone.
Chris: I mean, he didn’t ask, you just knew he needed one. You were paying attention. That makes me think of all the times I sit in a restaurant with my family, and I look over at a table next to us, and every person is staring down at their phone. They have all gone to the same place to sit around the same table for a family dinner. Not one of them is looking at each other. So, maybe look up and pay attention. We have an opportunity.
Ms. Spellings: That’s a good start.
Chris: Every single one of us has the power to do something. We might even say the power to do something fearlessly.
Ms. Spellings: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, Chris. I knew you were going to get that in there.
Chris: Margaret, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule, because I knew you’d have a lot going on. Thank you all for listening today. And remember, you have the power to be fearless.