Margaret Spellings: In Her Own Class

"This whoopin' and hollerin' drives me crazy," Spellings said, running fingers through her thick blond hair. "Where are your manners?"

Middle school is tricky, Spellings said -- too many hormones and too loose a curriculum. When boys in white shirts and ties shuffled onstage, Spellings said, "They're so awkward, it cracks me up." Her own experience in seventh grade was "the low point of my life," she said. ". . . There's a lot of mush going on in middle school -- one of the nuts we haven't cracked in public education policy."

At home, Spellings counters mush with discipline. When Grace brought home "not so great" midterm grades, Spellings had her daughter write up a plan that hangs on the refrigerator: *Stay organized *Pay attention in class by not talking or passing notes *Listen to my tutor. On it, Spellings wrote: Grace -- Excellent plan! Love, Mom.

Beneath that, Grace drew a cartoon of her mother saying: I am the most Diva-fabulous princess of them all! Bow down to me fools! I am soon to be queen!

In Spellings's world, activities fall into two categories: "must-to-do's" and "nice-to-do's." You must make your bed, before you can e-mail friends. (Mary said she is the only student in her dorm who makes her bed. "I'm so proud, Mary. That makes me so happy," Spellings said, her voice soaring.)

She uses the same management tools at the Education Department. In school districts that rate "need improvement" under the No Child Left Behind Act, "it's like with Grace: You're not going to play soccer till you clean your damn room. With these chief education officers, I've let them go to the movies; now I better see a clean room."

And they clean it, Spellings said: "Bribery is the cornerstone of good parenting. And good management."

If home life has helped her manage work, work life has helped her at home. When Mary and Grace moved to Washington, they missed their friends and their father in Texas. Mary told her mother she had ruined Mary's life.

That's when the president sat down with Mary and Grace. According to the girls, Bush said: "It's really important that you stay here, girls. I need your mother." Mary and Grace said it wasn't fair; the son of senior adviser Karen Hughes moved back to Texas. The president said, "Well, he's whinier than you."

Spellings, meanwhile, struggled with her own doubts, and her daughters helped her. "She would say, 'What am I doing here? I'm in the freakin' White House!'" Mary said. Grace added: "She would say, 'I don't have a PhD, and there are all these people who went to Ivy League college for nine years working under me.' " Spellings still carries a note from Grace from inauguration night: Mom, I am so proud of you!! Thank you for letting me go the ball, but I'm going to sleep cause I feel like crap . . .

At the Carl Sandburg auditorium, it was time for Grace's chorus to sing. Grace wouldn't tell her mother where she was going to stand. "Mom's always, like, blowing kisses and waving," explained Mary, who was testing her flute.

The next minute Mary was onstage, playing in the spotlight. Grace sang, chin up, her brown hair gleaming. And for a moment, Spellings, who shuns all corn and sap, put her hand on her heart. Her babies -- whom she'd nursed for a year, and fed hand-mashed carrots instead of jarred food -- were flying.