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What We're Reading | July 23, 2014

Bush Center President Margaret Spellings sat down recently with the Dallas Morning News to discuss school testing and accountability in the state...

Bush Center President Margaret Spellings sat down recently with the Dallas Morning News to discuss school testing and accountability in the state of Texas. She helped design the state’s school accountability system under then-Governor George W. Bush and would continue on to oversee the national implementation of No Child Left Behind during the Bush Administration.

“I still believe in the theory of action; I stand by it vigorously. We must have measurement. We must have transparency. We must have clarity around accountability. It’s how you do that, not whether or not you do that,” Spellings says. Her experience in education policy, and her return to Texas almost a year ago to lead the Bush Center in Dallas, lend to an interesting conversation on assessments, achievement gaps, and the adverse shift she sees in the Texas accountability system.

The Financial Times ran this provocative story about global water scarcity, how some companies are responding to the scarcity, and what steps are required to meet the demand for water. According to this piece, companies have spent $84 billion worldwide to deal with water demands, whether better conservation, management or supplies. Some, like Coca-Cola, are investing in conservation projects that can stretch out supplies. The piece also gets into the tension between agriculture, the biggest water user, and industry. That’s a very real tension in Texas, where urban and rural interests vie for water supplies.

Water supplies are a global story, but they also are a particularly important North American one. Stay tuned.