New schools chief comes out strong.

The new education chief is in and she's making waves. Within days of her new start, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who was approved Inauguration Day, criticized a PBS cartoon show that depicts gay couples, supported President Bush's drive to expand high school testing, and took a stand against a lapse in morality judgment.

The U.S. Department of Education recently cut its contract with Ketchum, a public relations firm hired to mainly promote the No Child Left Behind law, after it was publicized that media commentator Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 to talk up the law (see story on page 29).

Spellings took the stand despite NCLB being her baby. She helped write the law, which requires annual testing in grades 3-8 and one test during grades 10-12. Bush wants to extend annual proficiency exams to grades 9-11, but Spellings says she'll consider reasonable changes in how the law is enforced.

Spellings also criticized the Public Broadcasting Service for a "Postcards from Buster" cartoon that depicts two lesbian couples. The department gives money for the show through a federal program that educates children through television. "For the Department of Education or public broadcasting to get into things that are, you know, in a grayer area, is just not something we need to do," she told the Associated Press.