TULSA, OKLA. ? U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings defended the No Child Left Behind Act on Monday against complaints by American Indian leaders that it is too rigid and has forced rural schools to cut tribal culture and language classes.

Indian children are making gains in reading and math under President Bush’s school reform law, Spellings told hundreds of tribal leaders at the annual meeting of the National Congress of American Indians.

“For the first time ever in the history of our country, we are holding ourselves accountable as a nation for closing the achievement gap between white and minority students within a decade,” she said. “It’s about time.”

But tribal leaders said the law does not address the needs of native communities to preserve culture and language, and its mandates make it difficult for many of the rural school districts that serve American Indian children to recruit and retain qualified teachers.

Thousands of North Dakota teachers, for example, were found to lack the schooling to be considered highly qualified under the law.

The Education Department eventually gave the veteran teachers a reprieve, but it’s a problem faced by rural schools nationwide where teachers do double-duty in a spectrum of subjects, said Tex Hall, a former North Dakota teacher of the year who is president of the American Indian and Alaska Native group.

“You might have a major in music and a minor in special education” and teach both, Hall said. “But now, they’re saying your minor isn’t good enough. It’s devastating for a rural school district to say you just lost your special ed teacher.”

Spellings told the group that she agreed more flexibility is needed in the law for communities “that are particularly rural and particularly remote.”

“I know the most important thing is the bottom line results and that’s what I’m going to focus on,” she said. “We have to keep our eye on the quality of student achievement in every single one of our communities.”

More than 90 percent of Indian children attend public schools, and Hall said many tribes want programs that teach their language and culture. But schools struggling to meet the No Child Left Behind are sometimes forced to cut those programs, he said.

The complaints echo those contained in a preliminary report released earlier in October by the National Indian Education Association.