Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job.

My grandfather was a teacher, my grandmother on my mom's side, four of my aunts, my sister-in-law, my best friend. So I've always, my entire life, been surrounded by teachers, and because of that I've had a tremendous respect for what teachers can do, the power that they can have.

The reality in Washington D.C. is if you live in Tenleytown versus if you live in Anacostia, you get two wildly different educational experiences. It’s the biggest social injustice imaginable. What we are allowing to happen in this day and age, we are still allowing the color of a child’s skin and the Zip code they live in to dictate their educational outcome, and therefore their life outcome. We are robbing them every single day of their futures. And everybody in this country should be infuriated by that.

That should be the goal, is that every kid in every neighborhood, despite whatever challenges they may face, are getting a great education in our public schools.

In schools where parent involvement is greater, you do have higher achievement levels and better functioning, better performing schools.

If you grew up in a lower-income community, or less well-off, the belief is that the way to change that circumstance is through education.

I think that one thing that people are missing is that we are never going to be able to fix this country's [American] economy in the long run until we fix our public education system.