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.

My parents came from an environment where everyone knew that the way to be successful was to get a great education, and that was going to be your ticket in life. If you could succeed in education then you would succeed in life, so that was sort of the driving force behind my parents' upbringing, and therefore kind of how they brought me up.

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 people don't talk enough about education and what we need to do in our public education system.

We are in tough economic times right now, and the first thing we have to do is look at how we're spending the dollars that we have, and at what kind of return on investment we're getting. Because I think it will show that spending more money without fixing the fundamental flaws in the system won't produce anything different in terms of results. In DC, we were spending a whole lot of money on things that had no positive impact on students' achievement levels.

My parents were extraordinarily focused on education. It was the topic of every dinner conversation, is are you number one, are you getting all As, if not, why not. You need to do better. So my entire orientation and focus growing up was around doing your best and making sure that you were going to get the best education possible.

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.