MR. KOJO NNAMDI...Education in the District of Columbia. He joins us in studio. De'Shawn Wright, thank you for joining us.

MR. DE'SHAWN WRIGHTThank you for having me.

NNAMDIIf you'd like to join this conversation, you can call us at 800-433-8850. What concerns do you have about how neighborhoods in the District of Columbia may affect the performance of the schools inside them? 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org, send us a tweet, @kojoshow, or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Ask a question or make a comment there. The aforementioned report by the Chicago-based group IFF caused quite a stir earlier this year.

NNAMDIIt essentially found that the greatest shortages of seats and adequately performing schools are clustered in the city's poorest neighborhoods. Before we get into what this could potentially mean for the system, what exactly did you learn from this report about the city schools that you may not have known before?

WRIGHTWell, first, thank you for having me on your show.

NNAMDIYou're welcome.

WRIGHTAnd the main thing that, I think, we could take away from the IFF report is a better, crystal clear vision for where we need to concentrate our efforts. One of the things that we wanted to accomplish in commissioning the report is to understand -- well, 'cause we all understand that we still have a great way to go in terms of quality education district-wide throughout the District of Columbia. But when you begin to have individual conversations with neighborhoods or individual parents or teachers and school leaders, they all are articulating the great challenge.

WRIGHTBut for us, as district leaders, we have to figure out where do we have the greatest need and how do we prioritize our efforts in a way that allows us to get to where we have the greatest challenges first. And so what the report gave us is a greater crystallization of where we need to have high quality seats but also a very clearer picture of what type of seats we need. Do we need more in the elementary side? Do we need more middle school seats? Do we need more high school seats?

WRIGHTAnd so the information that we gleaned from the report is going to be very prescriptive in helping us begin a very thoughtful conversation that we have already started with our local education leaders and that will take us through the summer as we begin to figure out what can we do, working collectively together, to address the need in the -- particularly in the top 10 neighborhoods that were identified.

NNAMDIGlad you mentioned the words thoughtful conversation because conversations about schools in the District of Columbia often deteriorate into thoughtless yelling. But that's another story.

WRIGHTYes, sir.

NNAMDIWhat criteria did IFF used to determine which schools were top tier and which ones were, well, not as good?

WRIGHTWell, it is a quantitative study, so it looked specifically at DC CAS scores and then took a very clear focus of -- to the 2010-2011 test scores, but also did a regressive analysis to look at how well our upper schools performed over the last five years to make a projection about where do we think these schools, if they continue on the track record that we've seen, where they're going to be at five years from now.

WRIGHTAnd so the methodology used for the report was exclusively looking at DC CAS scores. And we fully recognize that the complexity of what goes into school performance can't get measured by once single indicator, but we think that it is the most -- one of the most important indicators that gives us the right place to start to begin our conversation about where do we need to focus our efforts.

NNAMDIHowever, that may be where you want to begin the conversation, but a lot of people probably want to begin the conversation by talking about whether or not school closures are coming down the pike. This report recommends that both public and charter schools in the so-called tier four category be closed or turned around. Where do things have to go from here before a round of closures is upon us?

WRIGHTWell, I won't -- first, let me be clear in that the recommendations by the research, all right, are just that. They're recommendations. We, the community in the District of Columbia can decide which of these recommendations we're going to choose to adopt, which we're going to reject and which we need to mold in the way that can best meet the needs of our individual neighborhoods. And so that's in a very important place to start.

WRIGHTThe chancellor has already made her determinations about school closures for this upcoming school year, so there is not going to be an immediate switch by which we're going to close a large number of schools. The chancellor made a decision that River Terrace will be the school -- one school that will close for this upcoming school year. There's one charter school that's going to close. And so this isn't a conversation about closure.

WRIGHTThis is a conversation about where do we need to collectively work very hard over the next four years to make sure that we are providing the highest quality of education. And that is a responsibility that is not just the chancellor's and DCPS and not just the charter sectors. But the glaring need that we have, particularly in these 10 neighborhoods identified in the report, demonstrate that we need all hands on deck. And we need everyone's efforts to make sure that we're doing a better job in these communities.

NNAMDIIn case you're just joining us, we're talking with De'Shawn Wright. He is the deputy mayor for education in the District of Columbia. We're inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. Do you feel there's adequate access to high-performing public or charter schools in your neighborhood? 800-433-8850. You can send us a tweet, @kojoshow, or email to kojo@wamu.org. It seems that a lot of grievances are rooted in suspicion about who did this study and their connections to the charter school movement. What can you tell us about who IFF is, and why it was chosen to do the work?

WRIGHTSure. So when I was first tapped to take this role, one of the things that became immediately clear was that we didn't have a good snapshot of not only (unintelligible) help us with facility planning but in terms of where we needed quality seats. And there are very few firms out there who can do both of those in parallel, looking at the facility aspect of it but also with a goal toward getting us to high-quality seats. And the folks at IFF have a history of doing this work, really, around the country, from Kansas City to Chicago to Milwaukee to Denver to St. Louis.

WRIGHTAnd so, given their expertise in really helping cities think strategically and given that they've done a lot of work both on the public school side and the charter side -- and we do have a city where 60 percent of our kids are on District schools, 40 percent are on charter schools. Their level of expertise in that broad spectrum, I think, made them a perfect candidate to come and help us do the work. In terms of who funded the report, it was funded through the D.C. Public Educational Fund with support from the Walton Family Foundation.

NNAMDIThere are people who might know -- want to know a little bit more about who De'Shawn Wright is. Allow me to share a little bit of your bio. De'Shawn Wright began his career in public education as a Teach for America corps member in 1998, teaching middle school grades in New York City. During that time, he worked as both a classroom teacher and a program coordinator managing the implementation of a modern technology program in Community School District 6 in Washington Heights.

NNAMDIUpon completing his fourth year as an educator, he worked in the New York City mayor's office of operations under the Bloomberg administration as a policy analyst overseeing the operations programs and services of city agencies within the business affairs unit. There's then more. You worked with Cory Booker, the Newark mayor, in August of 2006 serving as the city's education adviser and becoming chief policy adviser and came here to Washington, D.C. as deputy mayor in 2011.

WRIGHTYes, sir.

NNAMDIThat's all correct?

WRIGHTThat's all correct.

NNAMDIIf you have questions or comments for De'Shawn Wright, call us at 800-433-8850. You have been a teacher, and there's been a swift pushback from unionized teachers in this city's public school system to this report. Union President Nathan Saunders saying the report is an assault on traditional public education and a serious threat to public school teachers. How would you respond?

WRIGHTWell, I've had some very productive good conversations with President Saunders, and I wouldn't characterize it that way. I think we have to be honest about where we have the greatest challenge. And I think part of the stance that you often get is, I think, very much veered in the fact that we haven't been partners with our teachers and our educators. And one thing that I've tried to stress through President Saunders and all our conversations is that this is not about a blame game.

WRIGHTThis is about being very, very honest about where we have the greatest need and greatest challenges and then working collectively with our partners to figure out how we address that need. And just as I say, we can't begin to think about doing this work without thinking about the charter side or the District side, we certainly can't think about doing this work in a meaningful way without teachers.

WRIGHTAnd so as educators in the District of Columbia are going to be partners in this -- my team actually went to the WTU's last meeting that they had at McKinley Tech last month and shared the data in the report and also opened up an invitation to them that, as we begin this community conversation which we have planned -- I'll be kicking off in late April -- that we want teachers. We want educators to be a key part of that conversation because they are the ones on the frontline every day educating our kids.

NNAMDIHow would you characterize the relationship you have with the head of the teachers union Nathan Saunders? I notice you said you've had some productive conversations with him. He had a lot of conversations with former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and with current schools chancellor Kaya Henderson. One cannot help but observe that all three of you are veterans of the Teach for America corps.

WRIGHTYes, sir.

NNAMDIBut that does not seem to have affected your relationship with Nathan Saunders.

WRIGHTSo Nathan and I have gotten to know each other fairly well in the year that I've been in this role. And I have a great deal of respect for what he does every single day in advocating on behalf of teachers. I think we have a good working relationship, and I have no reason to believe that we won't continue to have a good working relationship.

NNAMDIThe conversation about this report is happening at the same time that there's been talk about whether the city should get into the business of authorizing charter schools itself, which, right now, is the responsibility of a charter school board. How do you feel about this? What do these conversations have to do with each other, if anything?

WRIGHTWell, I don't think they have anything to do with each other at all. I mean, we've been talking for just a little while about the idea of potentially looking at chartering authority for the District. That is something that, if you look nationally...

NNAMDIWhat would be the rationale for that?

WRIGHTSure. So I think one of the rationales is if you are a superintendent or a chancellor and you have a significant charter sector, as we do in the District of Columbia, I think, having the authority to be able to activate or to deploy charter schools, specifically in communities where you know you have a great need and where you feel as though some of the models that you tried on the District side may not be as effective as they could be.

WRIGHTAnd I also think that as the chancellor thinks about her portfolio -- and she's got a number of high-performing schools and a number of exceptional school leaders -- many of them would do very well with the type of freedoms and autonomies that a charter -- that the charter sector has. And so I think it's just a matter of giving the chancellor another tool in her toolbox to best deploy where the programs and services in terms of school models, where we need them nationally.

WRIGHTAnd so -- and I think it's -- I think it could potentially be an option for us here. We're in the very early phases of looking at it, but it's something that we're certainly open to.

NNAMDIWould it be cynical if someone were to make the observation, as someone has, that the city is interested in authorizing charter schools because the charter schools have one freedom that public schools do not have. They have the freedom to reject students who do not fit their profile or their interest. And with the number of special education children that are in the D.C. Public Schools, a lot of charter schools simply don't accept a whole lot of special education kids. And would it be cynical for someone to say, well, that's one of the reasons the city is interested in authorizing its own charter schools?

WRIGHTI would say that it's cynical, yes, sir, only because, you know, we actually are making a great effort to bring our special needs students back to the District of Columbia in our public education system. One of the things that the mayor has tasked me with, and mentioned it in his very first state of the District address, was that he wants to cut in half the number of kids who are in nonpublic placements right now. And that means we have to build capacity in our local public schools to be able to serve those special needs students.

WRIGHTAnd so when we took office in January of last year, we were at about 2,200, and so the charge for the mayor is for us to get to 1,100 by the end of his first term, if we don't do better than that. And so to suggest that going the charter route is a way for us not to try to serve the special needs students is absolutely contradictory to the mayor's charge.

NNAMDITo what degree are there concerns within the administration about whether the charter schools are already in a competition for resources and attention with public schools?

WRIGHTWell, certainly there's conversation about it. There is the Public Education and Finance Reform Commission, which just provided its findings to the administration last week in terms of trying to figure out how do we bring parity to the systems? And so for us, we want to invest in what works, and so part of what we wanted to get to in the IFF study is not just figuring out where do we need high quality seats but also figuring out, in those neighborhoods, every single one of those neighborhoods has a high quality model. And we want to be able to support that model.

WRIGHTSo regardless of whether it's a traditional public school or as a public charter school, we want to be able to direct our resources, to be able to support that school, to either be able to grow faster or if it's got a sort of slower trajectory, or to be able to serve more kids in its existing model. And so, for us, the real focus is, let's find what's working because as I've visited classrooms all throughout the District of Columbia, there was -- for every problem or challenge that I see, I can identify two schools that have gotten it right.

WRIGHTThey have found some way to overcome that obstacle. And so, for us, it is about, really, as you sort of quoted me earlier, lifting up the hood in these individual communities, understanding what is working at the neighborhood level, what we can do on the public charter school side, on the district side to support that, and then building capacity so that we can serve all of our kids with a high quality.

NNAMDII think Beth in Washington, D.C., wants to talk about one such school. Beth, you are on the air. Go ahead, please.

MS. BETH MYERSHi. My name is Beth Myers. I live in Washington, D.C. I had a child in D.C. Public School for a few years, but have -- do not have one in the public schools now. I did observe the school over east of the river on Martin Luther King. It's a relatively new charter school, and I think it's of note because it's called the Excel School, and it's all girls. I think something that we have to observe it -- a reason we have to observe it is because it appears to be a very successful school.

NNAMDIWhat do you mean when you say appears to be?

MYERSI went to see the school because I work further out, right on the District Prince George's County line. And I saw it. You can tell just by appearances. You walk in the school. It is clean. The children are (unintelligible).

NNAMDIIt looks like an environment where learning is taking place.

MYERSSorry?

NNAMDIIt looks like an environment where learning is taking place.

MYERSI'm sorry. I'm -- trouble hearing you.

NNAMDIOh, well, go ahead, please.

MYERSOK. It appears that, to me, I was -- I went into a couple of the classrooms, and you can see that there's learning going on in the schools, even (unintelligible) not as a professional. And, clearly, children are trying to get into the school. They have a waiting list, and I think this is a kind of school that needs a lot of support. They're trying to be not only teaching the kids but supporting the children in other ways so that when they go on -- I think, the school only get maybe third or fourth grade -- there are many opportunities for these children, and they (unintelligible).

NNAMDIOK. Allow me to have De'Shawn Wright respond to that as the kind of school that you apparently think that he and others ought to be looking at.

WRIGHTYeah, well, I think, it really piggybacks well into my last comment that, I think, that as we look at schools all throughout the District of Columbia, we have great models here. It's about deploying those models where we need them most, supporting and supercharging efforts that are working and are getting good results for kids and families. And the caller, Beth, you know, identified one model, which is a single-sex school. We're certainly open to that.

WRIGHTWe want to be -- and that's part of what the next step for us, in terms of the IFF report, is to really have these community level conversations because we need to develop school models that kids and families actually want to attend. One of the pieces of data that really was illuminating for me, in terms of the report, is that 74 percent of our traditional public school kids and 57 percent of our charter school kids tend to go to school in their cluster or in a neighborhood cluster.

WRIGHTAnd so for us, the charters, how do we bring a high quality school to your individual neighborhood? If their kids and families want to be able to activate choice and programs all throughout the District, we want to support them in that. And we certainly believe that they should have that right. But, for us, if every child doesn't wake up in a home that can access a high quality neighborhood school, then our job is not done.

NNAMDIBeth, thank you very much for your call. I went to a single-sex high school, and, I guess, for some people, that would be a strike against single-sex schools. We're going to take a short break.

NNAMDIWhen we come back, we'll continue this conversation with D.C. Deputy Mayor of Education De'Shawn Wright. If you have called, stay on the line. We'll get to your call. We still have a few lines open. 800-433-8850 is the number to call. You can send us a tweet, @kojoshow. How do you feel about the idea of getting the D.C. government possibly back in the business of authorizing charter schools? 800-433-8850. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're talking with De'Shawn Wright, deputy mayor for education in the District of Columbia. I'll go directly to the telephones and talk with Alicia in Ward 7. Alicia, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MS. ALICIA RUCKERThank you, Mr. Nnamdi. Good afternoon, Deputy Mayor Wright. My question -- I have an extreme concern about the fact that the mayor wants to reduce the number of special education seats by over half during his administration. How in the world are we going to do that when the right infrastructure is not in place in the District of Columbia schools proper? And why does it seem like we'll be creating DCPS proper into the specialty education LEA while all the publicly funded charter schools continue to have the cream of the crop?

NNAMDICould you talk about what you mean by lacking in infrastructure, Alicia?

RUCKERWell, what I mean by lack of infrastructure, the reason that the students -- most of the students -- and I don't know all of the case loads. But I'm saying most of the students who attend special education schools outside of the city do so because the city does not have the proper infrastructure in place inside of our schools to support the educational needs of those students. That's why they're going to school outside the city...

NNAMDIOK. Allow me to have...

RUCKER…'cause if we had that in place, then they'd be going to school here now.

NNAMDIDe'Shawn Wright?

WRIGHTYes, so I think she brings -- raises a valid point, and what we're doing is we're building the infrastructure. And so my team has been working very closely with both DCPS and OSSE in terms of really building that capacity and figuring out what are the best programs and services that kids and families are accessing when they're going to nonpublic placements and figuring out how we can bring those seats back to the District of Columbia. And...

NNAMDIOSSE, of course, is the Office of the State Superintendent for Education.

WRIGHTOffice of the State Superintendent for Education, yes, sir. And, in addition, we've put our money where our mouth is. And so if you look at the mayor's last budget from the last fiscal year, we got about $75 million more toward public education. And the mayor made a commitment that he wanted those dollars to go towards special education so that we are building that capacity.

WRIGHTWe have no intention of asking one kid or one family to return back to the District of Columbia to access a special needs seat unless we can assure that kid or that family that they're going to get as good or a better program than they would if they were to continue it into a nonpublic.

NNAMDIAlicia, your voice sounds awfully familiar. Are you Alicia Rucker from Empower D.C.?

RUCKERI am Alicia Rucker from Empower D.C.

NNAMDIYes, you've been on this broadcast before. That's why we remember your voice.

RUCKERYes, sir. I have.

NNAMDIOK. Thank you very much for your call, Alicia. A lot of people (word?) in this area have been on edge for the past several days because it's my understanding that we are in the thick of the out-of-boundary lottery season with D.C. Public Schools. We got this comment posted on our website, "I live in Petworth, in bounds for two grossly under-performing schools and in walking distance of a third under-performing school.

NNAMDI"Had we tried to get in through the lottery -- I did not apply -- and if we had successfully matched any of these schools, how could we, in good conscience, send our child to these schools? As it turned out, our lottery results were not promising. For our first choice, we were waitlisted number 42 at a school that only had 14 seats. All of other waitlist numbers were in the hundreds. Oh, and, just to be clear, I was applying to PS3 programs so that eliminated all the hot properties west of Rock Creek Park."

NNAMDI"We do not have the income to support a private education all the way through college. So, today, the state of the city's public schools will relegate my child to a second-rate education." What do you say to that, De'Shawn Wright?

WRIGHTSo we certainly shouldn't be depending on -- excuse me -- the luck of a lottery to get a child a high quality seat, and that is whether that child is trying to get a seat in a traditional public school or a charter school, who also do their enrollment through a lottery process. And so I think that the challenge that that question articulates is very real. And, again, it goes back to why we initially did this study and why we think it is so urgent and important to not just think about creating high quality seats broadly throughout the District of Columbia but putting them in communities that need them most.

WRIGHTAnd so what I would say to that caller is that we're making every effort and that I hope that she, along with her family, will get involved with the community engagement process because I believe that her community is in part -- in one of the 10 neighborhood clusters that we're going to be focusing on to figure out how can we provide better quality programs so that she does not have to depend on a lottery for her child to be able to attend a school that, quite frankly, you or I or any other callers today would want for their child.

NNAMDIAnd that caller lives in Petworth which would put her in Ward 4. It's my understanding that you stepped on a bit of a landmine when you told a group of parents that you wouldn't send your children to either of these poorly performing schools in Ward 4 because of the condition there. And, I guess, we're talking here about Coolidge and Roosevelt. A lot of people in Ward 4 took that as an insult. How did you mean for it to come across?

WRIGHTWell, I was actually responding to a lovely young lady who was asking me a question, who actually attended Coolidge. And my statement was specifically talking about the infrastructure of the building. And I was not going to look any child or any adult, for that matter, in the eye and tell them that they should be satisfied with the current infrastructure that they're provided. We desperately know that, as we look across the District of Columbia, there are number of schools that require significant investment.

WRIGHTUnfortunately, we cannot get everything done as quickly as we'd like because their resources are limited. And so we're taking a broad look at the District.

NNAMDIPlans to renovate Coolidge and Roosevelt High Schools have been delayed, correct?

WRIGHTHave been delayed by one year, correct, but, in delaying them by one year, we're also putting more dollars into both of those buildings because we believe that's what it's going to take to be able to provide the child that I was responding to with the type of learning environment that she deserves and that every child deserves.

NNAMDIBack to the telephones. Here is Lisa in Centreville, Va. Lisa, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

LISAThank you so much for taking this call. My concern regards that of residents that want to send their kids to their neighborhood cluster public schools. I don't know why public schools can't have the same amount of flexibility that charter schools do so that the kids that live in that neighborhood can just have as high quality education as the charter. I don't think privatization or a form of privatization -- the only methodology by which the public schools are improving as a way to...

NNAMDII'm not sure I understand. What do you mean by flexibility?

LISAWell, it seems that -- I'm assuming that these two public schools has its own bylaws by which schools must operate.

NNAMDIYes.

LISAAnd for people to be queuing up to their children to go the charter, it seems that the charter school is making some gains. So I'm wondering why can't those gains be made in the neighborhood where the public schools are, or where the population that's in the public schools is different than that of the charter? 'Cause the charter can accept or reject students as they want. The public school takes all takers.

NNAMDIDe'Shawn Wright.

WRIGHTSo I think that she's hitting on an important point about how do we try to figure out how to -- in the District, to give the folks the types of freedoms that they need in order to be able to educate their kids? I've been in that seat. I've been a classroom teacher, and so I know how it feels to have the limitations of a set curriculum or a set way of teaching and learning. And it just doesn't work for the 30 kids that are in front of you.

WRIGHTAnd so I think we -- you know, we always have to be thinking about how can we give, not only teachers and schools leaders, the tools that they need to be successful in educating our kids but the freedoms and autonomies to be able to correct course or to try innovative approaches. And, certainly, that's one of the benefits of a charter sector. I'd argue that we are also experiencing that on the District side. You know, here in the District of Columbia, we try to (word?) partnership or transformation schools.

WRIGHTIn places like New York City, where I've also worked, they tried the empowerment school initiative, which was us, as the central office, thinking about all of the different requirements that we put upon schools and stripping those away in exchange for holding school leaders and educators accountable for results.

WRIGHTAnd so, while we want to trust you as professionals because you have the best knowledge about what's going to really close the gap of achievement in your school and with your specific kids, we also need to make sure that we are deploying resources behind programs and services that actually have a track record of success. And so the chancellor, I know, is committed about -- to do this. I mean, and here in the District of Columbia, we even have school-based budgets where the chancellor will give you a school mark.

WRIGHTBut she will allow her school leaders to make decisions about whether or not you want to buy that second AP, or whether or not you think a third teacher makes more sense, or whether there's a different curriculum or a different external partner that you want to bring in instead of buying a particular service. And so I think we continue to look -- try to look creatively at how we can strip away the bureaucratic requirements that we've put in on top of schools and school leaders over time so that we can get out of their way and help them to do the difficult work of educating our kids.

NNAMDILisa, thank you very much for your call. As you've referred to or I referred to early, you taught middle school in the New York City system where there's now a fierce debate going on about the city's release of data on teacher's performance ratings for instructors across the system. How do you feel about this kind of data being made public? Is it something that you would support here in the District?

WRIGHTI will let the folks in New York fight their own battles.

WRIGHTWe have enough of a challenge and a great opportunity here in District of Columbia.

NNAMDIWell, I did -- the reason I raise it is because there are a lot of public employees whose performance is not measured in public. It's not like we see supervisor reports for cops or firemen or the people who pick up our trash.

WRIGHTSure.

NNAMDIWhat is it that you think makes teachers different in the public view?

WRIGHTWell, I think it is -- you know, certainly, if you compare it to our trash being picked up, it's -- that's not a life-or-death circumstance. And so I can certainly understand why, as a parent, I would be very curious about my -- how my teacher was performing in comparison to the other teachers within that school, or even across the District of Columbia.

WRIGHTAnd, certainly, the new contract that was negotiated -- I mean, the previous administration, in terms of impact, I think, begins to get us closer to ensuring that the teachers that are in front of each one of our kids every single day are providing them with the best quality education that they possibly can. But I'm certainly going to let New York fight its own battle in terms of whether it wants to release individual teacher performance scores.

NNAMDIWe got this email from Linda Moore, founder and executive director of Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Public Charter School. "I just want to correct an impression that you left with listeners earlier your conversation -- in your conversation with De'Shawn Wright. Charter schools, in fact, are required by law to accept and serve special needs students, just as DCPS schools are. Federal law, IDEA, as well as the D.C. School Reform Act, require this of all public schools. Please do not leave listeners with the impression that charter schools do not serve special needs students."

NNAMDIWhat happens in the environment if charter schools also don't have the kinds of infrastructure that it takes to serve certain kinds of special needs students?

WRIGHTWell, the way that the law is written right now is if they have a child who is what we call level three or level four, which means that they have the most severe needs, that they can select the District to be their -- what we call their LEA, their local education agency. And that kid or that family can also access a non-public placement. But we also have to be honest about some of the limitations of a smaller school learning environment, whether it is a smaller traditional public school or a smaller charter school.

WRIGHTOnce you have a -- there are a certain sort of economies of scale that get created when you begin to serve upwards of 400 students that allow you to be able to offer specialized services in a way that, quite frankly, some of the smaller school environments are not able to. And so, I think, the caller is illuminating an important point in that we got to figure out how do we support all of our schools, specifically our smaller charter schools, in terms of being able to serve our special needs students, particularly those who are on the more severe end of the scale.

NNAMDIWe're running out of time very quickly, so there's a certain level of urgency to my question. And it's a question about urgency. The school system was at the core of the mayoral race two years ago. Mayor Gray seemed to win a lot of people over to his camp, who felt that Adrian Fenty's education reform efforts were moving too fast, alienating too many people. Yet it was during Adrian Fenty's tenure that this urgent wave of school construction and renovation began that Coolidge and Roosevelt are now all a part of.

NNAMDIAnd parents are clearly hungry for that to continue. What can you tell us about the sense of urgency Mayor Gray has to continue reforms at all levels, including the physical structure of the system?

WRIGHTWell, we are absolutely maintaining that level of urgency. And we are working right now to update our capital improvement plan, which, I think, is going to illustrate the fact that we are not slowing down. In fact, we are hoping to be more aggressive on the facility development front. And in terms of the overall education reform effort, we are not slowing down one bit.

WRIGHTAnd I think that if you look at the work that we're doing around building high quality special needs seats in the District, around our focus around our most lowest-performing neighborhoods and schools and figuring out how we can support them -- and in this IFF report, I think, it is a clear indication that we are going to put a spotlight on where the challenges are and that we're going to role up our sleeves and do the difficult of making sure that all of our kids get a high quality education over the next three years.

WRIGHTAnd so I certainly -- I wake up every day, and I have the partnership and support of a phenomenal chancellor in Ms. Henderson and our state superintendent, Hosanna Mahaley. And now we've welcomed a new partner in this work in Scott Pearson, who just was tapped to lead the Public Charter School Board. And we all wake up every single day, thinking about how we can work together to make sure that all of our kids, regardless of where they live, get access to a high quality education.

NNAMDIDe'Shawn Wright, he is the deputy mayor for education in the District of Columbia. Thank you so much for joining us.

WRIGHTThank you for having me today.

NNAMDIHopefully, you'll come back again soon.

WRIGHTI would be more than thrilled to.

NNAMDII'm going to ask you some tougher questions at that point. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, what should we do when an ad in a Metro station essentially swears at the president? Should we do something or nothing, say, it's simply First Amendment rights? When we come back. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.