If you want warm and fuzzy, I am not your girl.

I am about fighting for what is right for kids.

When you are in as dire a situation as we were in Washington, DC, it doesn't really call for niceties.

It calls for dramatic action.

My dad raised us, I think, in a very specific way.

He always used to tell us, "What you have "and what you've accomplished is not because you're special "or you're talented or you're smart "or anything like that.

"It is because you were fortunate enough to be born "into this family.

"You got the level of education that you did, et cetera, because you were lucky."

And we grew up in Toledo, Ohio.

He said, "The kids who live in inner city Toledo, "it's not that they're any less talented than you are "or any less capable.

"They are in the situation they are in because of the circumstance of their birth."

So at a young age I started working with kids.

And I first became a teacher in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1992.

When the mayor first offered me the job, I'd say my first reaction was, "This is crazy."

Because I was not the profile that people would expect from the city's first schools chancellor.

I think people expected that he would hire somebody more experienced who had been a superintendant several times before.

I think people expected him to hire somebod who's African American, given the makeup of the district and the city.

So when he first said, "I want you to take the job," I... you know, in my mind I was thinking, "Are you nuts?"

If I was going to take this position on, the kinds of things that I would be advocating and doing would cause a lot of controversy.

And, you know, his reaction was, I think, the perfect reaction that you want from a leader.

He said, "You know what?

"As long as we know that what you are doing "is in the best interest of kids, then I don't mind any of the pushback."

The hardest part about firing teachers in the Washington, DC public school system was knowing that these are real people with lives and obligations and responsibilities to their homes, knowing that lots of them were probabl very, very good people.

But at the same time we knew that we could not afford to have people who were not providing the best qualit education to kids.

I have a soft spot in my heart for children.

And so my life's work has been about making sure that kids are getting what they need and deserve.

My daughters make me laugh every day.

And the thing that is most interesting about my kids is that they're very savvy about education reform.

So they were very young when I took the job in Washington, DC.

They saw me go through all the kind of political struggles.

You know, they say to me, "We get what you do... "why you do what you do.

"We get why you have to sometimes be away from home, "and why you work so hard, because you're trying to make sure that every kid has what we have."

And I think that's absolutely right.