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Ask educators and parents how successful former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has been, and opinion is sharply divided. The same goes for whether he has set education reform in the right direction.

Yet when asked about Klein's motivations there is no disagreement, even from some of his most vocal critics.

"I do believe he cares. I think he is completely wrong-headed, I think the way he runs the schools system is wrong-headed. I think you do have to listen to teachers and parents if you want to run the school system well, but I would never say that he doesn't care about the kids," says Leonie Hamilton of Class Size Matters.

"I always admired the fact that he cared fiercely about kids. And we discussed, sometimes conversed, sometimes fought a lot about what was the best mechanism to get there," says Randi Weingarten, who was the president of the United Federation of Teachers from 1998 to 2009.

"I believe he had children's best intentions at heart. I don't think he really ever understood that helping instruction would have helped children more," says United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew.

"I think Joel is so passionate. He's so smart, he speaks with such conviction on these issues that he's absolutely become a national figure," says U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

"He's really set the bar for superintendents across the country in terms of his boldness and his willingness to speak the truth about what's happening in public education in an incredibly compelling way," says Michelle Rhee, a former chancellor for Washington, D.C.

"The thing I really loved about Joel was his conviction that we were doing a disservice to the most at-risk students -- the students of color, the ones who have been failed for decades. And this was his passion," says Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children's Zone.

"I mean, you hear Joel cite [former U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Thurgood Marshall, you hear Joel cite the Supreme Court in Brown versus Board of Education. That's not something he's pretending to cite, that's a part of Joel's background and his history," says Deputy Mayor for Education Dennis Walcott.

For Klein, the struggle over education is ongoing.

"I see it, of course as a Civil Rights issue. Fifty, 60 years after Brown versus Board of Education where we promised every kid an equal education. Today in America, all too often your skin color, your family’s income, your zip code, they determine the quality of a child's education. And that's what really is wrong," says Klein. "Nobody does this for eight-and-a-half years and gives everything I've had, whatever talents I've had, whatever energies I've had to try to make the world better for the children of New York. I didn't need any high profile jobs, I had high profile jobs. I was making a whole lot more money.

"I consider myself the luckiest kid in the country, because educators, teachers in this city changed my life," continues Klein. "I grew up in public housing. So I believe education is the magic ingredient in the American dream and I think the American dream is the magic ingredient in America."