D.C.’s mayor played down a school-lottery scandal. Now parents are furious.

Conor P. Williams was quoted in the Washington Post on D.C.'s school-lottery scandal.

Conor Williams, a senior researcher at New America’s Education Policy Program and father of two children who were placed at their school through the District’s lottery, said the disclosure of special treatment for the politically connected was particularly unfortunate in the District, whose lottery has been held up as a national model.

“That system works well and is a force for equity when there’s no way to game the system and get your way in,” Williams said. If favoritism pollutes the process, he said, “it just does huge damage” to the presumption of fairness that underlies the system

“It’s just extremely dispiriting,” he said.