By Christina Grant

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was right to champion accountability in education in this month’s State of the State address. At this point, no one needs to be convinced that a good education is necessary for a better life. But we have yet to come together as a state to follow through on that creed.

New York State ranks second in the country in the percentage of students who successfully complete an Advanced Placement class, but only 4.1 percent of black students accomplished this feat in 2010 compared to 24.6 percent for New York high school graduates on the whole. In 2011, white students in New York were almost twice as likely as their black and Hispanic counterparts to meet basic standards in reading and writing. In eighth-grade reading, New York ranks 40 out of 45 states in the gap between the achievement of Hispanic and white students. We are home to cavernous achievement gaps.

Based on a national model with significant wins in three other states, we’re launching NYCAN: The New York Campaign for Achievement Now to ensure that every child in New York has access to a great public school, not just the lucky ones. Our new State of New York Public Education report ranks every elementary and middle school in the state and highlights the unfortunate growing trends in these achievement gaps.

We created NYCAN because there are tangible solutions at our fingertips, not just problems. Our inaugural 2012 campaign, “The Empire State Strikes Back,” advocates for three policy changes that will help close our cavernous achievement gaps. The first is legislation to allow New York parents at chronically under-performing schools to vote to “take over” the school. The “parent trigger” would allow a majority of parents at struggling schools to choose from several reform options, which could include converting the school into a charter school, firing the school administration or closing the school outright.

A parent trigger is the kind of policy with the potential to bring the urgency for change that we so desperately need in our public schools. In response to the troubles faced in their own education systems, California, Texas and Ohio have either passed or are exploring their own versions of a parent trigger.

Perhaps the most devastating figure in our State of New York Public Education report is that only 18 percent of New York’s black eighth-graders are proficient in reading, meaning that by the time they enter high school, 82 percent are not reading on grade level. Hundreds of thousands of New York children have learned this truth the hard way.

We New Yorkers spend more per student on education than any other state. But we still fail to prepare the vast majority of our students for college and the highly competitive job market. It is crucial that lawmakers prioritize education in New York this year and enact legislation such as the parent trigger.

Christina Grant is the founding executive director of NYCAN, a new statewide education reform initiative.