Those who insist that we’ll never fix America’s public schools until we fix poverty have it exactly backwards. We will never solve poverty in America until we fix our public schools.

New York has some of the largest achievement gaps between the haves and the have-nots in the nation. Our achievement gap exists not because our middle-income students perform so well, but because our poor and minority students score near the bottom.

In eighth-grade reading, New York ranks 40 out of 45 states for the achievement gap between its white and eighth-grade Hispanic students. And only 18 percent of New York's African American eighth-graders are proficient in reading, meaning that by the time they enter high school, 82 percent of all African American students are not reading on grade level.

New York, and the entire nation, was built on the promise of universal education for all. Public schools are the cornerstone of our democracy.

Our future is inextricably linked to the education of our children – all of them.