President Obama, Gov. Patrick and other political leaders call education reform the civil rights issue of our era. Nowhere is that more true than in Lawrence and other “Gateway Cities” – older, medium-sized cities outside of Boston that are home to large numbers of new immigrants and high rates of poverty.

Gateway City schools must be the equalizer – providing children in these cities with a high quality educational foundation to enable them to compete in a vibrant economy and contribute to an equally vibrant democracy.

Everywhere one looks at the Veritas Preparatory Charter School in Springfield are not-so-subtle reminders concerning what this place is all about — preparation for college.

For starters, there are old-fashioned pennants, representing dozens of schools from across the country, adorning several walls in the cafeteria and the hallways by the front office. “We got started by ordering a bunch of them,” said Rachel Romano, the school’s founder and executive director. “People will come in and say, ‘where’s my college?’ and we’ll tell them they have to get us a flag.”

Even though Massachusetts has been a leader in reforming public education, it is clear that more needs to be done. 

According to a study by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, there is a 25 to 30 percentage-point achievement gap between African-American, Hispanic and low-income students and white students in reading and math. More than one-third of the state’s students are failing MCAS exams, and they cannot graduate from high school without passing that test. Nearly 30 percent of public school students — more than 250,000 in all — attend schools in low-performing districts, despite billions of dollars in supplemental funding that has been poured into those districts in the last 20 years. 

NEW BEDFORD — It was pure accident Global Learning Charter Public School founders modeled their venture on a San Diego school started by the family of a former city resident who earned billions as an engineer.

But it was no accident Tuesday when the school's downtown campus was renamed the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Center for Education and Innovation.