The sweeping national initiative strives to dismantle the status quo in public education and re-orient schools around students rather than political factions or the adults in charge.

The effort was launched by Sharpton and Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools.

"Here we are, 54 years after Brown vs. Board of Education . . . after we promised every kid access to an equal educational opportunity and we're not delivering on it," Klein said. "That crisis is going to get much worse because of what's going on globally - the competitive threats to this nation."

Klein said a national discourse on school reform is needed, followed by hard action.

Movement backers are big on statistics.

For starters, the achievement gap between African-American/Hispanic students and white/Asian students has hardly narrowed since 1992, remaining at 20 points, they note.

White 12th-graders are, on average, four years ahead of their black peers. More than 23 percent of Hispanics between the ages of 16 and 24 have dropped out of high school, compared with about 12 percent of African- Americans and 7 percent of whites.

In Colorado, only 75 percent of students graduate from high school, and of those only 40 percent go to college.

"The United States has a history of incremental reforms," said Bill Kurtz, principal of the Denver School of Science and Technology, a charter school. "We don't need incremental. We need dramatic change."

Kurtz pointed out the successes he's had with students labeled at-risk. One hundred percent of the school's first graduating class was accepted into four-year colleges, he said.

Mayor John Hickenlooper said he couldn't imagine any other endeavor in which so many people invest so much time and money with "so little success."

"How do we change that and ramp up the way we go about it and the expectations to which we hold ourselves?" Hickenlooper asked.

Project's goals

• Get effective teachers in every classroom and effective principals in every school by giving them the training they need and paying them what they're worth - and making tough decisions about the teachers who aren't performing.

• Empower parents by giving them a meaningful voice in where their children are educated, including public charter schools.

• Create accountability for teachers, principals and central office administrators.

• Commit to making every decision about who is hired, how money is spent, and where resources are deployed with a single focus - what best serves students.

• Call on parents and students to demand more from their schools and themselves.

• Stand up to political forces and interests who seek to preserve a failed system.