RHODE ISLAND is not an island. We are connected to a vast national network of achievement and innovation and indeed to an even more extensive global community.

We might excuse the poor geography student for assuming that our state is separated from the rest of the nation. But we Rhode Islanders have no such excuse when we approach our public policy as if no other state has ever faced similar problems and solved them.

Fifteen years ago, our next-door neighbor Massachusetts passed a comprehensive education-reform act that created more than 60 new innovative public schools, moved the entire state toward school-based management and added rigorous outcome measurements to chart the state’s progress. In 1998 the Fordham Foundation gave both Massachusetts and Rhode Island an F grade for their math curriculum. Our neighbors to the north immediately responded and in 2005 received an A grade. We kept our F.

This year, as the federal government notified us that only one-third of Rhode Island’s 4th graders were proficient in math, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce named Massachusetts the number-one education state in America. Citizens and businesses from all over the country and the world now have another very good reason to move there. Farther on, from New York City to Ohio to Washington State, policymakers and legislators are opening their doors to new ideas.

Rhode Island should be exploring solutions and strategies that exist both within and beyond our borders. This should be a time of extraordinary change in our state. We can build Rhode Island’s future on a world-class public-education system. Our size is our strength. Our entire state is one-eighth the size of New York City, smaller than Philadelphia or San Diego, and hardly bigger than Indianapolis. In all cases we should be the state in which what ought to be, is.

Here are the facts. According to the 2007 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Report, when per-pupil spending is correlated with achievement, only six states get a worse return on their investment than we do. Only Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi fare worse in educating their poor and minority students. According to the federal government’s 2007 NAEP Report, when it comes to educating our Latino children, Rhode Island is the very worst in America. Nor do our suburban middle-class students compare favorably to their peers in high-performing states. Consider the numbers and consider the company we are keeping for a moment, and ask yourself whether we can afford to be patient or apprehensive any longer.

Despite the dismal statistics, we are neither cynical nor discouraged. While others may despair, ours is a message of hope. An amazing thing is happening in Rhode Island. A coalition of its mayors and town administrators has decided not to wait any longer. They have decided that enough is enough.

These officials have been working to change the learning environments in their own towns. They have been speaking with their constituents, with philanthropists and businesspeople, and with their state representatives about writing a “New Rhode Island Story.” Most important, they’ve looked outside their borders for help, flatly rejecting the old notion that “it can’t work in Rhode Island.”

This fall, Dr. Bryan Hassel will be conducting a study and initiating an action plan on behalf of our coalition. Dr. Hassel is a former Rhodes Scholar with a doctorate from Harvard University. His research organization, Public Impact, is as respected as any in the nation and his Rhode Island team includes highly regarded Brown University education professor Martin West. What impresses us most is Hassel’s proven record of helping communities adopt the best possible practices to improve the performance of their students within the limits of their budgets.

We, your representatives in town halls across the state, do not have all the answers. But we are finally asking the right questions.

We want to know how to control education costs while improving the performance of our children, raising them up until all the opportunities they deserve appear before them.

We want to know whether new learning environments might be built alongside old ones and whether they might be allowed to grow and flourish when they prove successful.

We want to know what these learning environments would look like if all we cared about was educating our kids to the best of our ability within our means.

Most of all we want to know whether the people of our great state are ready to stand for a New Rhode Island Story, in which citizens and businesses rush to invest in our state not despite our schools but because of them.

Why not us? Why not now? For new ideas and new investments to flow to Rhode Island, we don’t need to build a bridge. We only need to put out the welcome mat.

Daniel J. McKee is mayor of Cumberland. This piece was also signed by Lincoln Town Administrator T. Joseph Almond; North Providence Mayor Charles Lombardi; Glocester Town Council President Steven A. Sette; East Greenwich Town Council President Michael B. Isaacs; Johnston Mayor Joseph M. Polisena; and Cranston Mayor Michael T. Napolitano.