Today's Boston Globe editorial page has a column by Abigail Thernstrom titled "Martin Luther King's unfinished legacy." She describes the "huge racial gap" in K-12 schooling. "Students who have equal skills and knowledge - whatever their color - will have roughly equal earnings . . . Schooling has become the key to racial equality." She goes on: "The racial gap in academic achievement is an educational crisis. . . It's time to join a new crusade - one dedicated to changing American education in ways that will truly create a level playing field . . . We still need desperately the radical and imaginative leadership that Martin Luther King once so brilliantly provided." Like Thernstrom, the founders of this country saw education as the great equalizer. Unfortunately, many of our federal, state and city leaders seem to have forgotten that this is so. The best way to promote "economic development" in any community, particularly an urban one, is to create a first rate school system, one that is adequately funded and supported by everyone.