(CNN) -- Mayors Julian Castro of San Antonio, Michael Hancock of Denver, Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, California, and Angel Taveras of Providence, Rhode Island, each attended public schools in the cities they now lead. This month, they launched a tour to meet educators, families and innovators in each of their cities, with the hope of understanding their shared problems -- and potential for solutions. "Education is more than a quality of life issue. Education impacts everything that we do in the city. It really is a fundamental right and it's a path out of poverty," Taveras said. "We're working to see what's going on in each other's city and to share solutions and help adapt them to our own city."
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Four American mayors are touring each other's city to learn more education solutions
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Mayors from California, Texas, Colorado and Rhode Island are on the tour
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The mayors shared stories from their own school experiences
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Providence mayor: Education "is a fundamental right and it's a path out of poverty"
"Far too often a child's educational outcomes are determined by her or his ZIP code, and that's the case in Sacramento, too, and this has led to an unacceptable achievement gap," @placeholder said, describing how slow they've been to close the gap between white and black students' scores.