Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise was in national news again last week, reiterating his warning that America is being damaged by a school dropout crisis that hurts the economy and dooms young people to failure.

As keynote speaker at the Greater Louisville High School Dropout Solutions Summit, Wise sounded alarms that he raised in his recent book, Raising the Grade.

America is falling behind other advanced nations in graduation rates and college-going rates, he said. Every year, another 1.2 million U.S. students quit high school - 7,000 per day - heading into society with no diplomas, no skills and little future. About one-third of all students fail to graduate, including half of minority students. Dropouts are more likely to wind up jobless, on welfare, in police trouble and the like.

In past generations, plenty of blue-collar jobs were available to dropouts, who could find satisfactory careers in factories. But blue-collar work is vanishing in the new "information age." Now, only the educated are sure of success. America is becoming more a two-tier society with a well-paid educated class and a sinking uneducated class. The average U.S. college graduate earns $52,600 a year, and the average dropout gets $17,300.

Too little attention has been given to high schools as a key factor in this succeed-or-fail problem, he said.

"During my more than two decades in public service, I always believed that I was doing the best job I possibly could to improve educational opportunities for the young people in my state and district," commented Wise, now president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an organization focused on high school reform. "With the benefit of hindsight, however, I have realized that my efforts - although well-intentioned - were missing a crucial element. I focused primarily on the bookends of education: early childhood, with the passage of a bill creating pre-kindergarten; and higher education, via the Promise scholarship, which helped thousands of West Virginia students remain in the Mountain State for college. Secondary education was largely ignored."

Now, Wise said, he sees that high school is the worst trouble zone.

The ex-governor wants stronger national efforts to beef up high school - "implementing a rigorous curriculum, increasing personal attention and tailoring specific programs for those students that need extra help," his organization says.

If one-third of young Americans continue slipping through the cracks, the nation will suffer painful damage. Other countries will move ahead in the race for scientific and technological achievement. The U.S. economy will slip.

As the old commercial said, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Wise's warning should be heeded.

As keynote speaker at the Greater Louisville High School Dropout Solutions Summit, Wise sounded alarms that he raised in his recent book, Raising the Grade.

America is falling behind other advanced nations in graduation rates and college-going rates, he said. Every year, another 1.2 million U.S. students quit high school - 7,000 per day - heading into society with no diplomas, no skills and little future. About one-third of all students fail to graduate, including half of minority students. Dropouts are more likely to wind up jobless, on welfare, in police trouble and the like.

In past generations, plenty of blue-collar jobs were available to dropouts, who could find satisfactory careers in factories. But blue-collar work is vanishing in the new "information age." Now, only the educated are sure of success. America is becoming more a two-tier society with a well-paid educated class and a sinking uneducated class. The average U.S. college graduate earns $52,600 a year, and the average dropout gets $17,300.

Too little attention has been given to high schools as a key factor in this succeed-or-fail problem, he said.

"During my more than two decades in public service, I always believed that I was doing the best job I possibly could to improve educational opportunities for the young people in my state and district," commented Wise, now president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an organization focused on high school reform. "With the benefit of hindsight, however, I have realized that my efforts - although well-intentioned - were missing a crucial element. I focused primarily on the bookends of education: early childhood, with the passage of a bill creating pre-kindergarten; and higher education, via the Promise scholarship, which helped thousands of West Virginia students remain in the Mountain State for college. Secondary education was largely ignored."

Now, Wise said, he sees that high school is the worst trouble zone.

The ex-governor wants stronger national efforts to beef up high school - "implementing a rigorous curriculum, increasing personal attention and tailoring specific programs for those students that need extra help," his organization says.

If one-third of young Americans continue slipping through the cracks, the nation will suffer painful damage. Other countries will move ahead in the race for scientific and technological achievement. The U.S. economy will slip.

As the old commercial said, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Wise's warning should be heeded.