Consider this:

“. . . By the time low-income students reach 12th grade, if they have not dropped out of school, their achievement levels are about four years behind other young people. As a result, they obtain college degrees at only half the rate of more affluent students. Demographic data reveals that African-American and Latino students from low-income neighborhoods will be responsible for the future vitality of the U.S. economy.”

Sound familiar? The demographics aren’t quite the same but we suffer the same educational disconnect in West Virginia.

We can talk all we want about tort reform, repairing Workers’ Compensation and promoting West Virginia businesses and tourism. All of those are wonderful goals. But West Virginia will struggle until we start sending our underclass to college.

Higher-achieving students – who almost always possess a decent standard of living – go on to college, with or without assistance from Promise scholarships or aid programs. They get their degrees and depart for greener pastures elsewhere. It’s the epitome of a vicious cycle, one that keeps poor West Virginians stuck here with little hope.

What’s the solution? Let’s return to the opening excerpt.

It comes from the Web site of Project GRAD (Graduating Really Achieves Dreams), a non-profit effort that originated in Houston, Texas. Project Grad is the brainchild of James Ketelsen, a Houston, Texas businessman and philanthropist who saw the same widening gap in his city that we observe in West Virginia.

Ketelsen, with help from both public and private associates, developed an intervention program spanning kindergarten through 12^th grade. Ketelsen looked for both curriculum changes and family support that would decrease the dropout rate and improve the percentage of college-going students in inner-city Houston.

The businessman started his program in 1988. By 1991, the number of Davis High School graduates entering college had quadrupled. Davis is a high school on the city’s Near North Side. Project Grad has now expanded to twelve urban school districts in eight states.

We need something similar – or identical – here. West Virginia stands once again at a crossroads. The modest economic gains of the 1990s have eroded with the loss of thousands of good-paying manufacturing and industrial jobs. A dearth of available, college-educated workers has no doubt contributed to the problem.

In many cases, the folks now out of work have nothing to fall back on. What jobs exist in our economy require a higher education. The good old days of settling in right out of high school for a long career in the chemical or coal mining industries are long gone.

The same will of course hold true for those graduating high school now. More of our young people simply must go on to college. But they can’t if they’re not prepared.

Being prepared means early mastery of language and math skills. It means taking courses designed to challenge students who otherwise might pick the path of least resistance.

These steps need to be taken before the ninth grade. Project GRAD statistics show that ninth grade is too late to start.

A critic might wonder why I’m so eager to educate students if they’re destined to leave for jobs elsewhere. They won’t have to leave if we prove to industry that an educated workforce exists here. Build it and they will come.

Certainly, scholarships should not be doled out through quotas and entitlements. Neither is it ideal to make higher education a self-perpetuating commodity, bestowed largely on those already fortunate enough to grow up with certain blessings.

As your State Treasurer, I witness first-hand our educational struggles and their effects on the state’s ability to pay our bills. Surely any elected official is concerned.

Maybe this issue is dear to me because I speak from experience. If it weren’t for the support of a few key people and a brother who tutored me I might have also fallen through the cracks. I did not come from a “college” background.

That’s why Project GRAD has such value. Inner-city children are not the only kids educationally crippled by socioeconomics.

Plenty of diamonds remain in our rugged terrain, sparkling kids waiting to be unearthed.