Earlier this week I had the privilege of visiting Citizens’ Academy, a Cleveland-based non-profit charter school for students in grades K-5. Followers of TechFutures know how excited we were when ECITY’s John Zitzner decided to open up Entrepreneurship Prep, a not-for-profit charter school affiliated with the Cleveland Municipal School District that will eventually serve inner city children in grades 6-12.

Add to that efforts such as Fenn Academy, which Ed Morrison recently wrote about on Brewed Fresh Daily and you have, well, still not enough.

An educated citizenry is the single most important tool for rebuilding our region’s economy. No factor correlates more closely to an increase in per capita income than educational attainment. And while the US may still hold a leadership position in many higher education research fields, our greatest challenge is in getting our own kids prepared to take advantage of those higher ed assets. If you don’t even graduate from high school, being surrounded by great colleges won’t help you one bit.

While many non-US citizens come to the US to take advantage of our university resources (and many of these then leave to return home, taking the knowledge they’ve acquired and any future economic spillovers with them), far too many of our own citizens never even make it through high school. Sadly, many of those who do graduate from US high schools find they are ill prepared for US college life—“graduation” shouldn’t mean turning 18 while still reading at a fourth-grade level.

It is important for the tech community to support higher education and the research efforts that are housed there. But it is even more important that we support and become actively involved in improving our primary and secondary educational system so that we have a truly educated citizenry.