Read excerpts from more than 275 articles; most are available to download

In 1992, Yoshiro Sakurachi, Japan's equivalent to our Speaker of the House, created a stir by saying that the reason for America's poor economic performance was because one-third of American workers could not read and the schools were bad.

While Sakurachi's statement was far too simplistic, it did provide a valuable service by directing our attention to an important point -- that excellence in education is essential for excellence in business. And, to carry the point one step further, quality education is critical to a community's economic well-being. Businesses (especially those thriving in today's information age) look for communities where they can find a high caliber work force.

The bottom line: quality education is important to cities and towns as they seek to attract, retain, and develop businesses.

Sometimes we act as though the money we spend for schools is a burden keeping our communities from prospering. In some places, local officials seem to think they're better off sacrificing educational dollars in order to provide tax incentives to induce businesses to move to their city or town. In fact, education expenditures can be a community's best investment in the future.

In the "good old days," a worker was seldom asked to think logically beyond pushing button "A" after bolting on part "121B." Workers now stand shoulder to shoulder with robots; the keyboard is replacing the wrench; and the computer is commonplace.

Indeed, many large businesses are providing remedial education for their employees. Unable to find the quality of worker their businesses demand, they need to create a workforce meeting their needs.

People in business, people who want to recruit or develop new businesses, and people interested in the future of their communities -- including members of local planning boards and commissions -- have a huge stake in the outcome of the educational process. Too often we have considered schools as the exclusive province of the school board and of interest just to students and their parents. We all must be involved. Schools belong to the community. It takes the whole community to ensure that the product is of high quality. Most education professionals welcome community support and understanding. Education is too important to be ignored.

The involvement of the community can be most effective at the point of policy development. Some communities provide "partnership programs" which involve students visiting local businesses and business people visiting classrooms. While these programs have value, they will fall short if they represent the only effort for integrating the community into the educational process.

An essential first step is to develop a broader strategy for how our schools can help educate students so that they can meet the needs of today's businesses. To help articulate this, the educational establishment must draw on the intelligence and ideas of people involved in local economic development and in successful businesses.

A growing number of cities and towns have established community advisory committees including a broad spectrum of interests. Such a committee does not replace any of the legal functions of the local school board, but adds insights to the board's work and a sense of the investment the community must make in order to produce a workforce capable of meeting the needs of the future.

Almost every community believes it has "the best schools in the state." It's time for us to put aside our community pride and take a long hard look at the quality of the students we are graduating, and the work force we are producing.