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The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has covered former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise's comment on the looming education crisis. You need homework help for college to be a subscriber to read the entire article, but I have cut and pasted it for you. Wise was speaking at The Digital Education Seminar, hosted by Greg Kaza and the Arkansas Policy Foundation in Little Rock, Arkansas earlier this week.

The report in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette concentrates on Wise's remarks about Arkansas's economy, but in addition, it cites most of Wise's smart gifts to the education reform debate, such as that online education provides more flexible, more affordable, and performance-enhancing alternatives for all kinds of learners. Presently, Arkansas has a limit on virtual schools, restricting only 500 students to attend the courses, but all pupil can search term papers in different online providers.

Story follows :

High-school dropouts are costing Arkansas new jobs, higher wages, home purchases and better healthcare those folks would bring to the country when they obtained a diploma, the former governor of West Virginia said Tuesday.

The country will lose more than $2.8 billion in lifetime earnings and $93.7 million in health-care prices from the 11,000 students who dropped from Arkansas high schools last year alone, said Bob Wise, currently president of the Washington-based nonprofit Alliance for Excellent Education.

A better-educated population would attract businesses, create new jobs, generate more tax dollars, and improve the nation's national and economic security, he said.

"It's no longer an issue of whether we want our children to be successful.

Education is at a "crossroads," and what happens over the next several months will decide the future of education for many years to come, Wise said.

No Child Left Behind has helped set national education targets and direct federal funds, but after 10 years, it's outdated, Wise said.

There's also a need to boost funding for education, especially at the middle and high school levels, and discover ways to aid underperforming schools, Wise said.

If 1,300 of the 2,600 students who dropped out in 2008 had stayed in school, they would make a combined $13 million annually, meaning an additional $8.8 million in spending and $2.9 million in investments to the region's economy.

"In many years, we desperately want each these children working at a higher level for the good of our state, and at this time, they desperately want us," he said.

At the forum on online education, Wise said America must better incorporate online learning in the classroom if the country hopes to enhance its education system into the 21st century.

It's a crisis that's threefold: Funding for education is declining, there's a nationwide teacher shortage, and graduation rates are abysmal. And Internet-based learning a part of the solution.

"We don't have any choice but to change," Wise said.

While state funding nationally for education increased between 2005 and 2008, it declined by about 2 percent in 2009 and by about 4 percent this year due to the recession, Wise said.

In Wisconsin, which has a big digital school system, the typical per-pupil cost is $6,500 in the digital system, Wise said.

"And most important, you aren't sacrificing quality."

Internet-based learning may also help the nation address the impending teacher shortage.

Wise said one-third of the country's teachers will be eligible to retire in the next five to seven decades.

Already, there's a shortage of math and science teachers. For some rural and inner-city schools, it's nearly impossible to recruit highly qualified teachers in these areas, he said.

In Georgia, as an instance, there are 440 high schools but only 88 certified physics teachers working in the state.

Digital learning can put highly qualified teachers in every classroom, irrespective of how remote the schools are.

Pickens High School in rural West Virginia -- which recently had just two graduating seniors -- can't draw in a fulltime Spanish teacher. Instead, the school teaches students Spanish via the Net.

"I asked the principal, 'how can you teach Spanish here?' He said, 'I have one of the greatest Spanish teachers in the nation. She's in San Antonio, and she's a native speaker,''' Wise said. Online learning may also bolster graduation rates, Wise said.

Only 50 percent of America's college students are graduating within six decades, Wise said, even though 62 percent of jobs today require some amount of postsecondary education.

Online learning can boost graduation rates by allowing students to find out more at their own speed.

Students are also more likely to be motivated to learn via technology, since so many young individuals are accustomed to wielding technology outside of schools, Wise said.

"I've been brought into online learning because I have looked at a few of these essential issues, and I've realized that we simply can't do what we will need to do in education without it," he said.

Internet-based instruction is already a part of Arkansas' educational system.

Some traditional Arkansas schools use Internet-based instruction to teach elective courses which they couldn't otherwise offer.

The Arkansas Virtual Academy, a public online charter school, also allows about 500 kindergarten through-eighth-grade students to take classes over the Internet out of their homes.