Tuesday is Election Day, and the most important vote you cast will be for people you almost never hear about: the members of your local school board.

It's your most important vote because the performance of our public schools is one of the most important determinants of our region's economic success.

Businesses won't create or retain jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania if they can't find workers who are proficient in basic skills. Although many people think that our region's workforce strength is determined by how many college graduates we have, the fact is that most jobs -- both now and for the foreseeable future -- will require a high school-level education and on-the-job training, not a college degree.

Unfortunately, a high school diploma in the Pittsburgh region doesn't necessarily mean that a student has the basic skills employers expect from a high school education. Pennsylvania State System of School Assessment test scores for 2011 show that more than 37 percent of our 11th-graders can't do math properly, and 26 percent can't read adequately. That means that southwestern Pennsylvania schools are sending more than 9,000 young people into the workforce every year without the minimum skills they need to get a job, much less go to college.

It's not just the high schools that are failing. The problem starts all the way back in elementary school. Nearly 30 percent of the fifth-graders in the region can't read at grade level, and more than 20 percent aren't proficient in math.

No business could survive if one-third of its products were defective, and our region can't be competitive in the global marketplace if one-third of our workforce lacks basic skills.

If you think the state tests may be too tough, think again. The National Assessment of Education Progress has found that Pennsylvania's standard for "proficiency" is only equivalent to what NAEP calls "basic" skills. Under the NAEP standard for proficiency, fewer than 50 percent of the elementary school students in our region would be considered proficient in either reading or math.

You might think that your own local school district is doing well because it proudly told the community it is meeting state standards for "adequate yearly progress," or "AYP." But a school can be classified as making "adequate yearly progress" even if one-third of its students are not proficient in math and one-fourth are not proficient in reading.