DATE: Saturday, October 25, 1997            TAG: 9710230018

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   30 lines

VIRGINIA GETS JOBS-CENTERS GRANT SEEK EMPLOYMENT HERE

Thanks to information technology, employers soon will be able to post job openings that Virginia job hunters can access through their home or workplace computers or at 39 designated Virginia Employment Commission offices. Workers can find out, too, where to train for jobs for which training is necessary.

Workers will learn which jobs are available and where. Employers will learn swiftly who might fill them. A three-year, $11 million grant from the U.S. Labor Department is bringing the electronic job marketplace to Virginia. The grant was won by the business-friendly Allen administration, which for crackbrained ideological reasons resisted accepting federal Goals 2000 funds for education that are now earmarked for classroom technology.

The resistance was clearly misguided since computers are everywhere. Youngsters who grow up not knowing how to use computers will be disadvantaged. Virginia has too few workers with the skills to perform post-industrial jobs.

Instead, Virginia schoolchildren score below the national average on academic tests. Too many leave high school without basic knowledge and skills. Too few finish college. Employers complain of the shortage of Virginians able to take new-era jobs.

So three cheers for the electronic job marketplace, but it will avail us little if Virginia schools don't start turning out more graduates able to win the well-paying jobs that require information-technology skills.

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