The alarm sounded during the '90s: America's educational system was under capacity and overwhelmed. The national economy was evolving in dramatic ways, the demand for skilled workers was escalating, and millions of uneducated people were pouring into cities to find jobs. America's educational system, circa 1895, was ill-equipped to produce qualified workers in adequate numbers.

More than a century later, the pace of change has escalated again. And once again, the country's educational system is misaligned with the demands of that change. A century ago, the national economy was evolving from agrarian to industrial, and manufacturers were demanding workers with critical skills—not the least of which was the capacity to adapt from farm to factory. The best way to transform field hands into an urban, assembly-line workforce? High school. It would take 50 years, however, before a majority of the country's K-12 students would earn a high school diploma.

These days, we don't have decades to get it right, experts say. Old-line manufacturing jobs have automated or moved offshore, the country's immigrant population is swelling, and the dizzying pace of advancement has dramatically raised the bar for technological literacy. In the past decade or so, we have abandoned forever our old analog world and embraced a digital existence of ubiquitous cell phones, cheap computing power, wireless Internet, cloning, iPods, nanotechnology and genetically altered soybeans. What would those 1890s farmers think?

The world is spinning faster, and, in the vernacular coined by best-selling author and columnist Thomas L. Friedman, it is getting flatter. Americans who once competed among themselves for good jobs and economic supremacy are now vying against competitors from China, India, Pakistan, the Ukraine and other distant points. Anyone with a high IQ, marketable skills and Internet access is a contender on the global economic playing field.

In an era of velocity – fast connections, next-day delivery, instant messaging – the fastest-growing segments of the American population are the least-well served by an educational system that plods along like the clackety relics of the Industrial Revolution.

Immigrants and their first-generation children, people of color, the poor, sons and daughters of parents who didn’t attend college, non-English speakers, and people from other groups that are less likely than average to get an adequate education represent an ever larger portion of the nation’s population. Failure to make education accessible and attainable for them could result in a new underclass that will be mired in a cycle of intractable cross-generational poverty. Moreover, the nation will face predictable consequences: shortages of knowledge workers, slowed economic growth and loss of global competitiveness.

A leading indicator of the problem is the state of K-12 instruction and the gulf between it and postsecondary education. A high school diploma is no longer an indicator of meaningful educational attainment, college preparedness or suitability for a decent-paying job with growth potential. Yet even that modest level of academic accomplishment eludes many. Nationally, more than 30 percent of ninth-graders fail to earn a high school diploma, and only one in five earns a four-year college degree within six years of high school graduation.

“The truth is, we are in a crisis now, but it is a crisis that is unfolding very slowly and very quietly,” writes Friedman in The World Is Flat, a trenchant analysis of global economic trends and, for many, a manifesto for change. “This quiet crisis involves the steady erosion of America’s scientific and engineering base, which has always been the source of American innovation and our rising standard of living. ... For the first time in more than a century, the United States could well find itself falling behind other countries in the capacity for scientific discovery, innovation and economic development.”

The Trends in International Mathematics and Science study, which in 2003 tested 500,000 students from 41 countries, found that 44 percent of eighth-graders in Singapore scored at the most advanced level in math. In the U.S., just 7 percent of students scored that well, the study showed.

The United States ranks 17th in the world in the number of 18- to 24-year-olds who earn science degrees, down from No. 3 three decades ago, Friedman reports, citing data collected by the National Science Board (NSB). In China, 59 percent of all bachelor’s degrees are awarded in science and engineering. The equivalent figure in the United States is about 32 percent.

Often, the die is cast early in a student’s academic career. The NSB found that engineers and scientists who enter the workforce with advanced degrees had opted in middle school – some 14 years earlier – to take the courses that would enable them to tread such a demanding career path.

Yet many students lack the resources to make wise choices and persist in their educational pursuits. Many barriers impede academic attainment, including insufficient financial resources, poor academic preparation, cultural norms and inadequate information about the college-going process. The lack of reliable information derails students at each phase of the process. Without knowledgeable parents, engaged guidance counselors or other effective mentors, students simply fail to take the steps to become educated.

Overcoming obstacles – academic, attitudinal, financial, informational – that bar the doors of college for poor, non-white children from undereducated families is a stiff challenge. “You almost have to double and triple your efforts for this population to have a chance,” says David W. Breneman, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

The convergence of several disturbing trends – rising tuition, Pell grants’ eroding purchasing power, reduced state support of higher education, students’ increasing reliance on loans, and growing populations of low-income, minority and other “at-risk” students – looks to Breneman “like a train wreck.”

Still, there is precedent for responding to such challenges. In the late 1940s, the GI Bill paved the way for millions of veterans to attend college. Two decades later, the federal student loan program began to open the doors of college for even more Americans. And more recently, prompted by a creeping crisis of access in the 1960s, educational leaders created the community college system to provide educational opportunity for millions of baby boomers reaching college age.

Today’s college students face a different challenge of perhaps even greater proportion. For underserved students in particular, access to and success in higher education requires unflagging vigilance to pre-college preparation. To be most effective, preparation should begin in middle school. Thousands of programs throughout the country are trying to help these students prepare academically, financially, socially and logistically.

Models vary, but many take a holistic, comprehensive approach that seeks to involve entire communities in the education of children. From the traditionally Hispanic border states in the West to newly emerging communities of Mexican and South American immigrants in the South, from the inner-city housing projects in the North to enclaves of poor whites in Appalachia and elsewhere, these programs seek to alter the trajectory of lives and thereby change a nation.

“If we don’t do something out of the ordinary,” Breneman says, “we are going to consign a very significant percentage of this next generation of young people to third-class citizenship.”