Last Friday I watched as my daughter and 400 of her classmates celebrated their graduation from Ballard High School in Seattle. Their commencement was proof of the power of public education in our state.

The graduates reflected the color and diversity of our state’s cities. Ballard’s principal announced that this graduating class was one of the best he has ever known. They bring purposefulness to their lives and ours.

The ceremony was both serious and festive. It began with a moment of silence for Daniel Chavez, a 2003 Ballard graduate who was killed in Iraq earlier this month. It included a speech that encouraged the graduates to not just go along, but to ask questions and to be active citizens in our democracy.

Both messages are evidence of a trend among young people whose lives have been imprinted by Sept. 11. They have a strong impulse toward civic engagement.

The entire country experienced the same heightened sense of solidarity and shared lives after Sept. 11, but for almost all of us those feelings have fallen off, replaced by political and social antagonism, and individual indifference. But young people have bucked this trend and are sustaining a belief in civic engagement.

The young Marine from Ballard killed in Iraq gave his life for his country. The Ballard students marching in anti-war demonstrations are not turning their backs on the conflict, but engaging themselves in trying to end it. That, too, is crucial civic engagement.

A majority of Ballard graduates are going on with their education and training. Forty-eight percent are heading to four-year colleges and universities, 33 percent are going to community and technical colleges and 1 percent to the military.

The drive of Ballard students is not the exception. Washington’s elementary and middle school students have again exceeded the national average in the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, this year by 12 percentage points. A much higher proportion of fourth-graders in our state passed the WASL math test last year than in 1997.

But the increase in achievement – from 21 percent to 60 percent – is overshadowed by the fact that two in five still did not make the grade on this test. More 10th-graders passed the WASL writing test last year than in 1999, but more than a third still failed to make the grade. And while the percentage of 10th-graders passing the WASL math test increased in the double digits, more than half of them still failed this test.

So while it is important to celebrate the achievements of high school graduates this year, it is not enough to rest on our laurels and say we are doing a great job. In this era of globalization and competition, in which India and China can compete with us in training engineers, technicians and entrepreneurs for the 21st century, doing OK is not good enough. Especially when we are educating only a small proportion of our children for the world of high-tech globalization and are leaving too many of them behind from the start.

Our place in the world will rest on brainpower. If we want to compete, we have to give our children the skills to compete. Our democracy is based on an informed and thinking citizenry. If we want to renew our democracy, we must educate our kids in the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic and critical thinking. Our children – all of them – deserve the opportunity to learn and succeed. If we want to give them this chance, we have to invest in them now.

The Legislature made a strong commitment to education in fully funding Initiative 728 to reduce classroom sizes and Initiative 732 to enable teachers’ pay to keep up with inflation. It added more slots in the state’s colleges and universities.

That’s a start, but not good enough.

School budgets in Seattle, Tacoma and around the state are being pared back. Funding for kindergarten is being trimmed, and electives such as music are on the chopping block. If we are to give our children their rightful future, if we want to celebrate the success of the graduating class of 2015, we have to invest in their education now. That’s what civic engagement is all about.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.