How does a nation address the opportunity gap facing “rich kids and poor kids growing up in separate and unequal Americas, their fates increasingly and unfairly tied to their ‘choice’ of parents and the zip code in which they are born.”
In 2015, Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam launched the Closing the Opportunity Gap initiative to look for solutions through The Saguaro Seminar in Civic Engagement in America. With support from Carnegie Corporation of New York, the initiative convened five working groups of roughly a dozen of the country’s leading experts in each of five areas: family and parenting, early childhood, K-12 education, community institutions, and “on-ramps” such as community college or apprenticeships.
In March 2016, the groups issued the results of their research distilling the best evidence-based ideas for narrowing the inequality gaps in America and providing a more thorough understanding why fewer Americans today have the chance for upward mobility. Download the report.
