The role of education in promoting opportunity and economic growth

The Hamilton Project, launched last year at Brookings to advance economic strategies and policy options, examined the full spectrum of early childhood, K-12, and higher education, and ways to promote opportunity and growth through our nation’s education system.

On March 29, 2007, the Project had two panel discussions that featured recent strategy and discussion papers by affiliated scholars and experts. The first panel explored a strategy paper outlining why education policy must be crafted in a way that is most responsive to proven research evidence and that emphasizes both new investments and structural reforms. This panel also highlighted three discussion papers, released in February, offering specific proposals for enhanced investments in education. The papers focus on providing intensive preschool for disadvantaged children, simplifying the process for college tuition loans, and changing the tax code to make student loan repayments more affordable.

The second panel explored overall challenges to America’s education system, including what the nation needs to achieve its full potential in today’s competitive, global environment.

The panelists were Hamilton Project Advisory Council Member Lawrence H. Summers of Harvard University; Kati Haycock, Director of The Education Trust; James Heckman, University of Chicago economics Professor and 2000 Nobel Memorial Prize winner; Jens Ludwig, Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow and Georgetown University public policy Professor; Joel Klein, Chancellor of the New York City Schools; and Harvard Professors Susan Dynarski and Thomas Kane. Jason Furman, Hamilton Project Director and Brookings Senior Fellow, and Judy Feder, Dean of the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, moderated the panels.