WHO WE ARE

Opportunity America is a Washington think tank and policy shop promoting economic mobility – work, skills, careers, ownership and entrepreneurship for poor and working Americans.

Restoring robust economic mobility is among the most urgent challenges facing the nation today. Our current approach dates back more than 50 years to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty – a strategy that made a difference in its day but is no longer enough.

What’s needed is a new conversation: a new vocabulary, new voices from new places on the political spectrum, a new broader climate of concern – and a new national push to enhance opportunity.

Opportunity America is devoted to filling this gap, funneling ideas into the policy process and building consensus around a new agenda.

WHAT WE DO

The organization’s principal activities are research, policy development, dissemination of policy ideas and working to build consensus around policy proposals.

Among the top issues on our agenda: working-class decline, career education, community college reform, career-focused charter schools and immigrant entrepreneurship.

Recent projects have included convening a bipartisan working group of scholars and policy experts to develop solutions for the working class, editing a volume of the best new center-right thinking on poverty and mobility, a research paper on community colleges and workforce education and a roundtable session bringing together CTE charter school educators from around the country.

Opportunity America also manages a coalition of employers and employer associations working to improve policy on workforce issues. Its core goals: amplifying the employer voice on career education, creating space for partnerships between employers and educators and leveling the playing field to put workforce education more on a par with traditional academic instruction.