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The role of education in promoting opportunity and economic growth

Thursday, March 29, 2007

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.

Agenda

Panel Discussion

Susan M. Dunarski
Harvard University

Thomas J. Kane
Harvard University

Isabel Sawhill
Co-Director, Center on Children and Families, Cabot Family Chair
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, The Brookings Institution

Moderator: Jason Furman
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies Program
Director, The Hamilton Project

Panel Discussion

Kati Haycock
Director, The Education Trust

James Heckman
Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
2000 Nobel Memorial Prize Winner

Joel Klein
Chancellor, New York City Schools

Lawrence H. Summers
Hamilton Project Advisory Council Member
Harvard University

Moderator: Judy Feder
Dean, Georgetown Public Policy Institute