Center for American Progress

Contact Information:

Cynthia G. (Cindy) Brown
Director of Education Policy
Center for American Progress
1333 HStreet, NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
202-682-1611 x399
202-682-1867 Fax
cbrown@americanprogress.org

Description of Organization

The Center for American Progress, established in June 2003, is a nonpartisan research and educational institute with a four-fold mission to:

• Craft a progressive vision for America that best reflects the aspirations and interests of the American people;
• Generate progressive policy proposals that can root that vision in reality;
• Provide a thoughtful critique of conservative proposals and rhetoric; and
• Build a creative, far-reaching communications network that can help bring the national policy dialogue back into balance. 

In this context, the Center for American Progress is addressing the central domestic, economic, and international policy challenges that our country faces at the start of the twenty-first century. The Center is distinguished by (1) its commitment to linking communications with its policy work, in order to go beyond “idea development” and actually help shape national debate, and (2) its ability to distill key ideas from the work of experts in many fields, translate those ideas into actionable policy recommendations, and then deliver those recommendations into the hands of decision-makers, opinion leaders, and others who can help put such proposals into practice. 

Dropout Recovery Related
Projects and Publications

On August 23, 2005, the Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future National Task Force on Public Education, a joint initiative of the Center with the Institute for America’s Future, released its recommendations in a report entitled Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer: A Progressive Education Agenda for a Stronger Nation.  The four major recommendations were:

1. A three-part agenda to extend student learning time by

• Restructuring the education system through fundamental change in school days: extending the school day, reorganizing the school year, lengthening it in low performing school districts, and making better use of existing time in school
• Starting earlier with pre-school for all three and four-year-olds, beginning with low-income children and full-day kindergarten for all children
• Making post-secondary education affordable and available to all, including a Fast Track to College proposal, which assures more students are prepared for postsecondary education, and expanded Pell Grants

2. Setting high expectations through voluntary national standards and accountability, the beginnings of a discussion on funding challenges across states, and an aggressive agenda to expand school construction and modernization

3. Getting high-quality teachers into every classroom through better teacher preparation, revised and enhanced compensation structures, and a more equitable distribution of teachers

In December 2004, the Center published a paper it commissioned from Hilary Pennington, now a Senior Fellow at the Center, entitled Fast Track to College: Increasing Postsecondary Success for All Students.