This second report on the State of Opportunity in America is based on a research initiative launched in 2017 when the Center for Advancing Opportunity (CAO) was created through a partnership between Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF), the Charles Koch Foundation and Koch Industries, and in collaboration with Gallup, to give voice to members of “fragile communities” (FCs) across the country.
The goal is to help fulfill CAO’s mission of moving people living in fragile communities from promise to prosperity. CAO addresses that mission through three pillars of focus: ensuring all students have access to quality education, identifying barriers to entrepreneurship and job growth and supporting research to better understand and solve challenges within the criminal justice system. CAO has made investments to establish three research centers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs): 1) The Center for the Study of Economic Mobility at Winston Salem State University, 2) The Center for Justice Research at Texas Southern University and 3) The Center for Educational Opportunity at Albany State University.