1. expanding and restoring opportunity in america
Toward a More Perfect Union:
STRATEGY MEMO

2. introduction
Income inequality in the United States has grown significantly since the early 1970s, after several decades
of stability…. While inequality has risen among most developed countries, and especially English-speaking
ones, it is highest in the United States.
Most of the growth [in inequality] has been between the middle class and top earners, with the disparity
becoming more extreme the further one goes up in the income distribution. A 2011 study by the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the top earning 1 percent of households increased their
income by about 275% after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007,
compared to a gain of just under 40% for the 60 percent in the middle of America’s income distribution….
In 2012, the gap between the richest 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent was the widest it’s been since
the 1920s. Incomes of the wealthiest 1 percent rose nearly 20 percent, whereas the income of the remaining
99 percent rose 1 percent in comparison.
Source: Wikipedia
The fact that economic inequality exists in America is not in dispute. Neither is there much of an argument
over the fact that such inequality is on the increase in our society. What is being debated are the causes and
the societal impacts of such inequality, as well as what to do about it. Interestingly—and a matter of some
encouraging note—is the fact that people on both the political left and political right, as well as scholars
of differing ideological bents and areas of expertise, agree that inequality and inequity should not go
unaddressed.
No less a conservative politician than Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), has said:
“The American Idea belongs to all of us---inherited from our nation’s Founders, preserved by the countless
sacrifices of our veterans, and advanced by visionary leaders, past and present. What makes America
exceptional—what gives life to the American Idea—is our dedication to the self-evident truth that we
are all created equal, giving us equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that means
opportunity.” (November, 2011)
Liberals, moderates and at least some conservatives were encouraged recently Pope Francis, in major
statement on the theological underpinnings of his faith’s social gospel, wrote:
“The many situations of inequality, poverty, and injustice are signs not only of profound lack of fraternity,
but also the absence of a culture of solidarity. New ideologies, characterized by rampant individualism,
egocentrism and materialistic consumerism, weaken social bonds, fueling that “throw away” mentality
which leads to contempt for, and the abandonment of, the weakest and those considered ‘useless’.”
And to the extent people have thought about this issue of economic inequality, they have also come to
realize that is something that goes beyond any simple if difficult to achieve question of “fairness.” No, it
also has—as the Pope reminded us—social and cultural ramifications, as well as educational and civic ones.
And it is the matter of education which first captures the attention of ETS, and that essentially requires us

3. to delve into the larger issues involved.
Since its founding in 1947, ETS has become the largest educational assessment organization in the world.
It is also, arguably, the most widely respected educational research organization in the world, and as such
attracts scholars and students from every corner of the globe. Its research has permitted ETS to develop and
market a wide array of educational tools and tests, used from pre-school to graduate study, while also giving
it unique and valuable insights into the teaching/learning process, and helping shine a light on those factors
that impede teaching and inhibit learning.
As a non-profit organization, ETS has always taken its social mission seriously, and this project represents a
continuation of that tradition, albeit with much more far-reaching and potentially consequential elements
than with which ETS has ever been associated before. This undertaking, which comes on the heels of two
previous and ground-breaking reports—America’s Perfect Storm1 and Fault Lines in our Democracy 2—
will be unique in three critical ways:
• In addition to holding true to ETS’ time honored and even sacred regard for unbiased and
rigorous research, the work of this project will not be merely quantified and written down in some dry
and seldom read report. Communicating findings, conclusions and recommendations will occur via
multiple outlets and channels, including video, on-line, and in print.
• Second, in addition to deep dives into the extent and the causes of inequity in America
(educational, economic, social, political and civic), the report(s) emanating from our research will also
suggest solutions and remedies—public and private—aimed at reducing if not altogether eliminating
evident and preventable inequalities.
• Finally, this project will not only communicate its research and its recommendations, but it will
seek to rally opinion leader and public opinion behind them.
Beyond the extensive and probing research mentioned above it is essential that ETS:
• Articulate and communicate the findings and recommendations in a compelling fashion; and,
• Identify, motivate and organize key constituencies in order to actually do something about them.
To accomplish these goals, as ambitious as they are, requires an understanding of and a commitment to an
intellectually sound and strategically coherent theory of societal change.

4. communities of change
Today’s world and the nations that comprise it face multiple, huge and seemingly intractable problems.
Climate change, energy sufficiency, global financial instability, terrorism, pandemics, mass starvation
and political upheaval are just a few of the long list of crises that populate our newspapers, the television
airwaves and web channels. The number, frequency and severity of such crises is—literally—mind
numbing.
Not surprisingly, because they are confronted constantly with a bombardment of one crisis after another,
citizens have developed a new syndrome: crisis fatigue. Overwhelmed with the size and scope of the
problems, we ask ourselves: What—if anything—can we really do about this? How can a single individual
make a real impact on any one of these problems, let alone all of them, while also holding down a job,
managing family life, and enjoying even a modest social life?
As the onslaught of problems continues we become, as a society, and as individuals, increasingly passive,
impotent, and disengaged. We may want to engage, to help, but the problem is just too large, the solutions
too vague, the environment too complex to navigate successfully. Instead, we are given to scapegoating, to
affixing blame—on government, on corporations, on social institutions, basically on someone else.
The result is a society resigned to fate, but still a society that is at times angry, at times withdrawn, at times
cynical. Things just aren’t working, and they are getting worse.
What we seem to have forgotten, in this world of mass media and partisan political warfare is that large
problems have never been solved solely by governments or large institutions. They are rarely solved by
impassioned speeches, and never have they been solved by a clever 30 or 60 second television commercial.
Here it is helpful to recall the words of two great citizens of the 20th century, anthropologist Margaret
Mead and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Mead wrote:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the
only thing that ever has.”
And Kennedy, speaking in 1966 to a large crowd of students in Cape Town South Africa, a country still in
the awful grasp of racial apartheid, said
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against
injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and those ripples build a current which can sweep down the
mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
In those two statements we are reminded of a fundamental reality about change—what it takes and why it
happens. The issue of income or wealth inequality, just like other large scale societal problems will be solved
piece by piece, bit by bit, over time, by individual people who assemble themselves into communities,
communities that take action, on a human scale, that solve problems at the local/micro level. Other

5. individuals and communities who see and are inspired by these actions replicate them, and a kind of social
chemical reaction takes place that spreads change virally.
In the private sector it is instructive to look at three companies that have had a transformative effect on our
economy and on our lives: Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. Each of these companies started in obscurity,
by individuals looking to solve a problem. Although they ended up changing the world, that wasn’t their
original ambition; instead all they were trying to do was meet an unmet need.
Yet their visions were radical, long term, and paradigm shifting. None of them had the support, in the
beginning, of the traditional sources of capital. What they all had were practical, scale-able, ideas that
actually worked. They created communities around their ideas and their purpose, and people saw what
they were doing and joined their ever widening communities.
This method of change is certainly not new, and neither is it attractive to the arbiters of public tastes or
action on cable TV or the Internet; it doesn’t fit nicely into sound bites in the continuous 24/7 news cycle.
Instead, it requires patience and a long term outlook. It requires that ideology be replaced by the practical,
a focus on what actually works in the world. It requires looking for, and supporting, the outliers, the
individuals whose vision transcends and shifts the current paradigm.

6. purpose statement
As described above, the problems associated with and exacerbated by extreme and growing economic
inequality are so massive, so complex and so daunting that the first impulse is to recite the so-called
“serenity prayer” attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr: “God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
In fact, individually, not many of us can do much—if anything—to mitigate the income inequalities or
maldistribution of wealth in America. Surely, the wealthiest among us can contribute to worthy causes,
or endow scholarships, or otherwise be generous with products of our good fortune. CEOs and corporate
directors can adopt policies that bring greater equilibrium to pay scales, salaries, benefits and corporate
ownership. Political figures can do more to try to engage the most alienated and disenfranchised among
the citizenry. And educators can do a lot more to remove what President George W. Bush called the “soft
bigotry of low expectations” from our schools and classrooms. All of those things—and more—can and
should be done, to be sure.
But inequality will remain, and unless things change substantially in our society, it will grow in severity.
Some sort of systemic change is required--and here we are not talking about socialism versus capitalism or
any other revolutionary alteration in either our political or economic systems! Instead we are talking about
“expanding and ensuring opportunity in America.” What, in other words, can be done through public
policy, corporate practices, and educational programs that will make it more possible for more people to
succeed in their own “pursuit of happiness?”
One person at a time—one man, one woman, one worker, one executive, one student, one teacher,
one voter, one politician, one artist, one patron, one reporter, one reader—one person, one group,
one audience, one class—at a time is the organizational design of this project. It is at once modest and
audacious, simple and complex, obvious and challenging.
In summary form, it is our goal to spark the design, development and mobilization of a transformational
community—a coalition of caring, knowledgeable and engaged constituencies—that will have a significant
impact on expanding and ensuring opportunity in America. In order to achieve this, ETS will:
1. Identify and articulate, through an active research process, the societal forces that are causing inequality
and inequities in our society, including.
• Demographic Forces
• Globalization Forces
• Education Related Forces
• Workforce Related Forces
• Corporate Governance Forces
2. Articulate the consequences of leaving these forces unaddressed, chief among them are the loss of
opportunity and social mobility in America, as well increases in civic disengagement and alienation.

7. 3. Identify and articulate the counter forces and positive interventions that can reverse growing inequality
and ensure the prospect opportunity in our society.
4. Develop data driven policies and recommendations that, if implemented, will serve to amplify and
strengthen these counter forces and positive interventions
5. Develop a narrative, and an accompanying narrative/events-based strategy, which is designed to create an
ever widening community, the purpose of which will be to communicate these policy recommendations to
opinion leaders and decision makers in both the private and public sectors.

8. the web as one
At its most basic levels, however complex and ambitious, the ETS “opportunities project” consists of three
foundational elements:
• Research
• Communications (of the research findings)
• Organizing (around the findings and proposed remedies)
In the “old days” (e.g. before the advent of the World Wide Web and the Internet—way, way back in the
early 1990s, a far distant two decades ago!), all three of these elements would be conducted separately, even
if integrated. But, now in a project such as this one they can and should be conducted simultaneously,
interdependently, strategically and organically. For example, every researcher should see him or herself as
a communicator and an organizer. And the organizers will provide—or should provide—data in the form
of feedback. It will be, in fact, a closed if ever-expanding loop (see the 2012 Obama campaign as a perfect
example of this principle in action).
The ETS “opportunities project” will use all means—traditional and new—of data acquisition, analysis
and dissemination available to it. Similarly, communications of the findings to the “communities”—the
interested constituencies—will employ both “old” and “new” media and methods. Organizing will occur
via coalition building and the old-fashioned one-on-one “shoe leather” type.
But it will be different in one hugely important and fundamental way: the Web and the Internet won’t
simply serve as an “add on,” or as one tool in the toolbox. Instead, the effort will be Web-centric. The web
may be the only way—it certainly is the most cost efficient way—of identifying, reaching and penetrating
the concentric circles of interested constituencies, what will become our community of change. No
other means, absent a massive, expensive and virtually unmanageable ground movement (the “Occupy”
movement x a thousand-plus), can do what can be done via the web to inform, persuade, enroll, motivate
and deploy a vast network of advocates and activists.
Today’s technology allows us to reach people regardless of where they live, work or recreate. We can send
them—and they can send us and each other—documents, text messages and videos. If email and text
messaging can lead to mass rallies in Cairo or Kiev, or fuel an insurgent Presidential campaign on behalf
of a young black Senator from Illinois, or spur a spontaneous, huge snowball fight in Dupont Circle, it
ought to be able to help lead to a movement against inequality of opportunity and inequity in outcomes in
American society.
Among other things, this will require the design and construction of a visually attractive, operationally
robust and easily navigable hub or portal, a place or a vehicle where vast amounts of information can be
collected and disseminated, where debate and discussion can be conducted, where advocates can persuade
and recruit, and from which activists can be deployed. The hub will be, both symbolically and in fact,
the centerpiece—the core—of the project. Nothing—literally nothing—should be undertaken during the
course of the project without the utilization of the “hub” in mind.