Targeting an Achievement Gap in One of the Country's Most Educated Metros

This week, The Atlantic Cities has partnered with the Brookings-Rockefeller Project on State and Metropolitan Innovation to explore local solutions to national problems. You can find the rest of the series here.

Over the past two decades, the Puget Sound area’s innovation-driven economy has become a magnet for highly educated people from across the country and around the world. Drawn to the region by some of the nation’s most innovative companies—Microsoft, Boeing, Nintendo, Amazon, Genentech and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, to name a few—the Puget Sound region ranks well on measures of educational attainment. Of the nation’s largest 100 metro areas, the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area is 11th in bachelor’s degree holders and 17th in graduate degree attainment.