Robert Schwartz held a wide variety of leadership positions in education and government before joining the HGSE faculty in 1996. From 1997 to 2002, Schwartz also served as president of Achieve, Inc., an independent, bipartisan, nonprofit organization created by governors and corporate leaders to help states improve their schools. From 1990 to 1996, Schwartz directed the education grantmaking program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nation's largest private philanthropies. In addition to his work at HGSE, Achieve, and The Pew Charitable Trusts, Schwartz has been a high-school English teacher and principal; an education advisor to the mayor of Boston and the governor of Massachusetts; an assistant director of the National Institute of Education; a special assistant to the president of the University of Massachusetts; and executive director of The Boston Compact, a public-private partnership designed to improve access to higher education and employment for urban high-school graduates. Schwartz has written and spoken widely on topics such as standards-based reform, public-private partnerships, and the transition from high school to adulthood.

Degrees

• M.A., Brandeis University

• Board Member, Center for Education, National Academy of Science
• Board Member, The Education Trust
• Chair, Education Management Audit Council, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
• Trustee, The Noyce Foundation

• Phase II: Pathways to Prosperity, Pearson Foundation, (2011-2012)
  In the six weeks since its release, the Pathways to Prosperity report has sparked a much-needed conversation in the US about the “forgotten half.” While the strategy to increase college completion rates is certainly an admirable one, especially when coupled with increased attention to the link between college completion and the needs of the labor market, the report also highlighted an enormous challenge. If the college completion rate has been largely stuck at around 40% for the last decade, even if we can get it to 50% by 2020, what is our strategy helping for the other half of young people acquire the skills and labor market credentials they will need to be successful in our increasingly demanding economy? These young people come from middle class families as well as from underserved populations and regions of the country. Many have managed to complete high school and enroll in some form of postsecondary education, but because we lack clearly marked occupational pathways with sufficient information, guidance, and support, far too many people arrive at their mid-twenties with weak marketable skills and no credentials with currency in today’s labor market. We therefore seek a 16-month (May 1, 2011-August 31, 2012) planning and development grant to enable the project, in concert with one or more partner organizations, to launch a major national demonstration project in late 2012. We envision five sets of activities during this planning and development period. First, we need to be in a position to respond to the continuing demand for presentations, interviews, and op-eds. Second, in addition to responding to requests from the field, we need to begin a more intentional campaign to build understanding and support at the national level among key organizations and opinion leaders in the several sectors that are critical to making progress on the Pathways agenda. The third activity is to initiate some targeted research projects aimed at helping us better understand some of the challenges that must be overcome as the Pathways agenda moves forward. Fourth, and most important, we intend to work with a partner organization, Jobs for the Future, to design a major national demonstration project to build the institutions and pathways needed in states, districts, rural and metropolitan regions to support young people in moving from high school into postsecondary programs that promise much higher completion and job attainment rates. Our fifth activity during this planning phase will be to help this larger group of states organize themselves into a “Pathways Network.”
• Phase II: Pathways to Prosperity
  n the six weeks since its release, the Pathways to Prosperity report has sparked a much-needed conversation in the US about the “forgotten half.” While the strategy to increase college completion rates is certainly an admirable one, especially when coupled with increased attention to the link between college completion and the needs of the labor market, the report also highlighted an enormous challenge. If the college completion rate has been largely stuck at around 40% for the last decade, even if we can get it to 50% by 2020, what is our strategy helping for the other half of young people acquire the skills and labor market credentials they will need to be successful in our increasingly demanding economy? These young people come from middle class families as well as from underserved populations and regions of the country. Many have managed to complete high school and enroll in some form of postsecondary education, but because we lack clearly marked occupational pathways with sufficient information, guidance, and support, far too many people arrive at their mid-twenties with weak marketable skills and no credentials with currency in today’s labor market. We therefore seek a 16-month (May 1, 2011-August 31, 2012) planning and development grant to enable the project, in concert with one or more partner organizations, to launch a major national demonstration project in late 2012. We envision five sets of activities during this planning and development period. First, we need to be in a position to respond to the continuing demand for presentations, interviews, and op-eds. Second, in addition to responding to requests from the field, we need to begin a more intentional campaign to build understanding and support at the national level among key organizations and opinion leaders in the several sectors that are critical to making progress on the Pathways agenda. The third activity is to initiate some targeted research projects aimed at helping us better understand some of the challenges that must be overcome as the Pathways agenda moves forward. Fourth, and most important, we intend to work with a partner organization, Jobs for the Future, to design a major national demonstration project to build the institutions and pathways needed in states, districts, rural and metropolitan regions to support young people in moving from high school into postsecondary programs that promise much higher completion and job attainment rates. Our fifth activity during this planning phase will be to help this larger group of states organize themselves into a “Pathways Network.”
• The Forgotten Half (AKA Pathways to Prosperity Project., Nellie Mae Foundation, (2010-2011)
  Additional funds requested by the PI and granted. Funds to be used for dissemination activities as specified in the ongoing Pathways to Prosperity Project. See below .We propose to use the convening powers of the Harvard Graduate School of Education to bring together a kind of national board of directors to develop a bold new agenda for action – one aimed at substantially increasing the numbers of young adults who receive the education and training they need to succeed in the 21 st century. Once we have clearly defined the challenge, and prepared a proposed agenda for action, we plan to convene a National Summit of CEOs, Governors, educators, and nonprofit and foundation leaders to mount a campaign to convince the nation that we must adopt a more effective system for preparing our young adults to succeed in this century. This project will be led by Robert Schwartz, Academic Dean of the Graduate School of Education. While the project will be based at the Graduate School of Education, faculty members from throughout the university have expressed interest in participating in this important endeavor.
• Futures of School Reform, Spencer Foundation, (2009-2010)
  This initiative aims to spark an important and lacking national conversation about future directions for school reform. Our effort is motivated by two observations. First and most critically, we think that our current strategies are unlikely to achieve our goals of substantially altering longstanding inequalities of educational opportunity. We have made progress in some districts and states, and there is remarkable work being done in a fair number of schools, but sadly, the reality remains that significant improvement at scale has thus far proved out of our reach. Without a new or better strategy, this situation is unlikely to change. Second, in contrast to the last gathering of this type, the Pew Forum in 1990, there is no clear consensus on what direction would be most promising. The Pew meetings united a diverse set of actors behind standards-based reform; today there are a number of promising efforts underway, but no obviously preferable path.
• The Forgotten Half, James Irvine Foundation, (2008-2010)
  The goal is develop and then champion comprehensive solutions to the urgent national problem of the “forgotten half:” the huge percentage of young adults who arrive at the age of 25 without earning a meaningful post-secondary credential. Ultimately, the Forgotten Half project aims to substantially increase the numbers of young adults who receive the education and training they need to succeed in the 21st Century.
• The Forgotten Half, Nellie Mae Foundation, (2008-2010)
  The Forgotten Half Project aims to use the convening power of Harvard University to bring together a kind of national board of directors to develop a bold new agenda for action on this fundamental challenge. This board would include prominent American corporations, as well as foundations, business groups and educators who share a deep desire to help develop a more effective system for preparing our young adults to succeed in the 21st century. The initial planning meeting we held in late April illustrates the range of organizations prepared to join together in this work. That meeting was attended by Jeanette Harrison of American Express, as well prominent representatives from GE, Accenture and Boston Scientific. The American Society for Training and Development, the Conference Board and the Business Roundtable were also represented, as were the National Academy Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• Futures of School Reform, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, (2008-2011)
  This initiative aims to spark an important and lacking national conversation about future directions for school reform. Discussion of educational reform today is “stuck” in three critical respects: 1) our current strategies are insufficient to meet our rightly ambitious goals of eliminating gaps in achievement; 2) our current discussion of the ends of schooling is too narrowly focused around testing to the neglect of other important purposes of education; 3) our current approaches are too removed from ideas in other arenas about how to improve practice and adapt to change. To generate a new round of thinking that addresses these limitations, this initiative will bring together 30 national educational leaders and thinkers with a broad diversity of experience and capabilities (i.e. school leaders, urban superintendents, educational entrepreneurs, technology experts, experts on teaching and learning). This group will engage in a series of intensive structured discussions over two years, following by the production of a written product in the third year. In this volume, working groups of the larger set will lay out five different visions for the future of school reform. Results of the work will be broadly disseminated. This work will be distinctive from other national panels in several respects: 1) its charge will be to think broadly about the future of school reform as opposed to remedying failings of existing law; 2) the committee will be widely diverse in its knowledge and expertise; 3) its mission will be to avoid banal consensus and instead to lay out competing ideas about what a better future might look like. Interim success will be measured by the degree to which the ideas receive coverage in the education press and the broader media; longer-term success will be measured by whether these ideas penetrate educational policy and practice.
• Executive Education for Educational Leadership Program, Wallace Foundation, (2006-2010)
  The goal of this project is to create the Executive Leadership Program for Educators at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The program is a multi-disciplinary executive leadership program to provide teams of state and district education leaders increased capacity to think systematically, act strategically and lead significant changes in states, districts and schools focused on improving student achievement.

• A-124   School Reform from the Outside In: The Roles of External Partners and Funders (Spring 2013)
• L-200A   Ed.L.D. Second-Year Core Seminar (Fall 2012)
• L-200B   Ed.L.D. Second-Year Core Seminar (Spring 2013)

• Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

• High Schools
• Policy Analysis and Evaluation
• Politics of School Structure and Governance
• Reform Issues
• School to Work
• Standards

An announcement that Academic Dean Robert Schwartz has been named the William Henry Bloomberg Professor

An article on Robert Schwartz's participation in an international seminar that examined how to recruit, retrain, develop, and nurture a high-quality teaching force

An announcement that Professor of Practice Robert Schwartz will serve as the next academic dean at HGSE

A roundtable discussion with education leaders led by Robert Schwartz on the future of No Child Left Behind

An excerpt from Robert Schwartz's talk on standards-based reform at the American Youth Policy Forum