Richard Weissbourd is currently a lecturer in education at HGSE and at the Kennedy School of Government. He is also faculty director of the Human Development and Psychology Program, M.Ed. His work focuses on vulnerability and resilience in childhood, the achievement gap, moral development, and effective schools and services for children. For several years he worked as a psychologist in community mental health centers as well as on the Annie Casey Foundation's New Futures Project, an effort to prevent children from dropping out of school. He is a founder of several interventions for at-risk children, including ReadBoston and WriteBoston, city-wide literacy initiatives led by Mayor Menino. With Robert Selman, he founded Project ASPIRE, a social and ethical development intervention in three Boston schools. He is also a founder of a pilot school, the Lee Academy, that begins with children at 3 years old. He has advised on the city, state and federal levels on family policy and school reform and has written for numerous scholarly and popular publications. He is the author of The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children and What We Can Do About It (Addison-Wesley, 1996) and The Parents We Mean to Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children's Moral and Emotional Development(Houghton Mifflin, 2009).
Weissbourd, R. (2009). The parents we mean to be: How well-intentioned adults undermine children's moral and emotional development. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2009)
The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children and What We Can Do About It (1996)
National Awards for Education Reporting 2012. Opinion in an Education-Only Newsroom: Promoting Moral Development in Schools, Harvard Education Letter, 28(1), Jan/Feb 2012. (2012)
2009 New Yorker Magazine Reviewer's favorite for The Parents We Mean to Be (Houghton Mifflin, 2009)
Awarded One of Top 10 Education Books of All Time by American School Board Journal, for The Vulnerable Child (Addison-Wesley, 1996)
Best Editorial Award from Association of Educational Publishers for The "Quiet" Troubles of Low Income Children, Harvard Education Letter, 24(2), March/April 2008.
Pre-K-3rd Implementation and Evaluation Framework Project, W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation , (2011-2012) This 24-month project (July 2010-June 2012 ) will develop a PreK-3rd Implementation and Evaluation Framework. All good evaluation tools are also
good planning tools. As such, the Framework will be a useful guide for those engaged in the development, planning, and evaluation of PreK-3rd grade
efforts. The research-based Framework will be a significant contribution to the field. It will not only provide a user-friendly and meaningful Framework
for understanding the depth, breadth, and quality of PreK-3rd approaches, but will also establish the foundation upon which PreK-3rd grade evaluations
can be conceptualized and designed.
The Framework will be designed primarily for use by schools and school districts and will be based on the premise that there is no one “right” way to
build or evaluate PreK-3rd efforts. The approach to building a PreK-3rd system depends on a school district’s or school’s resources, leadership,
population, needs, and strengths. From an implementation perspective, the Framework will help users see the “big picture” of comprehensive and
systemic PreK-3rd work. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the Framework will guide users in understanding how their own PreK-3rd
strategies “fit” in the big picture, providing concrete examples of how they can enrich and expand their PreK-3rd efforts.
Restricted Follow-up Support on the Integrating Early Childhood and Elementary Education, W. Clement & Jessie V. Stone Foundation , (2011-2012) Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) sought funding for a third PreK-3rd Institute, the subsequent follow-up work, and evaluation. The goal is to foster the development of successful PreK-3rd initiatives across the United States by bringing a second cohort of PreK-3rd teams for a 2010 Institute and providing follow-up support to participating sites. The specific objectives are to: [1] finalize the recruitment of a new cohort of PreK-3rd teams; [2] design and implement the PreK-3rd Institute; [3] support participating sites in carrying out the action plans; and [4] monitor and evaluate the implementation of the action plan.
Pre-K-3rd Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Foundation for Child Development, (2009-2010) The goal of this project is to create a network of school systems that are implementing high-quality Pre-K-3rd programming and generating and disseminating new knowledge, with a goal of creating the foundation for school success during these critical years and reducing social-economic and racial achievement gaps.
A Q & A with Richard Weissbourd in Ed. Magazine on an early intervention project called Three to Third.
An interview with Rick Weissbourd about his involvement in several Boston-area initiatives and his research on children's moral and social development.
