Robert Schwartz is Professor Emeritus of Practice in Educational Policy and Administration and a former trustee of the Noyce Foundation. He now serves as a founding board member for the STEM Next Opportunity Fund.
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 adviser 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.
Since 2010, Professor Schwartz has participated in two OECD studies, Learning for Jobs and Strong Performers and Successful Reformers and contributed chapters to four Harvard Education Press volumes: Teaching Talent (2010), Surpassing Shanghai (2011), The Futures of School Reform (2012), and Improving the Odds for America’s Children (2014). In 2011, he co-authored an influential report calling for more attention to career and technical education, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. He is currently co-leading Pathways to Prosperity at JFF, a national network of states and regions that was formed in 2012 to act upon the analysis and recommendations outlined in the Pathways report.