Senior Policy Counsel
Paul Weckstein is the senior policy counsel for the Center for Law and Education. CLE, which was originally established at Harvard University in 1969 as the national support center on education issues for legal services programs, works to advance the right of all students and families, and particularly those in low-income communities, to high-quality education.
He has played a role in shaping past and current reforms of Title I, the Perkins and School-to-Work Opportunities Acts, and other federal education programs in order to boost program quality, equity, and family engagement. He has developed national projects to assist communities, advocates and attorneys, and schools with implementation of both Title I/academic reform and high-school/school-to-career reform. He has trained, published, and advocated extensively on a wide variety of issues, including high-school reform, standards-based reform, career and technical education, student testing and assessment, civil rights, student tracking and classification, student and parent involvement, special education, and students rights and school discipline.
He began his education career at the Massachusetts Department of Education, where he worked with high school students on state and local student involvement and student rights projects. He graduated from Haverford College and holds both education and law degrees from Harvard University. He has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and at both the Washington College of Law and School of Education at American University. He has also served the American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth at Risk and was the primary author of the resolutions and reports on the right to quality education adopted by the ABA.
