FPG People
Richard Clifford, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
dickclifford@unc.edu
PH: 919.962.4737
FAX: 919.966.1786
Mailing Address:
Campus Box 8040
The University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8040
Richard M. Clifford, Ph.D., is a senior scientist at the FPG Child Development Institute at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Clifford's training is in Educational Administration with specializations in Political Science and Research. He began his career teaching and serving as a principal in public schools. For more than 25 years, he has studied public policies and advised government officials and practitioners on policies affecting children and families. His work focuses on two major areas: public financing of programs for young children and the provision of appropriate learning environments for preschool and early school-age children. Dr. Clifford is co-author of a widely used series of instruments for evaluating learning environments for children.
In 1993-94 Dr. Clifford took a leave from UNC-CH to help establish and to serve as the first director of the Division of Child Development in the North Carolina Department of Human Resources, and help with the design and implementation of the state's Smart Start early childhood initiative. He also was instrumental in the establishment of the More at Four Prekindergarten program in North Carolina and continues to serve on the Governor appointed advisory board and its executive committee.
Dr. Clifford has served as co-director and principal investigator for the National Center for Early Development and Learning and also as co-director of the State-Wide Early Education Programs (SWEEP) Study. These two large-scale studies examined pre-kindergarten programs in a total of 11 states that together served some 80% of all children in state funded pre-kindergarten programs in the US. Dr. Clifford is currently co-director of FPG's FirstSchool initiative, developing new models for children's first experience in school. He is a past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
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