Name: Matthew Kelly
Title: Assistant Professor of Education (Educational Leadership)
Department: Education Policy Studies
Phone: 814-863-3773
Email: mgk76@psu.edu
Office address: 204F Rackley Building
Directory entry: https://ed.psu.edu/directory/mgk76
Kelly specializes in K-12 school funding policies, past and present. His current research examines long-term trends in how state governments distribute educational resources and opportunities, as well as the intersections between school funding and inequities of race, ethnicity, income and residence.
His current book project, “Taxing Inequality: The Rise of District Property Taxation and the Making of Educational Inequality,” provides a history of district property taxation and its alternatives. The book explores the role of education finance in expanding and entrenching economic and racial inequality in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Kelly’s recent work has appeared in journals such as “Educational Researcher” (for a recent summary from “The Hechinger Report” https://hechingerreport.org/rich-schools-get-richer/), “Teachers College Record, AERA Open, and History of Education Quarterly.” Other recent work has received awards from the History of Education Society and Division F of the American Educational Research Association. He is co-book review editor for the “American Journal of Education.”