Matthew A. Kraft



Matthew A. Kraft is an American economist of education, educator, and researcher. He is currently an associate professor of Education and Economics at Brown University, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Research Fellow with IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. His primary work focuses on efforts to improve educator and organizational effectiveness in U.S. public schools.

Biography
Between 1999 and 2003, Kraft attended Stanford University where he majored in International Relations with a concentration in Political Economy and earned a master's degree in International Comparative Education. In 2005, Kraft taught 8th grade English as a long-term substitute teacher at Urban Promise Academy in Oakland Unified School District, where he conducted field work for his master's thesis. He earned teaching credentials in English and history from Alliant International University and taught 9th grade humanities at Berkeley High School in California from 2005 to 2008. He served as a school representative with the Berkeley Teachers' Unions leadership committee for two years.

After working as a high school teacher, Kraft pursued an Ed. D. in Quantitative Policy Analysis in Education with a concentration in the Economics of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2013, he joined the Department of Education at Brown University as an assistant professor. He was a visiting professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in the spring of 2023.

Currently, Kraft is an associate professor of Education and Economics at Brown University, as well as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, a Fellow at the CESifo Research Network, and Senior Fellow at the Esade Center for Economic Policy in Madrid, Spain.

Professional Achievements
Kraft’s scholarship examines efforts to improve teacher hiring, professional development, evaluation, and working conditions; the application of new approaches for interpreting effect sizes; and the development of school-based tutoring and mentoring programs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has published over 40 academic articles in leading education, public policy, and economics journals which have been cited over 11,000 times. Kraft is regularly quoted in national news outlets and is consistently ranked among the top 200 scholars on the Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.

He is the recipient of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Outstanding Public Communication Award, the Society for Educational Effectiveness Early Career Award, the William T. Grant Early Career Scholar Award, the Brown University Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award for the most outstanding article across the seven flagship AERA journals, and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship.