Matthew P. Steinberg

Matthew P. Steinberg is an associate professor of education and public policy (with tenure) in the Schar School of Policy and Government and the College of Education and Human Development, and the Director of EdPolicy Forward: The Center for Education Policy at George Mason University. He is an affiliated researcher with the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, a faculty affiliate with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, and an IUR Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Urban Research. 

Matthew's research addresses issues of educational significance at the intersection of the economics of education and education policy, including: educator evaluation and human capital; accountability and urban school reform; education finance; and school safety and student discipline. Matthew's work aims to inform local and national policy discussions on the impact of education policies and practices on the distribution of teacher effectiveness and the educational outcomes of students, particularly the most disadvantaged among the population. To do so, Matthew matches rigorous econometric methods with rich administrative data to produce empirical evidence that answers fundamentally important education policy questions. Matthew's research has appeared in leading education, policy and economics journals, including the American Journal of Education, Economics of Education Review, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy, Educational Researcher, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, National Tax Journal, and Regional Science and Urban Economics. Matthew's research has also appeared in policy and practice publications that reach district, state, and national policymakers and school leaders, including Cityscape, Education Next and The State Education Standard.

A recipient of the 2016 National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, Steinberg received his PhD in public policy from the University of Chicago. During his tenure as a doctoral student, he was an Institute of Education Sciences Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the University of Chicago Committee on Education, a researcher at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, and a Mathematica Policy Research Summer Fellow. Prior to graduate school, he was an investment banker and a New York City teaching fellow. 

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Areas of Research

• Education Policy
• Program Evaluation
• Applied Econometrics
• Economics of Education