Superintendent
Revere Public Schools
Dr. Kelly is passionate about empowering and supporting great teachers to create student-centered learning experiences.
Dianne K. Kelly, Ed.D., recognizes that a Superintendent must wear many hats — politician, manager, decision-maker, negotiator, advocate, spokesperson, cheerleader, and more. But after serving for nearly 11 years as Superintendent of the Revere Public Schools, it is the role of instructional leader that continues to fuel Dianne’s passion for the job.
Since her first years as a classroom teacher, Dianne said she has been fascinated by the question: What makes a great teacher? Throughout her career, she has worked with educators who have successfully motivated even the most disengaged students, and she has studied what differentiates their practice from that of less effective teachers.
“I’ve been thinking for a long time – since I started teaching – about what a good teacher is, and what a good teacher isn’t … and about the opportunity that some kids have, and some kids don’t,” she said.
Now in her 31st year with the district, Dianne began her tenure at Revere High School as a Mathematics teacher, and later as Dean of Students, before becoming the district’s STEM Director. During those years, Dianne affirmed her conviction that the best way to improve classroom instruction is by empowering teachers to collaborate with colleagues in order to increase their collective instructional skills.
For seven years, she coordinated the mentor program for the Revere Public Schools, assigning, supervising, and supporting veteran educators who served as mentors to new teachers. In 2010, Dianne became Assistant Superintendent, a role that enabled her to expand the district’s investment in teacher leadership. Working with then Superintendent Paul Dakin, Dianne developed coaching programs for teachers of Math and Literacy. As Superintendent, she supported the creation of additional coaching positions in the fields of STEM, English Learners, and Special Education. Revere also launched a consulting teacher program, in which teachers leave the classroom for two years to lead job-embedded professional development with their colleagues, focused on student engagement and deeper learning. Today, nearly 40 Revere educators serve as either curriculum coaches or consulting teachers.
“I wanted to change the way instruction happens at the classroom level,” said Dianne. “I believe that’s how you move a district.”
Shaping Student Attitudes about Learning
Underlying Dianne’s approach to teacher empowerment is a firm belief that schools and educators have the tremendous ability to shape students’ attitudes about learning – for better or for worse.
“As a high school teacher, I saw that kids already had these mindsets about what they were good at and what they weren’t good at,” said Dianne, “and I wondered a lot about where that came from.”
Dianne contends that too often, our educational system labels and sorts students, beginning at a young age, leaving lasting impressions on students about their abilities and limitations.
“When kids are in grade 3 or 4, and we tell some of them that they are ‘good at math’ or ‘good at reading,’ we are sending messages not only to the students being praised but also to their classmates who are not receiving the same encouragement,” she said. “By the time a kid hits ninth grade, she’s been told for years – explicitly or implicitly – that she’s not good at math. High school students are often disillusioned because they are bored and because they’ve been made to believe for years that they are not good at school. So why should they try?”
Dianne also recognized her own bias as a teacher, recalling the summer before she would teach sections of Honors and non-Honors Geometry.
“I realized I was already deciding how I was going to weaken the curriculum for some kids and strengthen it for other kids – and I hadn’t even met them yet,” she said. “This is just another way that we disenfranchise students from their own education. All of this was in my mind as I moved into administration.”
As Superintendent, Dianne has made de-tracking a high priority, beginning by no longer classifying courses as “Honors” during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the de-tracking proved very effective at closing achievement gaps in advanced coursework. For example, the gap between the percentage of English Learners successfully completing at least one advanced course and the student group with the highest successful completion rate fell from 58.3 percentage points to, at one point, 22.2 percentage points. For low-income students, the gap was cut in half – from 15.4 percentage points to 7.7 percentage points.
After pressure from some parents, Honors classes were later restored, but with several important changes, including open enrollment in the classes for any student, regardless of past academic performance. Dianne also advocated successfully for a provision that would allow students in non-Honors courses to earn Honors credits by completing additional assignments. Dianne notes that despite those changes, the achievement gaps have widened once again. In 2025, the gap for Revere’s English Learners reached 44 percentage points and for low-income students, 19 percentage points.
“We’re trying to move the culture,” she said. “We’ve made some headway, but we’re not all the way there yet – away from the traditional grading system toward a student-centered, multi-faceted, deeper learning experience for students.”
To earn a Doctorate degree in Leadership in Urban Schools from the University of Massachusetts Boston, Dianne wrote her dissertation about the development of student attitudes toward Mathematics. The idea was born in part out of her own experiences as a student, both positive and negative. She recalled two very different years of Math classes at Boston Latin Academy. In one, Dianne lamented the lack of instruction from a teacher who was more invested in his role as an athletic coach than as a Math teacher. In her senior year, however, Dianne’s love of Math was reinvigorated by her Calculus teacher, Mr. Stengle.
“He was all business – strict, stern, straitlaced – but if you were struggling, he would sit beside you until you got what it was that he was teaching, and he never gave up on anyone,” she said.
“I always knew that I liked Math, but he made me know that I was good at it, and I watched him make other students feel the same way. That was inspirational to me.”
As Dianne began exploring her options after high school, she considered applying to architectural colleges, but “being in Mr. Stengle’s class made me realize I wanted to be a Math teacher,” she said. “I want to make other kids feel about Math the way that Mr. Stengle made me feel about Math.”
Extensive Involvement in M.A.S.S.
Throughout her tenure as Superintendent, Dianne has remained deeply involved in M.A.S.S. She said she has grown as an educator and as a leader through the association’s professional learning and networking opportunities.
“The professional development offerings are top-notch, especially the Summer Executive Institute,” she said. “The opportunities to engage with colleagues about matters we’re all struggling with, or specific things I’m dealing with, are tremendously valuable.”
Dianne completed the New Superintendents Induction Program (NSIP) and has attended the Women’s Educational Leadership Network (WELN) Conference every year. She is a member of both the North Shore and Urban Superintendents M.A.S.S. Roundtables, and she served as a tri-chair of the latter for several years.
Dianne is a member of the M.A.S.S. Executive Committee, having previously served as its Vice President, President-Elect, President, and Past President. It was during the 2022-23 school year that she was President of the association, when district leaders and many others were “still trying to recover from COVID.”
“Probably the best thing I did during that time was to try to help people focus on their own well-being,” she said. “We were all pretty traumatized.”
At the same time, Dianne acknowledges the ways in which she became a better Superintendent through the pandemic.
“Everything that happened in COVID was truly challenging, but I think what we learned through that process was to stay calm, to stay focused on what really matters, and basically that we can make anything happen,” she said. “There were miraculous things that happened during that time, from food distribution to on-line learning.”
Dianne said she is proud of the impact of her advocacy work at the state level during her tenure with M.A.S.S., particularly to change the way the state counts low-income students in its funding and accountability formulas. When state officials shifted from “low-income” to “economically disadvantaged” classifications, Dianne said, many school districts (especially those in urban areas) lost significant funding because only families receiving federal benefits were counted, omitting large numbers of undocumented students. Dianne was among those who fought successfully for a more accurate calculation.
In 2023, Dianne was named Massachusetts Superintendent of the Year. M.A.S.S. also presented her with the Bobbie D’Alessandro Women’s Leadership Award in 2023 and the Christos Daoulas Award in 2024.
Dianne continues to emphasize the need to redesign education funding altogether.
“The way we fund our public schools needs to change – not just how much money to give each school,” she said. “You can’t plan for long-term change if you don’t know what your budget is year to year. Schools need to be able to have at least some kind of a rainy day fund, where they can save money, so if the budget tanks one year, there’s at least something there they can use to bolster that and maintain the programs and services they’ve put in place.”
Strong Family Ties
Dianne spends much of her free time with friends and her large, close family. She has five siblings and 16 nieces and nephews, half of whom still live near where the Kelly family grew up, in the Neponset neighborhood of Dorchester. Dianne’s parents still live in the house where her mother was raised. She and some of her siblings have bought houses only a few blocks away, so family dinners are frequent and lively.
“We all get along very well, and we love spending time with one another,” she said.
Two of Dianne’s younger brothers are military veterans, and they were among the founders of Massachusetts Fallen Heroes. Dianne formerly led the organization’s volunteer group and continues to serve as a volunteer, particularly for the monthly sample sales in Hanover that support programs and services for veterans.
After more than three decades in public education, Dianne is looking back on the important lessons she has learned and looking forward to the impact she hopes to make in the years ahead.
So what conclusions has she reached about the burning question of the essential elements of great teaching?
“It all comes down to relationships and caring,” she said. “I encourage my teachers and administrators to tell the kids they believe in them, and they will believe in you. Show them you believe in them with the way you structure your classes, the level of rigor you engage them with, the way you assess their knowledge, and most importantly, with your willingness to recognize their individual strengths and needs, rather than seeing them as a certain ‘category’ of learner. Any teacher who truly believes in kids and who embraces the intense effort required to have strong relationships with kids will, in fact, be a great teacher.”
