Dr. Kelly is the Senior Director of the CAL-WIDA Partnership. He oversees the development of the test materials and the integration of the test development team with other teams at CAL and with external partners. He has years of experience managing all aspects of test development, from the development of test and item specifications, through the item development and review process, to the test validation phase.

Before coming to CAL, Dr. Kelly was a test developer, test development manager, and the Director of Business Operations at Second Language Testing, Inc., where he worked on many high-profile projects such as the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), the Pearson Test of English, and a number of tests for the federal government. Dr. Kelly received his B.A. in Applied Linguistics and Spanish from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Theoretical Linguistics from Georgetown University.