(This site under construction)

The Center for Research in Education Finance

Mission Statement

The mission of the Center for Research in Education Finance (CREF) is to expand existing knowledge of educational finance and productivity. Our goal is to assist federal, state, and local policy makers in finding ways to maximize educational resources to improve student achievement. Our research is designed to:

• Improve existing methods for measuring educational program costs,
• Develop innovative methods for assuring fiscal accountability within educational systems, and
• Search for ways to link educational outcomes to resource allocations.

• Studying the allocation and use of educational resources at the state, district, school, and classroom level,
• Conducting analyses of school finance equity and efficiency, and
• Finding new and better ways to measure how fiscal resources are related to student outcomes.

Personnel

Lawrence O. Picus, Associate Professor, Director of the Center for Research in Education Finance

Donald R. Tetreault, Research Assistant

Documents

(Post research documents with links here)

Resource Allocation in Selected California School Districts is a research paper, presented at the 1995 American Education Finance Association annual meeting, that is part of an ongoing multi-level, multi-state investigation of "What (Educational) Dollars Buy." The document can be viewed in its entirety, or you can view an abstract.

Other Resources

Each summer the School of Education at the University of Southern California hosts the Summer Superintendents' Conference. The 1996 Conference will take place in late July, 1996.

The Home Page for the USC School of Education has information about courses of study and faculty and staff.

For further information, contact Lawrence Picus at lpicus@usc.edu.

Webmaster Donald Tetreault at tetreaul@scf.usc.edu
Last updated September 3, 1995