Lawrence O. Picus is a Professor in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California. He serves as the director of the Center for Research in Education Finance (CREF), a research center in the School of Education at the University of Southern California. CREF research focuses on issues of school finance and productivity. He has also conducted research on the costs of alternative assessment programs for the Center for Research on Evaluation, Student Standards and Testing (CRESST) at UCLA. Picus is past-president of the American Education Finance Association. He is a co-author of Principles of School Business Administration (ASBO, 1995) with R. Craig Wood, David Thompson, and Don I. Tharpe. In addition, he is the senior editor of the 1995 yearbook of the American Education Finance Association, Where Does the Money Go? Resource Allocation in Elementary and Secondary Schools (Corwin, 1995). He has published numerous articles in professional journals as well. Picus teaching responsibilities include courses in school finance, educational policy, school business administration, school district budgeting, economics of education, the politics of education in the United States, and the application of computers to school district management. In his role with CREF, he is involved with studies of how educational resources are allocated and used in schools across the United States. He has also conducted studies on the impact of incentives on school district performance. Picus maintains close contact with the superintendents and chief business officers of school districts throughout California and the nation, and is a member of a number of professional organizations dedicated to improving school district management. He also serves as a consultant to the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, the National Center for Educational Statistics, WestEd and the states of Vermont, Washington, and Arkansas. Prior to coming to USC, Picus spent four years at the RAND Corporation, where he earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis. He holds a Masters Degree in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and a Bachelors degree in Economics from Reed College. He has a strong background in research design, statistics, and econometrics.
