About Us

Dr. Roza’s research focuses on quantitative policy analysis, largely in the education finance arena. She has led projects including the Institute for Education Sciences multi-year study of weighted student funding, the Finance and Productivity Initiative at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and the Schools in Crisis Rapid Response Paper Series. Her recent research traces the effects of fiscal policies at the federal, state, and district levels for their implications on resources at the school and classroom levels. Her calculations of dollar implications and cost-equivalent trade-offs have prompted changes in education finance policy at all levels in the education system. As part of her groundbreaking work on weighted student funding, Dr. Roza devised a “%SBA metric,” enabling an apples-to-apples comparison of total district funds in a WSF formula. This metric is now commonly recognized as the foundational measurement of WSF formulas nationwide.

Dr. Roza has written extensively on financial transparency and the opportunity toward equity and productivity. Her work has been published by the Brookings Institution, Public Budgeting and Finance, Education Next, Governing, The Hill, and the Peabody Journal of Education. She is author of the highly regarded education finance book, Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?

Dr. Roza served as a Senior Economic Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy teaching thermodynamics at the Naval Nuclear Power School. She earned a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Washington and a B.S. from Duke University, and has studied at the London School of Economics and the University of Amsterdam.