Marguerite Roza, Ph.D., is Research Professor and Director of the Edunomics Lab (Edunomicslab.org), a research center focused on exploring and modeling education finance policy and practice. She leads the McCourt School of Public Policy’s Certificate in Education Finance, which equips participants with practical skills in strategic fiscal management, finance policy analysis, and financial leadership.

Dr. Roza’s 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.

Dr. Roza has led projects on state and school district finance policy, financial equity, pensions, compensation, higher education finance, and other related topics, 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. She has written extensively on financial transparency and the opportunity for equity and productivity. Her work has been published by the Brookings Institution, Public Budgeting and Finance, Education Next, Governing, Peabody Journal of Education, and the American Journal of Education. Dr. Roza is author of the highly regarded education finance book, Educational Economics: Where Do School Funds Go?

Dr. Roza regularly works with state and local policymakers and education leaders and presents at research conferences and to national associations across the country, including the National Conference of State Legislators, National Association of State Boards of Education, Association of School Business Officers, Education Writers Association, and Policy Innovators in Education Network. She is frequently interviewed in the national media, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Education Week.

Dr. Roza teaches as part of the Certificate in Education Finance and in programs elsewhere, including the University of Washington, Rice University, and the Broad Center.

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