Picus Odden & Associates

On January 27, 2014, Allan Odden, Principal Partner in Picus Odden and Associates, served as the keynote speaker for the winter meeting of North Dakota’s Council of Education Leaders in Bismarck, ND.  His topic was an overview of the school finance adequacy recalibration study the firm conducted for the state’s legislature.

The next day, January 28, he met with the Legislature’s Interim Committee on Education Funding to present the first part of the study, which uses the Evidence-Based Adequacy model he and Lawrence O. Picus at the University of Southern California have developed to recalibrate the state’s Expenditure Per Pupil figure used in its school foundation formula.

Lawrence O. Picus prepared a framing paper and moderated a school funding symposium hosted by Vermont’s Governor, Senate President Pro Tem and Speaker of the House at St. Michael’s College in Colchester on January 14.

The symposium included a six-member expert panel discussion and several small group work sessions designed to evaluate possible options for the State of Vermont’s financing system and its fairness to students and taxpayers.

VTDigger.org:  Effort begins to re-evaluate education financing in Vermont

On December 10, Larry Picus, Allan Odden and Mike Goetz met with the Maine Interim Committee on Education and Culture to review the final report of the firm’s study of the adequacy of Maine’s school funding system.  The report led to much discussion and two excellent articles in the Maine press.  See

The Portland Press Herald:  Maine panel gets proposals to revamp education

The Bangor Daily News:  Report sought by Republicans says Maine should increase …

Picus Odden and Associates is in the process of developing a study of the adequacy of Kentucky’s school funding system, working under contract with the Council for Better Education.  Senior Associate Michael Goetz will direct the project, which will use the firm’s Evidence-Based model to assess adequacy and build on the firm’s analyses of Kentucky’s education system conducted in the early 1990s.  Results should be available in the second half of 2014.

See article: http://wkms.org/term/picus-odden-and-associates

The Picus Odden report on school finance reform, using the Evidence Based Model, received a good response by the Interim Education Committee meeting on October 29, 2013.

An article published in Maine’s, Bangor Daily News reported,

“Members of the Legislature’s Education Committee on Tuesday focused on what the best possible education system in Maine should look like, while deferring what is sure to be a contentious debate about how to pay for it.”

The final report for Maine’s Interim Education Committee is due on the 1st of December.