Provides research, evaluation, consulting, and technical assistance services that contribute to the lifelong process of learning and improving personal performance.

Produces and disseminates information to provide motivation and tools to enable individuals to make informed decisions about health issues.

Develops and implements education testing programs that benefit students, parents and public officials.

Works with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the government's primary source for collecting and analyzing data about public education.

Helps to provide all children with access to a quality education, and empowers people, organizations, and communities to bring about social change.

Is committed to helping clients improve the effectiveness of their workforce through a wide range of management, organizational, and business improvement efforts.

Produces, maintains and disseminates systematic reviews of the effects of social and behavioral interventions.

Thomas Parrish, Ph.D.

Managing Director

Thomas Parrish, Ph.D., is a Managing Director for AIR in Palo Alto. His major area of expertise is fiscal policy in public education with a specialty in special education. He has directed and participated in numerous cost analysis, education policy, and evaluation projects for federal, state, and local agencies over the past twenty-five years. He has addressed numerous committees, conferences, and legislative bodies on education finance policy, and has written extensively on these issues.

In addition to more than twenty-five years of experience leading and participating in a variety of educational policy studies, he spent five years teaching students from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Dr. Parrish also serves as the Co-Director of the Center for Special Education Finance (CSEF) which is involved in research addressing the national agenda for special education finance and in conducing state and federal studies on the impact of special education finance reform.

Dr. Parrish is also involved in a study documenting the related services being received by a large sample of special education students and an evaluation of the Implementation of Proposition 227, which specifies instructional program provisions for English learners. Dr. Parrish received his doctorate at Stanford University in Educational Policy and Administration, where his dissertation focused on special education cost and funding issues in California.