Russ Skiba

Russ Skiba is a Professor in the School Psychology program at Indiana University. He has worked with schools across the country in the areas of disproportionality, school discipline, and school violence. Skiba also directs the Equity Project, a consortium of federal, state and foundation-funded grants providing evidence to practitioners and policymakers in the areas of school violence, zero tolerance, and equity in education. Skiba is current director of the Discipline Disparities Research to Practice Collaborative, funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and the Open Society Foundation, a national effort bringing together key researchers, educators, and policymakers to increase research, policy and practice attention to disproportionality in discipline. He also directs PBIS Indiana, a federally and state funded project to develop a staewid3e writing team that produced the U.S. Department of Education's document on school Safety Early Warning, Timely Responses, and a member and lead author of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Zero Tolerance. Skiba has testified before the United States Civil Rights Commission, spoken before both Houses of Congress on issues of school discipline and school violence, and in 2008, acted as a special consultant to OSEP on issues of disproportionality and equity in special education. He was awarded the Push for Excellence Award by the Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH for his work on African American disproportionality in school suspension. His article Race is Not Neutral, won the Article of the Year award for the journal School Psychology Review in 2011.