Russ Skiba, Ph.D.
Equity Project Director

Russell J. Skiba, Ph.D. is Professor in Counseling and Educational Psychology at Indiana University. He has worked with schools across the country, directed numerous federal and state research grants, and published extensively in the areas of school violence, school discipline and classroom management, and equity in education. He was a member and the lead author of the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Zero Tolerance. His work has been cited in numerous national media sources, including USA Today, Time Magazine,the Wall Street Journal, and Nightline, and he has testified before the United States Civil Rights Commission and both Houses of Congress on issues of school discipline and school violence. He was awarded the Push for Excellence Award by the Rainbow Coalition/Operation PUSH for his work on African American disproportionality in school suspension.

Shana Ritter
Project Coordinator

Shana Ritter works in the area of cultural competence, school improvement and educational equity in a wide variety of settings. Her experience includes all levels of classroom teaching, curriculum development, teacher education, and family involvement. Currently, much of her time is spent working directly with schools and district teams to address issues of equity through data based decision making, culturally responsive practice, and dialogues on race, ethnicity and social justice. She has developed and taught courses and workshops on multicultural education, diversity in a pluralistic society, and moving toward equity.

CG Chung
Research Associate

CG Chung is a Statistician at the Equity project. His research interests are in the issues of minority representation in special education and in the statistical models for school reform, access and persistence in higher education.

Ada Simmons
Executive Associate Director of P16 Collaboration

Ada Simmons is Executive Associate Director at the IU School of Education Center for Research and P16 Collaboration. Her professional background includes education research, program evaluation, and policy analysis in elementary, secondary, and higher education settings. Dr. Simmons' research interests focus on issues of educational equity, including the disproportionate representation of minorities in special education and juvenile justice, and access and persistence of disadvantaged groups in higher education. On The Equity Project, she mentors future education practitioners and emerging scholars in the development of their educational research and policy analysis skills.

Becky Pérez
Graduate Research Assistant

Becky Pérez is a Graduate Research Assistant for the Equity Project. She is pursuing a doctoral degree in School Psychology with a minor in Education Policy. As a member of the Equity Project she manages initiatives to explore the equitable provision of special education services to ethnic minority student populations. She provides guidance in exploring Latino student disproportionality and assists in the overall coordination of the project.

Jason Cuadrado
Graduate Research Assistant

Jason Cuadrado is a Graduate Research Assistant for the Equity Project. He is pursuing a doctoral degree in School Psychology with a minor in Education Policy. Jason’s primary responsibilities on the project include the development of a cultural values survey with the goal of better understanding the implications of cultural responsive pedagogy. He is currently working on the evaluation of the LEAD model.

James Doolittle
Graduate Research Assistant

James Doolittle is a Graduate Research Assistant. He is pursuing a doctoral degree in school psychology with a minor in counseling. His current research interests include the development of culturally competent assessment tools for special education and the Response-to-Intervention model. As a member of the project, James’s primary responsibilities include developing and evaluating short-term measures of change in special education disproportionality. He is currently working on modalities of utilizing these measures to help school systems institutionalize ongoing data-based decision making as a key component of addressing disproportionality.

Haley A. Wright
Graduate Research Assistant

Haley A. Wright is a Graduate Research Assistant. She is pursing a specialist degree in school psychology with a minor in counseling. Her interests include identifying learning problems in the preschool and elementary years, designing learning programs to enhance social and academic growth. Her research interests are related to factors that influence the overrepresentation of African American children in special education and specifically classes for the emotional and behaviorally disordered and the under representation of African American children in classes for the gifted and talented.

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