Plucker Skiba

The new center has already received several new grants and contracts, including three large-scale literacy studies for the State of Indiana and an examination of a major teacher recruitment project for the Ohio Department of Education.

Jonathan Plucker, IUB associate professor in counseling and educational psychology, is directing the center, located at 509 East 3rd St., Bloomington.

The two original centers developed outstanding reputations for research excellence in a variety of areas, including school reform, school choice, education finance, literacy, math, science, civic and migrant education, recruitment and support of new teachers. Staff also evaluated multi-organization collaborations and coalitions, community and youth development programs, and public health projects.

Recent projects:

• The CEEP 2003 Public Opinion Survey on Education in Indiana Findings of the benchmark survey indicate that a majority of Hoosiers feel positively about public education in Indiana, especially if they are parents of school-age children. Approximately two-thirds of Indiana residents rate public school teachers positively.

http://www.iub.edu/~ceep/release.html

• Russell Skiba, director of the CEEP’s Safe and Responsive Schools Project, has found that there is little to no evidence that zero tolerance and school security measures have had “any impact whatsoever” on school safety. “It is extremely important that we stick to the facts in offering schools information about violence prevention,” Skiba said. “Our learning curve on the prevention of school violence has been extremely steep since Columbine.” Rigorous evaluations of school violence prevention programs commissioned by Congress, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice, and the U.S. Surgeon General have all found prevention of bullying to be among the most effective programs for reducing school violence. Research has demonstrated that these school-wide efforts have reduced incidents of bullying and diminished fighting by up to 50 percent. These findings contradict recent statements criticizing legislative interest in school-wide bullying programs as merely “feel good” measures and unwarranted.

http://www.indiana.edu/~safeschl/zero.html

• Plucker and colleagues’ data analysis of full-day and half-day kindergarten in Indiana and in the nation is available in PDF form by clicking on the link at this site:

http://www.iub.edu/%7Eiepc/