A new collaboration between UConn and the University of Pavia in Italy will serve to foster not only opportunities for student exchanges among those from each university pursuing studies in the disciplines of gifted education, creativity, and talent development, but also shared research efforts in these areas.

Casey Cobb said research overwhelmingly shows that wide-open school choice models like those in Florida and Milwaukee that use vouchers to allow parents to choose which school their children attend haven’t demonstrated improved outcomes.

Shaun Dougherty, the author of the Arkansas research and a professor at the University of Connecticut, praised aspects of the recent international study but said that it had limited ability to guide policy in the U.S.

Since 2015, Monique Duzant-Hastings has been working with students in grades 5 through 8 who have social, emotional, and behavioral needs. Thanks to the Neag School’s new partnership with her employer, the LEARN Regional Educational Service Center, she has now found a way to advance her career by pursuing certification as a K-12 special education teacher — at no cost to her. The new partnership offers LEARN personnel like Duzant-Hastings — a busy mother of three — the opportunity to apply for admission to the Neag School’s Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates (TCPCG) in special education at UConn’s Avery Point campus.

By state Department of Education standards, Kristina Wallace isn’t eligible to be chosen as Connecticut’s teacher of the year because she doesn’t work in a classroom. But that didn’t stop Wallace’s peers in the Windsor School District from naming her as its 2017-18 educator of the year.