n Making Teacher Evaluation Work, Authors Rachael Gabriel and Sarah Woulfin suggest there’s a way to not only improve the evaluation process, but use evaluations as a way to improve teaching. Rachael and Sarah have created a resource for teachers and evaluators to read together that walks them through every step of the evaluation process.

In part it’s a pushback to the narrow focus on math and reading tests under the former federal accountability law No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Declines in student participation in elective courses nationwide, especially in applied technical education, showed “the poverty of focusing on academics only … and losing the practical application of learning,” says Shaun Dougherty, an education policy professor at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education in Storrs. “To be a good college student, employee, citizen, you have to have a broader appreciation for why what you are studying might matter.”

Members of the Neag School of Education Alumni Board, along with Neag School faculty, staff, and administrators; friends of the university; and guests, gathered this past Saturday on the UConn Storrs campus for the 19th Annual Alumni Awards Celebration. This year’s sold-out event honored six outstanding Neag School graduates in a number of award categories.

Rachel Holden is a graduate student studying agricultural education at UConn, with the goal of becoming a teacher after she graduates in May 2017. She is currently student teaching at the agricultural science program at Lyman Hall High School in Wallingford, Connecticut, with a class of animal science students.

Renzulli Academy will host its Invention Convention and Inquiry Project Expo from noon to 2 p.m. March 24 at Bennie Dover Jackson Middle School, 36 Waller St., New London.

Radio Dispatch with The Knefels (13:09 Neag School’s Preston Green is interviewed about how the charter school sector resembles the Enron crisis)

The Neag School of Education ranked 27 this year. In addition, U.S. News ranked three of the Neag School’s specialty programs among the top 20 in the nation. Those were: Special Education, 15; Educational Psychology, 18; and Secondary Teacher Education, 18.

Mary Grandville will be the new principal at Parkway School in Greenwich effective July 1, Superintendent of Schools Sal Corda announced.

Ed Tech (Research on media literacy in the digital age,  from Neag School’s Donald Leu, is mentioned in this article)

“Unscrupulous individuals and corporations are using their control over charter schools and their affiliates to obtain unreasonable management fees for their services and funnel money intended for charter schools into other business ventures,” the study says.