Mansfield Public Schools (Neag School alumnus Peter Dart was named superintendent for Mansfield Public Schools)

Some legal scholars say that raises a new question. If a state can’t keep a private religious school out of its voucher program, can it stop a religious school from participating in its charter school program?

“Charter schools are the next frontier,” Preston Green, an education law professor at the University of Connecticut. Compared to school vouchers, “this could actually be more of a win for religious entities if they can get it.”

As UConn’s director of the H. Fred Simons African American Cultural Center (AACC) and affiliate faculty with the Africana Studies Institute, Willena Kimpson Price ’90 Ph.D. has been instrumental in supporting UConn African American students’ higher education experiences for the past three decades. Price has steered the AACC to be recognized campus-wide and throughout the United States as a university center that promotes an understanding and appreciation of the culture, history, and traditions of people of African descent.

DIBELS itself doesn’t involve a lot of reading, but helps to predict how well children develop literacy skills by testing how fast and accurately they identify words, explained Rachael Gabriel, an associate professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut.

Casey Cobb, a professor at UConn’s Neag School of Education, has interviewed many families about what goes into them choosing whether to send their children to predominantly white suburban schools if they win the lottery.

“What we found was, yeah, race and socioeconomic status, that sort of diversity, does play a role in their decision making,” he said, pointing out that magnet schools are typically more diverse, and that was one of the reasons families tend to seek those schools.

Alan Marcus, a professor of education at the University of Connecticut, says in his state, there have been calls to remove statues of Christopher Columbus, in connection to the explorer’s violent mistreatment of Native Americans. Marcus said monuments can become “expired” as society’s values shift.

“What’s acceptable in one time period might not be acceptable in a different time period,” Marcus explained. These “expired monuments” can be repurposed to instead teach about “how we frame certain histories and whose perspective we learn about and whose perspective is left out.”

Three New Haven teachers were chosen for the Noyce Math Teacher Leader Program, a five-year professional learning and service program intended to expand Connecticut’s capacity to advance more equitable mathematics education, according to the school district. Program partners include the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education and its College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Department of Mathematics, as well as the Connecticut State Department of Education.

Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias ’97 MS, 6th Year is focusing her attention on the educational workforce, and hopes the session will yield approvals of public acts addressing educators, namely better working conditions and recruitment and retention of teachers.

The group started reaching out to legislators weeks before the session, Dias says, offering itself as a resource for questions or topic temperature checks in advance of any bill packages that may come out over the next few weeks.

This week, we welcome Fany Hannon, Neag School alumna a director of the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center, which is celebrating its golden anniversary this year. Fany talks about how the Center emerged from the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, what it’s been like trying to keep a student-oriented organization running during a global pandemic, and why so many generations of Latinx Huskies consider PRLACC a home away from home.

“When someone feels like their rights are being violated or the government is overstepping their bounds, they’ll cite the Holocaust, which is very dangerous,” says Alan Marcus, a professor in UConn’s Neag School of Education.

Marcus recently was part of a team that produced a research study that was published in “Holocaust Studies” that examined the transition of Holocaust education from live to virtual survivor testimony. Marcus also wrote a column for The Conversation on the issue.