The Neag School of Education, UConn’s Department of English, and the Connecticut Writing Project (CWP) at UConn are proud to announce Connecticut’s winners of the 26th annual Letters About Literature competition, a nationwide contest sponsored by the Library of Congress for students in grades 4 through 12.

When Jim Penders applied to replace the retiring Baylock in 2003, Penders told then-athletic director Jeff Hathaway that his goal was not to be a college baseball coach. He said it was to be the UConn baseball coach.And in the years since, Penders has not simply been a great coach at UConn. He has been a great UConn coach. There is a difference.

Morgaen Donaldson, director of Education Policy Analysis at the University of Connecticut, said Connecticut should consider the wealth of existing research on what works for disengaged teenagers when developing how it will spend the money.

“Unfortunately, many of our nation’s brightest students from underserved populations (e.g., Black, Hispanic, English Learner, and/or free and reduced-price lunch eligible) are not being identified as gifted and do not receive gifted education services,” says Del Siegle, principal investigator with the National Center for Research on Gifted Education and an associate dean with the Neag School. “About 80% of states that completed the most recent National Association for Gifted Children’s State of the States survey indicated that underrepresentation of students from underserved populations was an important or very important issue in their state.”

“Teachers and educators are not super supportive of acceleration,” said Betsy McCoach, one of the researchers and a professor at the University of Connecticut. “But it doesn’t make sense to pull kids together to do the same thing that everyone else is doing.”

Brandi Simonsen, a professor of special education in UConn’s Department of Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education and co-director of the Center for Behavioral Education and Research, was interviewed about the use of restraint and seclusion and whether the federal government has a role to play in regulating their use in public schools.

“I think there was a failure to anticipate private entities taking advantage,” said Preston Green, a professor of education leadership and law at the University of Connecticut.  “The lack of guidelines for those companies opened the way to potential abuses — drawing a comparison to the lax regulation of financial markets that led to the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago. ”

Congratulations to our Neag School alumni, faculty, staff, and students on their continued accomplishments inside and outside the classroom. If you have an accolade to share, we want to hear from you! Please send any news items and story ideas to neag-communications@uconn.edu.

Through a $50,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation, University of Connecticut assistant professor of educational leadership Jennie Weiner will investigate how microaggressions and discrimination affect the experiences of 25 black, female principals. Neag professor Laura Burton is the co-investigator on this project.

Alan Addley is in his 11th year as the superintendent of Granby (Conn.) Public Schools. A native of Northern Ireland, Addley started his career as a professional soccer player and mathematics teacher. He has 34 years of administrative and teaching experience in private and public schools in the United States and Ireland. Addley completed a Connecticut Superintendent Certificate through the Executive Leadership Program in 2007 and earned his Ed.D. in 2014, both at the Neag School.