U.S. News & World Report released its 2019 national rankings of the best graduate schools of education on March 20, 2018, with the Neag School of Education ranking No. 30 in the nation. Once again, U.S. News has named the Neag School among the nation’s top 20 public graduate schools of education. It is tied at No. 17.

“The standards call attention to the positive things that you should be doing. Traditional school rules outline all the things we don’t want to see in schools,” said Brandi Simonsen, the co-director of the University of Connecticut’s Center for Behavioral Education and Research.

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.

Joshua Hyman, a researcher at the University of Connecticut, studied the effects of mandatory ACT tests in Michigan’s public high schools and found that the policy led to many more low-income students not only taking the test, but performing well.

According to Neag School psychology researchers James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto, little-c creativity has been useful for addressing common misconceptions about creativity.

Thanks in part to the evaluation expertise of a doctoral student in the Neag School’s measurement, evaluation, and assessment (MEA) program, a recently released report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that about 1 percent of enrollments in federal health-insurance plans in 2015 were potentially improper or fraudulent.

Each year, more than half a million students drop out of high school in the United States. But what if schools could predict which individuals were most at risk for dropping out — and perhaps even take action to prevent such an outcome? As it turns out, such a scenario is closer than ever to becoming a reality.

When Sushruta Kunnenkeri was a child, his father fostered a learning environment at the kitchen table, inviting his children to talk about science and history, giving them the confidence to explore new fields and ask questions — something Kunnenkeri, now an aspiring science teacher enrolled in the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates (TCPCG), wants to encourage his students to do.

Learning, Leadership, and Education Policy (LLEP) is a doctoral program available through the Neag School’s Department of Educational Leadership, offering concentrations in three areas: adult learning; leadership and education policy; and sport management. This installment of “10 Questions” connects with two current Ph.D. candidates in the LLEP program.

As 2017 nears its close, work on the University Principal Preparation Initiative — an initiative led at UConn by the Neag School’s University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) — is getting ready to celebrate its first birthday. This past year, UConn was one of seven universities selected to take part in the Wallace Foundation-funded initiative, which launched officially in January and is focused on improving training programs for aspiring school principals nationwide. Over the past 10 months, dedicated workgroups have been developing a “theory of action” for redesigning UCAPP.