2019 marks the 50th anniversary of that landmark case, Tinker v. Des Moines School District, where Tinker and the other plaintiffs prevailed.

In the Q&A below, National Education Policy Center Fellow and University of Connecticut professor Preston Green III explains the significance of the case, tracing its implications to modern-day student speech issues (like those related to social media) that the 1965 Court could not have foreseen.

Securing a child’s academic success begins with choosing the right schools. But how can parents decide where to enroll their kids?

“Given that the Neag School’s mission is to improve educational and social systems to be more effective, equitable and just for all, federal funding for research focused on key issues in special education aligns seamlessly with our efforts to support educators, policymakers, and students nationwide,” says Gladis Kerstaint, dean of the Neag School of Education.

“The Tinker case marked the first time that the Supreme Court addressed whether the First Amendment applied to speech by students within public schools,” says Preston Green, a professor from the Neag School of Education at UConn. “The Court ruled that a school district violated the First Amendment by suspending students for wearing black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. In reaching this decision, the Court ruled that public schools could not censor student speech unless it ‘materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasions of the rights of others.’ “

In addition to the heightened, richer vocabulary that books present to toddlers, the shared context of the experience is a key component to its value, explains Michael Coyne, professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut and co-director of the Center for Behavioral Education and Research.

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) announced last week that researchers from the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education have been awarded $6,896,988 over five years for three research projects related to special education. A faculty member from the Neag School of Education is also serving as co-prinicpal investigator on a $3,999,320 project awarded to the University of Kansas.

Sarah Woulfin, associate professor in the Neag School’s Department of Educational Leadership has been named co-editor of Educational Researcher(ER) for 2019 to 2022.

This isn’t the first time that fashion and politics have collided,” says Cooper. “A few years ago, Gucci put out a style or image on one of their pieces of clothing that was resembling of the minstrel show, which was highly offensive to African Americans in the United States. So as opposed to viewing it as a form – and large – a large contingency of the hip-hop community boycotted Gucci and said, you know, this was culturally insensitive.”

“The church is dictating what is taught or done,” says Preston Green of the Memphis charter network’s lease with the diocese. “That seems like a conflict under the [U.S. Constitution’s] establishment clause to me,” which prohibits the government from favoring a religion.

“We really need to think systematically about how to permit charter schools to exist in a way that won’t deleteriously impact school districts,” says Preston Green, a professor of education at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “So understand that when I’m calling for a moratorium, I’m not calling for a backdoor closure but, rather, really thinking deliberately about how they can exist and be situated in a way that their inefficiencies are lessened.”