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.”

The justification for gifted education is simple: Academically advanced children should be given work at their speed and level, both to nurture their talents and prevent them from becoming bored and disruptive in class.

“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.”

Science is in the midst of a crisis: A surprising fraction of published studies fail to replicate when the procedures are repeated.

Science is in the midst of a crisis: A surprising fraction of published studies fail to replicate when the procedures are repeated.

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.

As federal lawmakers prepare to debate legislation greatly reducing the use of restraints – and eliminating the use of seclusion – in public schools, a recent hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education focused on the use of restraint and seclusion and featured testimony from UConn expert George Sugai. We asked 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, 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. ”

The University of Connecticut’s education school has, once again, finished high in the rankings when it comes to public universities and graduate schools.