Category: Neag in the Media


Read stories by or about Neag School faculty, alumni, students, and other members of the community that appear in external news outlets.

CSDE’s Ground-Breaking Research Collaborative Issues New Report Showing Positive Effects of Home Visits on Student Attendance

January 20, 2023

The Connecticut State Department of Education’s (CSDE) ground-breaking research collaborative – the Center for Connecticut Education Research Collaboration (CCERC) (formerly Connecticut COVID-19 Education Research Collaborative) – released a report on the evaluation of the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program (LEAP) which showed the positive effects of home visits on student attendance.




The Power of Puppets: New Toolkit Helps Kids Process “Heavy Feelings”

January 9, 2023

Emily Wicks with UConn’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry noticed the pandemic-era disruptions to kids’ social-emotional learning and development, and reached out to Sandy Chafouleas at the university’s Neag School of Education. Together they developed Feel Your Best Self, a puppet-centered program aimed at helping “strengthen the emotional well-being of elementary-aged children.”


New Superintendent Chosen for Somers Schools

December 30, 2022

Samuel Galloway has been named the town’s new school superintendent and, pending successful contract negotiations, will officially take over the post on April 1. Galloway will replace Paul C. Gagliarducci, who has served as interim superintendent since Brian P. Czapla retired in June after five years.




Why Some Colleges Publicly Punish Student Groups

December 15, 2022

Adam McCready, an assistant professor in residence in the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education and the editor of Oracle, a research journal for fraternity and sorority advisers, said that student-conduct offices’ efforts to list organizations’ misconduct was born out of efforts by fraternity-and-sorority-life offices to be more transparent about Greek-letter organizations’ conduct after hazing-related deaths.



How a Connecticut School District Improved Elementary Math Scores Amid a Nationwide Decline

December 8, 2022

When Dan Crispino took the job overseeing the curriculum for elementary schools in Meriden, Connecticut, it was 2019 and he had a big problem to solve. The low-income district, where nearly 75% of kids receive free or reduced lunch, was struggling with math.

“When I would go into classrooms all over the district, I could see that kids didn’t seem as excited about math,” Crispino said. “And it didn’t surprise me that our results were depressed in math.”

Crispino said math classes were 60 minutes then. They are now 90 minutes, beginning with a 30-minute lesson followed by an hour-long block where every minute counts. The class is made up of tightly timed segments, where students and the teacher rotate through small groups.