Over the past academic year, Neag School graduate student and high school English teacher Leszek Ward studied the effectiveness of regularly bringing small groups of students together with faculty advisors during homeroom at New Haven Academy, to determine whether implementing a structured protocol across certain groups would increase students’ sense of belonging.
Ward’s project won second place for the Lynn Hall Teacher Action Research Prize, an award which led him to discuss his work during the networking expo at the Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference held in New Haven, Conn., in April.
Ward is a student in the University of Connecticut Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP), a program within the Neag School that aims to prepare highly qualified school leaders to serve school communities across the state of Connecticut. UCAPP culminates in a capstone project, referred to as the change project, that allows students to take what they have learned through coursework to identify a need for change in schools and lead real-world improvement work.
UCAPP culminates in a capstone project, referred to as the change project, that allows students to take what they have learned through coursework to identify a need for change in schools and lead real-world improvement work.
Taking Steps to Foster Connectedness
Ward is in his 11th year of teaching at New Haven Academy, an interdistrict magnet school that serves 300 students from grades 9 through 12. New Haven Academy prides itself on being a school learning community where all members, including staff, students, and parents, know each other well, but Ward wanted to take this idea to the next level.
Ward focused his UCAPP change project on what are known as “advisory groups” — small groups of students, each led by a faculty advisor, which meet for 10 minutes in homeroom at the start of each school day and for 30-minute advisory sessions twice a week.
“These groups are meant to be a student’s ‘school family,’ a place where they are known and supported by at least one adult in the building, as well as a group of peers,” states Ward in his change project report.
Through an initial round of surveys, however, Ward and a group of seven fellow teachers found that these advisory groups were not doing enough to foster a sense of connectedness between students and their faculty advisors.
Ward says he chose advisory groups as the focus of his project because these groups already met consistently and because implementing a common homeroom protocol among certain groups was a small, manageable change that could potentially have a greater outside impact.
“We came up with the protocol by sharing our own experiences in advisory,” Ward says. “We also tried to look at a few other schools, read a chapter of The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, and put all those different learning experiences together.”
The homeroom protocol, which was implemented across eight advisory groups, included the following steps:
While there were some limitations to implementing the protocol, including issues with students’ homeroom attendance and inconsistency in administrating each element of the protocol, the project ultimately showed an increase in the sense of belonging among students in the advisory groups that used the new, structured protocol.
Students’ sense of belonging was measured through an eight-question, schoolwide survey that was developed by Ward and administered three times over the course of the academic year: in September, November, and February. With the survey, Ward calculated an average “connected score” for each advisory group, comparing this score among the eight groups that underwent the protocol with the 11 groups that did not use the protocol. He found that the structured homeroom protocol had a positive effect, one that proved to be statistically significant, on students’ sense of belonging.
Ward’s interest in developing a sense of belonging at New Haven Academy stems from a body of existing research on the topic, including a 2007 study by Laura D. Pittman and Adeya Richmond that showed a sense of belonging is powerful enough to affect students even after they leave high school.
Celebrating the UCAPP Journey
Director of the Educational Leadership Preparation Programs at UConn’s Neag School, Richard Gonzales, says students administering their change projects often find additional organizational issues in the school community that they have to tackle.
“There’s always the original topic and original issue of improvement, but one of the things that most students learn is there is always a lot more that comes from just getting started, rolling up your sleeves, and taking on improvement work,” says Gonzales. “There are other things that surface that are also important and that people also work on.”
UCAPP students presented their change projects at the UConn Storrs campus on April 27 during the program’s 5th Annual Change Project Day.
“Change Project Day is the celebration of their journey, where they come together as a community of school leader practitioners,” says Gonzales. “They present to one another and talk about not only what improvement work that they led, but most importantly the things that they learned about leadership, about leading change, about facilitating work with others, and what they learned about themselves as leaders.”
For Ward, the UCAPP change project meshed well with his day-to-day work at New Haven Academy. “My experience with the change project fits in really nicely with the work I was doing at my school,” he says. “It provided me with an opportunity to tackle an issue that I care about and that is important to my school.”
Check out photos from the Change Project Day. Learn more about the UConn Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) at ucapp.education.uconn.edu.
The Day (UConn is working on a partnership with the Neag School to offer degree in sign language)
Connecticut Public Radio (Neag School professors are quoted regarding the state’s new assessment for future teachers)
Los Angeles Times (Research by Neag School’s National Center for Research on Gifted Education is referenced)
National Council of Teachers of English (Neag School’s Danielle Filipiak authors blog post)
CT Mirror (Casey Cobb is quoted regarding Dalio $100M gift to Connecticut education)
Math Ed Podcast (Suzanne Wilson interviewed)
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.
This fall, the Neag School, the Department of English, and the CWP served as the contest’s Connecticut sponsors for the 2018-19 academic year; Neag School Professor Doug Kaufman, CWP Director Jason Courtmanche, and Department of English Ph.D. candidate Mollie Kervick served as the contest’s representatives for the state of Connecticut.
There were 946 submissions from Connecticut students, and 96 semi-finalists. Each semi-finalist will receive a certificate of recognition. Nine state finalists from the contest’s three categories (Grades 4-6, Grades 7-8, and Grades 9-12) have been selected, and each will receive a cash prize and state recognition, which includes a special ceremony at the Connecticut State Capitol Building on Friday, April 26. From those nine state finalists, three first-place state finalists have been selected and will advance to the national competition, for which winners will be chosen later this month. Read more about the contest, and click the student finalists’ names below to read their winning essays.
View photos from the April ceremony at the state Capitol, celebrating Connecticut’s nine finalists.
Congratulations to the finalists for the state of Connecticut, listed along with their school, teacher, and the work of literature that is the focus of their essay:
Level I (Grades 4-6)
Level II (Grades 7-8)
Level III (Grades 9-12)
* Affiliated with CWP
† UConn alumna/us
Students in the Neag School and Department of English judged the 96 Letters About Literature contest semi-finalists this past month. The judges selected the best Letters About Literature submitted by Connecticut students at each of the three competition levels (grades 4-5, 7-8, and 9-12).
Thank you again to the contest judges, who are current students in the Neag School of Education Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s program with a second major or concentration in English:
Missy Bancroft
Jack Curry
Kiana Foster-Mauro
Elizabeth George
Sheila Higgins
Lauren Jolles
Ruthie Kelley
Sam Taylor Laviero
Theresa Legein
Sammi Mahoney
Julia Mancini
Kassidy Manness
Carly Martin
Jenna Massicotte
Lyric McVoy
Lindsey McMorris
Marisa Nazzaro
Julia Russo
Ajane Santora-Fyne
Matt Scalzo
Natasha Schweitzer
Melissa Scrivani
Suli Serrano-Haynes
Emily Smith
Emily Wade
Delaney Wisniewski
Zhanya Wrentz
Editor’s Note: The following story was originally published in The Hechinger Report and has been republished here with permission.
One of the big justifications for gifted-and-talented education is that high-achieving kids need more advanced material so that they’re not bored and actually learn something during the school day. Their academic needs cannot be met in a general education class, advocates say. But a large survey of 2,000 elementary schools in three states found that not much advanced content is actually being taught to gifted students. In other words, smart third-graders, those who tend to be a couple grade levels ahead, are largely studying the same third-grade topics that their supposedly “nongifted” classmates are learning.
“If kids are given more accelerated instruction, we see higher growth.”
— Betsy McCoach, Professor, Department of Educational Psychology
The survey found that instead of moving bright kids ahead to more advanced topics, gifted classrooms are preoccupied with activities to develop critical thinking and creativity, such as holding debates and brainstorming. The third-most common focus in gifted curriculums is to give students more projects and games, so-called “extension activities” that are tangentially related to their grade-level content. Accelerated math instruction ranked 18th on a list of 26 items that gifted curriculums could focus on. Advanced reading and writing instruction ranked 19th. Teaching academic self-confidence, leadership skills, and social emotional learning all ranked higher than teaching above grade level content.
“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.”
More than half the gifted students in the three states were white. In one of the three states, almost three-quarters of the gifted students were white even though they made up roughly half the population. In that same state, blacks made up a quarter of the population but had fewer than 10% of the gifted seats. Hispanics had 7% of the gifted seats and made up 16% of the population.
It’s important to point out that the researchers only surveyed schools and district administrators; they didn’t actually analyze the content or quality of gifted curriculum. Still, it’s revealing that three-quarters of the schools admit that they don’t use a separate curriculum especially designed for gifted students in reading or math. Without a curriculum, teachers are making their own decisions about what to teach. One classroom in one school might be offering a very different education than another gifted classroom down the hall.
Researchers found a wide variation in how schools teach gifted students. Within each state, roughly half the schools put gifted students together in separate classrooms. Other schools pull students out of their regular classrooms for a few hours a week of gifted instruction. Other times, a teacher is sent into classrooms to work with gifted students. A fourth common approach is to create small groups within a class, clustering gifted kids together for many assignments. Most schools used a combination of the four approaches, but researchers didn’t find one approach worked better than the others. Achievement gains were similar regardless.
The researchers say their survey is evidence of a “disconnect” between who gets labeled “gifted” and how these students are actually getting taught in American classrooms. They point out that the kids are being selected for these programs because they have high math and reading scores yet they’re not given much advanced instruction in either subject.
Sluggish learning for the brightest Americans may be the consequence. The researchers also tracked the annual state test scores for more than 350,000 students in these three states who started third grade in 2011. Gifted students, on average, began third grade with academic achievement two grade levels above the academic level of non-gifted students but posted slower academic growth than general education students between third and fifth grades. Other studies have also found slower growth for advanced students during the school year.
However, it doesn’t seem that gifted education is entirely useless. High-achieving kids who weren’t identified for gifted services but still scored above the median score for gifted students on the third grade test had even slower academic growth than students in the gifted programs. So perhaps these critical thinking and creativity exercises are doing something.
This research points to the lack of consensus on what the goals of gifted education should be. Many don’t think it should be about advancing students as quickly as possible. High-quality instruction that helps kids who’ve already mastered the basics go deeper into the material may ultimately be beneficial. And annual state assessments may not do a good job of measuring this kind of depth, creativity or critical thinking.
McCoach argues that research supports acceleration, citing a 2004 summary of the research evidence conducted by scholars at the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa. She also points to rigorous studies that found learning gains for gifted students who learned from different curriculums that combine acceleration with enrichment, such as those developed at William & Mary College and the University of Virginia. “This is one area where there is the most solid research base,” said McCoach. “If kids are given more accelerated instruction, we see higher growth.”
Why do schools tend to ignore this research evidence? McCoach speculates that many educators are worried that students who race ahead will face social problems at school, even though, she says, there is no research to support this widely held belief.
State testing itself might also discourage school leaders from changing the curriculum for gifted children. Gifted kids tend to score at the top, propping up school ratings and rankings; there’s a fear that even bright kids might do worse on grade-level material emphasized on the test if they are spending most of their time on future topics. “Gifted students are the ringers for the state tests,” said McCoach. School leaders “don’t want to be shooting themselves in the foot,” she added.
I hope this study calms anxious parents who worry that their kids will miss out on a great education if they don’t get into a gifted program. And for education policy officials, it’s worth revisiting what the point of gifted education is, especially when the students are disproportionately white. In the future, McCoach and her colleagues plan to study how gifted programs increase racial segregation. In the meantime, the debate over gifted education continues.
The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accredits the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Read more about CAEP Accreditation, including the programs covered and the accountability measures.
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