UConn Today (Neag School faculty members, Betsy McCoach and Scott Brown, are part of an interdisciplinary UConn group that was awarded an NSF grant)
40 Years of Confratute: The Legacy of Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis
You might presume that UConn’s main campus, tucked away in pastoral northeastern Connecticut, lay dormant over the summer months. Think again. Were you to peek into classrooms across campus in mid-July, you would be surprised to come across a few rather unusual sights:
… A Connecticut police officer enthralling a crowd of science teachers with real-life criminal cases as they learn how to dust for fingerprints and test for DNA evidence;
… Four young men presenting a lively spoken word performance, centered on improving education for economically disadvantaged students, to teachers and principals;
… Educators from India, Italy, Brazil, Qatar, and Switzerland teaming up for a surprisingly entertaining math lesson led by the wittiest individual in the room, a sprightly octogenarian math whiz who liberally sprinkles her lecture with wisecracks.
These are just a few of the scenes you would catch at what is known as Confratute, an annual, weeklong event sponsored by the Renzulli Center for Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent Development at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education. Arguably the most global initiative in all of UConn’s history, Confratute has, since 1978, drawn a total of more than 30,000 educators from around the world to the University’s Storrs campus to gain insight into research-based strategies intended to engage all types of students in learning.
“Confratute is a kind of gathering together of people who think there has got to be a different way — I would say a better way — of making schools more engaging, more enjoyable, and more exciting.”
— Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor
Joseph Renzulli
Celebrating its 40th anniversary this July, Confratute earlier this month brought together 600-plus educators from more than a dozen countries for nearly 50 sessions covering everything from how to incorporate CSI forensic science tactics into the classroom to creative storytelling using kinesthetics, music, and mime.
“Confratute is a kind of gathering together of people who think there has got to be a different way — I would say a better way — of making schools more engaging, more enjoyable, and more exciting,” says Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Joseph Renzulli, a longtime educational psychology professor in the Neag School and Confratute’s co-founder.
Renzulli, after whom the Renzulli Center is named, established this “gathering” four decades ago with Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Letitia Neag Morgan Chair in Educational Psychology Sally Reis. From the outset, Renzulli says, he and Reis wanted to make it unlike any other professional development conference or training — and set out to create part conference, part institute, with “a great deal of fraternity in between.”
‘The Most Energizing Learning Experience I’ve Ever Had’
Early in his career, working as a middle-school math and science teacher in his home state of New Jersey, Renzulli says he found that many of his students were “smarter” than him. As a professor in higher education years later, he says he witnessed the same attribute in his doctoral students.
“Half of the doctoral students who come through the door are smarter than me,” he says. “So I can’t teach them everything that I know, but I can teach them how to develop an investigative and creative mindset — and that is what I did with [my middle-school students]; I got them involved in many different projects and hands-on activities.”
Keeping these early-career experiences in mind, Renzulli sought, in establishing Confratute, to share with educators a wealth of effective instructional approaches used in the field of gifted education — still a somewhat peripheral academic discipline 40 years ago — as well as to show how these approaches could be applied successfully across all types of students.
“At that time, most gifted education was all about acceleration and advanced courses covering material faster and in greater depth. I’ve never argued against that,” says Renzulli. “However, it did not promote the kinds of experiences I had as a teacher, where kids [of all levels] got interested in investigative projects.”
“The collaboration and synergies that happened over the course of the week were amazing. It is the most energizing learning experience I’ve ever had, both times I attended.”
— Karen Kraeger, elementary gifted specialist,
Cobb County (Ga.) Schools
The intention of Confratute was not to advocate for doing away with any school’s regular curriculum, he says, but to bring together teachers and help them find ways to “jazz up” curricula in a way that would appeal to students at all levels. Confratute, he hoped, would show educators how to make school the kind of place that encouraged students to pursue their personal interests. “Schools should be places for talent development,” he says.
And even beyond the end goal of engaging all students, Renzulli wants Confratute to engage all teachers. “If you don’t enjoy teaching, you’re not going to get engaged; you’re not going to enjoy the act of learning,” he says.
For Confratute devotees, the program structure, which invites attendees to take part in dedicated weeklong sessions that concentrate on active learning, helps set it apart from other professional development opportunities in the realm of education. In addition, a focus on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, developed by Renzulli and Reis more than 30 years ago, helps participants plan how to implement enriching and engaging programs in their schools and districts.
“The weeklong format allows for extensive time to dig deeply into a topic for thorough explanation … enough time to have a paradigm shift,” says Karen Kraeger, an elementary gifted specialist for Cobb County Schools, located outside of Atlanta, who this summer attended Confratute for the second time.
“The extended time allows a group of people to grow, bond, and develop into a community of learners focused on improving learning for students,” she adds. “The collaboration and synergies that happened over the course of the week were amazing. It is the most energizing learning experience I’ve ever had, both times I attended.”
“At a more traditional conference,” says Melissa Thom, a longtime Confratute instructor and library media specialist in West Hartford, Conn., “you get a short overview of many different topics each day and, after three to four days, one often leaves feeling energized, but overwhelmed with all the new ideas and unsure of how to actually make something happen.”
In contrast, she says, Confratute’s weeklong strands “enable participants to explore a topic of interest much more deeply. … They leave Confratute with a product and/or a plan for how to implement the new ideas in their educational situation in the fall. In addition, deeper relationships are developed among the educators in the strand due to the added time together spent learning and sharing.”
Not to mention “the combination of learning, teaching, socializing, networking, and overall feeling of collegiality” that she believes makes Confratute unique. Thom, who this summer led a session titled “Talent Development Opportunities in the Library Media Center,” has been participating in Confratute for nine years.
While this annual event has endured year after year with an ever-ardent following, the road to Renzulli and Reis sharing their innovative work certainly posed its own challenges along the way.
Changing the Definition of Giftedness
Renzulli, a pioneering force in the field of educational psychology, giftedness, and creativity for nearly half a century, has, in that time, helped change the face of gifted education. He is quick to admit that his viewpoint on gifted education “has always been a little bit different.” To him, intelligence and giftedness are not defined solely by test scores or high IQ, and all students should be given the opportunity to develop their gifted behaviors.
One of the major concepts he championed — and for which he was in fact criticized, early on — is the idea that educators can successfully apply teaching strategies used in gifted education to engage all students, in part by giving students freedom to choose the kinds of projects and topics they explore, based on their own personal interests.
“We believe that all students can benefit from enjoyable and challenging learning opportunities,” states Confratute’s website. “Learning is maximized when we consider each student’s abilities, interests, learning styles, and preferred modes of expression.”
Yet these perspectives were not always popular.
During Renzulli’s early years in academia, his ideas were rejected outright by his contemporaries, with one article he authored about his research receiving rejections from every major gifted education academic journal. Eventually, Phi Delta Kappan accepted the piece for publication in 1978; today, that article continues to stand as the most frequently cited publication in the field of gifted education.
“Prior to Joe’s work on the definition [of giftedness], most professional educators equated giftedness strictly with high IQ scores,” writes Thomas P. Hébert[1], a friend and former graduate student of Renzulli, now a professor of gifted education at the University of South Carolina. “Renzulli’s definition challenged this antiquated approach and enabled gifted ed programs to be open to children of poverty, children from bilingual backgrounds, and children of color.”
“It is unusual for innovative or revolutionary ideas to be easily accepted by most, especially at the beginning. People want to see proof that changing from the known will offer better outcomes,” says Kraeger, the two-time Confratute attendee. Renzulli “persevered with his ideas, putting them into practice and studying the outcomes. His ideas … are still as relevant and powerful today as they were initially. That is the sign of a truly transcendent thinker.”
“You leave Confratute with a network of like-minded individuals — a vital aspect in today’s educational world.”
— Melissa Thom, Confratute instructor
International Reach
Under Renzulli’s visionary leadership, perhaps it is no wonder, then, that Confratute stands out from the crowd. In taking an approach unlike other professional development programs in education, in following an unconventional format, in bringing together a cast of colorful and keenly dedicated instructors, and even in touting a name that resists convention, Confratute continues to unite educators far and wide.
“You leave Confratute with a network of like-minded individuals — a vital aspect in today’s educational world, where educators who believe education should be joyful can often feel alone and isolated,” says longtime instructor Thom.
“Where else can you spend a week with so many of the eminent thinkers in education?” Kraeger says. “It is an experience unlike any other, one that is not to be missed.”
Even through Confratute’s decades-long evolution, from a yearly “gathering” at the UConn Storrs campus to an event with remarkable international reach, Renzulli, now in his 80s, has remained front and center at Confratute — “a kind of little oasis for people,” according to Renzulli, who affectionately calls Confratute supporters “positive malcontents who want to make a difference in their schools.”
With a career that now spans a near half-century, Renzulli has traveled around the globe many times over to share his research. He has won many accolades, advised doctoral students who have gone on to become prestigious researchers and experts in their field, has obtained more than $50 million in research grants, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s most influential psychologists. But ask what Renzulli considers his greatest legacy of such a long and storied career, and it is clear where his passion lies.
“I’ve published hundreds of articles and dozens of books, but when people ask what I feel is my major contribution, I say Confratute,” he says. “I’ve been able to reach more kids and more teachers serving more kids in schools around the country and around the world. This is what the theme of Confratute is all about.”
Watch the opening ceremony for 40th annual Confratute, with welcome remarks by Joseph Renzulli, Sally Reis, Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell, and Dean Gladis Kersaint of the Neag School.
Read a blog post about personalized learning and the Schoolwide Enrichment Model, written by Superintendent Blane McCann of Omaha, Neb., a longtime Confratute attendee.
View the Confratute 2017 photo album.
[1] Excerpt from a piece authored by Hébert and reprinted in Reflections on Gifted Education: Critical Works by Joseph S. Renzulli and Colleagues (Prufrock, 2016).
Polk Country School District Appoints 15 New Administrators
News Chief (Neag School alumna Donna Dynes was appointed director of information services)
Free Admissions Tests Help More Poor Students Go to College
Editor’s Note: This story, authored by Loretta Waldman, originally appeared on UConn Today, the University of Connecticut’s news website.
Closing the college attainment gap among minority and low-income students has been a longstanding challenge for education policy makers. Recently published research out of UConn suggests that a simple, low-cost intervention may offer an effective solution.
The study by Joshua Hyman, an assistant professor of public policy and educational leadership at UConn, looks at a policy in Michigan requiring 11th grade students to take the ACT and compares the change in the rate of students going to college before and after implementation of the policy. The findings, published in the summer 2017 issue of the journal Education Finance and Policy, show a one percentage point bump in four-year college enrollment among poor students.
The increase may not seem all that dramatic, but relative to other educational interventions, this policy is inexpensive and easy to implement on a large scale, Hyman writes. At the time of the study, 11 states had incorporated the ACT or SAT into their 11th grade statewide assessment. All 11 states require students to take the exams and and pay for them at a cost of $32 to $50 per student.
“Sometimes minor, cheap policies can have a small impact, and if you stack enough of them up, they can make a big difference.”
— Joshua Hyman, Assistant Professor
“This is a policy that is not super flashy, but sometimes minor, cheap policies can have a small impact, and if you stack enough of them up, they can make a big difference,” he says.
Hyman analyzed data on 11th-graders taking the college entrance exam from 2003 to 2008. He looks at demographic data such as sex, race, and date of birth, as well as socioeconomic factors such as free and reduced-price lunch status, limited English proficiency, special education status, and the student’s home address. The data also included eighth and 11th grade state assessment results and college enrollment information.
By comparing the data before and after 2007, when Michigan implemented the policy, he says he was able to figure out how many students, particularly low-income students, aren’t taking the ACT or SAT, and to predict who would score well and be eligible to go to a four-year college if they did take it. His findings show that for every 10 poor students who took a college entrance exam before they were mandatory, there were an additional five students who didn’t take the test but who would score well enough to get into college if they did.
“This policy in a sense increased the supply of poor students who are taking these college entrance exams and scoring well by 50 percent,” he says. “I found that to be a pretty surprising result – that there are a lot of disadvantaged students out there who would do well on these tests but just aren’t taking them. “
Hyman further examined the effects of mandating and paying for the ACT by comparing before and after trends among students attending high schools used as test centers to those attending non-test center schools. Just the fact that some students have to drive to another school to take the test may lead to some of them not taking it. Non-test center schools tend to have lower test-taking rates and would show a bigger jump in college enrollment, he reasoned. Indeed, the study findings bore his theory out, showing a 0.6 point increase in college enrollment. The effect was even larger among boys, 0.9 points; poor students, 1.0 point; and students in the poorest high schools, 1.3 points.
The study also found that the students compelled to take the ACT tend to stay in college. Hyman was able to follow all six groups of students through their second year of college and found that the majority of them did not drop out, a key concern with policies such as a mandatory ACT.
“I think the paper has some really uncontroversial, easy, helpful policy implications,” he says. “At $34 a student or so, this policy is quite cheap. It is really hard to move the needle statewide on the rate of students going to college or the rate of low income students going to college. If this policy moves the needle by just a little bit, that’s helpful and that’s important.”
Still, the mandatory ACT is far from a cure-all, he notes. The results suggest that requiring all students to take a college entrance exam increases the supply of poor students scoring at a college-ready level by nearly 50 percent. Yet the policy increases the number of poor students enrolling at a four-year institution by only six percent.
“In spite of the policy, there remains a large supply of disadvantaged students who are high-achieving and not on a path to enrolling at a four-year college,” he writes. “Researchers and policy makers are still faced with the important question of which policies can further stem the tide of rising inequality in educational attainment.”
Access the story as it originally appeared on UConn Today.
Free Admissions Tests Help More Poor Students Go to College
UConn Today (Neag School assistant professor Joshua Hyman authored a study on a Michigan policy requiring eleventh grade students to take the ACT)
Helping Your Student With Disabilities Prepare for the Future
Editor’s Note: Joseph Madaus, associate dean for academic affairs, pens this piece originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Summer is a busy time for high school juniors. They’re getting ready to say goodbye to school as they know it and they’re researching colleges, visiting campuses and trying to figure out what college fits their needs.
Planning is an important part of this process, but for parents and guardians of students with disabilities, this is especially true.
As a professor and researcher in special education, I’ve worked with many students with disabilities transitioning to college. The ones who are typically most successful after high school are the ones who were prepared to be strong self-advocates, who could seek out needed services and supports, and who could manage the multiple demands of being independent.
These are all skills that can – and should – be taught at the middle and high school level. Whether it’s understanding your child’s disability and legal rights or figuring out what accommodations and study habits work best, preparation is key.
“Whether it’s understanding your child’s disability and legal rights or figuring out what accommodations and study habits work best, preparation is key.”
A wide range of disabilities on college campuses
According to a 2016 report by the United States Department of Education, approximately 11 percent of all undergraduates report having a disability – up from 6 percent almost two decades prior. Since nearly two-thirds of all students who received special education services in high school did not self-disclose their disability to a college, the actual number of students with disabilities on campuses is likely much higher.
Most of these students have what are often called “nonvisible” disabilities, including learning disabilities, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and, increasingly, mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression.
Students with autism spectrum disorders are also more often attending college than a decade ago. And on some campuses, programs are emerging for students with intellectual disabilities.
A change in legal status
Many of these students receive special education services during some (or all) of their kindergarten through 12th grade school years.
For many, these services are provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEA). The IDEA requires a free and appropriate education, in the least restrictive environment, that meets the individual needs of students. A team of professionals work with the student’s family or guardians to develop an Individualized Education Program (IEP). The IEP outlines the student’s strengths and needs, sets annual goals and determines what modifications might be required to help the student meet those goals.
Other students with disabilities don’t need IDEA. They qualify for services under Subpart D of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which is a civil rights law (not a special education law) that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.
However, in both of these cases, services end at graduation. Special education services and individualized support and instruction required by the IDEA are not available in college.
At the college level, students with disabilities may be covered under a different part of the Rehabilitation Act. (Subpart D of Section 504 covers K-12, while Subpart E covers post-secondary.) Subpart E protects college students with disabilities against discrimination and requires that they be provided equal access to all aspects of the academic program and facilities – provided that the student gains admission into college and maintains eligibility to remain enrolled, without consideration of their disability.
If admitted, and if the student would like to receive accommodations, they must seek out disability services and provide the college with required information about the nature of the disability and how it impacts access to the physical environment or to learning. Often called “documentation,” the specific requirements vary based upon disability type and, often, the college that the student attends.
It’s important to note that it’s the student’s choice to seek out and to use services at the college level. But it’s also important to know that students must self-identify as having a disability or else they’re not eligible for services – the college does not need to seek students out.
How families can prepare
There are several things that families can do to get ready for life after high school. The list below is by no means exhaustive. Each student with a disability has unique needs and questions that should be addressed.
In general, however, students and their families should:
- Learn more about the disability and the student’s unique characteristics. When leaving high school, the student should understand his or her own strengths, preferences and weaknesses – to be able to self-advocate, to use and adjust learning strategies that work for him or her, and to independently make life choices.
- Become active in the IEP or Section 504 process and be active members of the team that develops and monitors the individualized plan. Students are often left out of this process, but should be included as early as is appropriate and to the greatest extent possible, based on the student’s skills.
- Learn about accommodation needs. Students and families can work with individual teachers to request and set these up. High school is a great time for a student to learn how to monitor what’s useful and what’s not. Learning which accommodations are really needed will be an important skill in college or work life.
- Transition away from any modifications to instruction, tests or grading, and focus on the use of learning strategies. Changes to teaching methods and tests are generally not provided after high school.
- Work on time management skills. The college day is much less structured than the high school day. This creates many exciting opportunities for students, but also challenges. Students need to be prepared to productively and independently handle this free time.
- Research the disability supports offered at different colleges. Section 504 only requires colleges to ensure access and prohibit discrimination, but many colleges provide more extensive services and supports. This may affect what colleges you want to visit or apply to.
An exciting option
Once you know what life after high school will bring, there’s even more you can do to prepare: Learn about the documentation requirements for the college you’ve chosen, get in touch with disability services and talk about needed accommodations and supports, and if appropriate for a student, think about transportation needs and access to medication or doctors.
But the most important thing is to simply start looking forward to the challenge ahead of you. College presents an exciting and viable option for students with disabilities. With preparation in high school (and knowing what to do when you actually arrive on campus) students with disabilities can succeed in college – or in whatever life after high school they choose.
Joseph Madaus, Professor of Education, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Connecticut
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Three Great ‘Sleeper’ Studies to Check Out on Google Scholar
Education Week (Research on career and technical education by Neag School’s Shaun Dougherty was covered)
Will Churches Ever Be Allowed to Run Charter Schools
The Atlantic (Neag School’s Preston Green weighs in on the possibility of charter schools being operated by religious groups)
UConn’s Chris Dailey to Receive Margo Dydek Award
Connecticut Sun (UConn Women’s Basketball assistant coach and Neag School alumna Chris Dailey to be honored on Aug. 8)
Teacher Tests Test Teachers
American Prospect (Neag School’s Preston Green is quoted in the story)
