For a decade, researchers from the Neag School of Education have worked with the state on an ambitious literacy initiative designed to close Connecticut’s significant achievement gap. Their efforts have proved so successful that now a program that began with a few pilot schools is set for significant expansion to school districts of need across the state.
Social justice and equity remains an area of focus for Neag School researchers, particularly given that the achievement gap between Connecticut’s low-income and minority students and their peers is among the largest in the United States. Here, the Neag School highlights several key avenues of research work in this area.
Education DIVE (Neag School’s Erik Hines was interviewed for story on the achievement gap of boys and biased treatment in the classroom)
After five years as dean of the Neag School of Education, Thomas C. DeFranco, Ph.D., has returned to life as a full-time mathematics professor in both the Neag School and the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
The enormous challenge of closing the gap between successful, high-performing students and the often multi-challenged, low-performing ones won’t be overcome by one, large sweeping change, but many small, effective, and strategic ones. “We’re excited and determined to discover the smallest changes that can have the greatest and most durable results,” said the Neag School of […]
As other institutions are slowing – or even reversing – the growth of their faculty, the University of Connecticut has embarked on one of the most ambitious faculty-hiring plans in U.S. higher education. Seeking to strategically expand its faculty in key research and teaching areas and boost the number of classes offered, UConn is aiming […]
Not long ago, during a trip to the West Coast, I met with a UConn alum working in the biotech field. During our conversation, he mentioned he could not hire college graduates to work in his company because the graduates he interviewed had strong technical backgrounds but lacked both written and oral communication skills, or […]
A grant supporting a college readiness program for two Bridgeport schools – Bassick High and Longfellow School—has been awarded by the Lloyd G. Balfour Foundation, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee to the University of Connecticut for an initiative to be run by the Neag School of Education’s CommPACT Schools Program. The $368,000 grant will go […]
Few observers doubt that Teach For America (TFA) has high aspirations. Established in 1990, TFA strives to close persistent racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps in U.S. public education by recruiting high-achieving college graduates to teach for two years in low-income urban and rural schools. In recent years, applications to TFA have soared, especially at highly […]
