One of the hottest topics in public education is the issue of evaluating teachers. Two years ago, a fierce competition for federal Race to the Top money prompted states to propose using data analysis to tie teacher performance directly to student test scores.
“I think we’ve all realized it’s far more complicated than it appears,” says Casey Cobb, Educational Leadership department head and director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis. “Educators in Connecticut want to use teacher evaluation more formatively, not only to hire and fire, but to develop instructional …

On Nov. 29, 2010, the University of Connecticut held the fifth annual Awards for Excellence in Public Engagement, in which a professor and student from the Neag School of Education were recognized as finalists.
The Office of Public Engagement selected one faculty member, one staff member, one graduate student, one undergraduate student and one university program based on involvement and leadership in public outreach. A total of 41 nominations were received this year.
Two of the 16 finalists were Jason Irizarry, an assistant professor of Multicultural Education in the Department of Curriculum …

Susannah Everett
Susannah Everett is a research associate with the Center for Behavioral Education & Research. Her focus is to support the research and implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) in the Hartford Public Schools, with specific attention on targeted interventions. She will also work with CT State Education Resource Center and other organizations to coordinate PBIS training and on-going professional development throughout the state. Everett has been an instructor with Neag’s Dept. of Educational Psychology since 2002 and previously was a school psychologist and School-Wide Positive …

When most people think about dehydration — if they think about it at all — they probably associate it with physical exertion or athletic performance. But a Neag professor’s latest research shows that dehydration can result even from leisurely activity such as sitting at a computer, with possibly detrimental health consequences.
Lawrence Armstrong, who has spent more than 20 years working in the Department of Kinesiology’s Human Performance Laboratory, says despite the popularity of bottled water, most people walk around mildly dehydrated most of the time because when they experience thirst, …

As Fred Carofano’s advanced placement students file into his East Hartford statistics class on the Tuesday before Christmas, he hands out a playing card that determines where they will sit and gives them a quick statistics problem to work on. If they get it right, they get a stamp that yields points at the end of the semester and augments their grade. But the exercise is really used to get them quickly into the mindset for the lesson that day.
“I would highly recommend that you all write this down because …