Education

The State Board of Education unanimously approved a system to grade teachers and principals Friday, noting the next step will be implementation. Read more about the details for these evaluations here and here.

Following the state’s lead in decriminalizing marijuana, the University of Connecticut has taken the next step and knocked down the penalties on campus. The plan approved by the Office of Community Standards will have university officials treat possession of marijuana the same as possession of alcohol. Instead of suspending students caught with small amounts of marijuana, […]

Even with the downsizing of newsrooms across the country, it turns out that college journalism majors don’t face the harshest job market. Architecture majors do. Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce’s annual “Not all College Degrees are Created Equal” shows that 14 percent of recent graduates in architecture programs are jobless, and those […]

State legislators have played little to no role in what tuition will be at the state’s public colleges, a reality that could change as President Obama steps up the pressure on colleges to stop raising tuition. During the first Higher Education Committee meeting this year, state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, asked how the state plans […]

Robert A. Kennedy’s nomination to become president of the state’s college system may have sailed through the Board of Regents last week, but he had a backup plan if things went awry. Kennedy was under contract to begin teaching biology at the University of Maine Jan. 15, according to the school’s student newspaper. Colleen Flanagan, […]

Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor has been cleared by the state’s ethics panel to make decisions on the network of charter schools he used to be closely tied to. Pryor, who helped open Amistad Academy in New Haven and was a member of the board responsible for the governance of numerous charter schools in the state, […]

ConnCAN, a New-Haven based education reform group, has given the panel tasked with fixing how the state’s schools are financed a failing grade on its first round of recommendations. “These consensus recommendations are a swing and a miss,” said Patrick Riccards, the group’s leader. The Education Cost Sharing panel released a short list of recommendations […]

Connecticut ranks seventh in cutting higher education funding from last year to this year, according to an annual report released by the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University Monday. While the average cut was 4.1 percent in other states, Connecticut’s colleges and universities took a 12.2 percent hit for this […]

The variety of deadlines parents have to enter their children in the various school choice lotteries are among a long list of shortcomings the state still needs to fix, lawyers involved in the school desegregation lawsuit say. On Friday, the State Department of Education decided to relieve some of that confusion and extended the deadline […]

The task force charged with providing a solution to the problems in the way the state funds education has approved an interim report. The “consensus recommendations” are two pages. The recommendations include providing greater access and enhancing early education programs, providing “fair and reasonable” funding for the state’s nontraditional school choice programs, using more accurate […]

Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor announced Wednesday that he has created seven new positions at the State Department of Education responsible for implementing elements of the education reforms sought by him and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. The new positions include a teacher talent officer for teacher preparedness, a school turnaround officer to lead interventions in low-achieving […]

A coalition of parents wants to eliminate the school district borders and eliminate penalties for parents who send their child to whatever school they chose. “I am an everyday parent, and I just want my children to have access to a great education,” said Gwen Samuel, the leader of the state’s Parents’ Union and a […]

Tom Foley’s back, and the public policy group he formed after losing a close gubernatorial race is focusing on jobs and education. Foley’s Connecticut Policy Institute — which is described as a nonpartisan think tank — in the last two days has asserted it wants to be a part of the discussion as Gov. Dannel […]

First the good news. The chances of a Connecticut student succeeding when they leave high school are among the best in the nation, and the state spends more for each student than almost every other state after factoring in the region’s higher cost of living, according to a national report card released Thursday by Education […]