Casey Cobb, Ph.D.
Neag Professor of Educational Policy University of Connecticut
- Storrs CT
Dr. Cobb's current research interests include policies on school choice, accountability, and school reform.
Biography
Dr. Cobb was named among the top 200 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influencers in 2023. Dr. Cobb is a former editor of Educational Administration Quarterly and a former two-term member of UCEA Executive Council. He is a co-author of Public and Private Education in America (ABC-CLIO, Praeger), Fundamentals of Statistical Reasoning in Education (Wiley/Jossey Bass, 4th ed.), and Leading Dynamic Schools (Corwin Press). Dr. Cobb is a former member of Connecticut’s Region 19 School Board. He holds an A.B. from Harvard University, an M.S. from the University of Maine, and a Ph.D. from Arizona State University.
Areas of Expertise
Education
Arizona State University
Ph.D.
Educational Leadership & Policy Studies
1998
University of Maine
M.S.
Educational Leadership
1995
Harvard University
A.B.
Economics
1989
Affiliations
- Education Policy Analysis Archives : Editorial Board
- National Coalition on School Diversity : Research Advisory Panel
- University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) : Jackson’s Scholar Mentor
- Educational Administration Quarterly : Former Editor
- University Council for Educational Administration: Former Member, Executive Committee
Accomplishments
Top 200 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influencers
2023
UConn-AAUP Service Excellence Award
2020
UCEA Hanne Mawhinney Distinguished Service Award
2017
American Educational Research Association, Division L Outstanding Policy Report Award
2015
Social
Media
Media Appearances
Experts: CT lack of homeschooling oversight invites child abuse; 10% had confirmed abuse or neglect
Hartford Courant print
2025-05-14
Casey Cobb, Neag professor of education policy at the University of Connecticut, said in his research, parents mainly choose homeschooling for faith-based reasons and because they don’t believe the public schools are serving their children well.
Cobb acknowledged there is not a lot of data around the population of homeschooled students because parents are not required to fill out a form informing the district they are withdrawing their child to school to homeschool them.
“Homeschooling is growing and it is becoming more nuanced with some cottage industries seeing it as a business opportunity” providing curriculum for parents, he said.
The K-12 World Reacts to Linda McMahon, Trump’s Choice for Education Secretary
Education Week online
2024-11-20
“It’s definitely a pick out of the normal, and that is intentional,” said Casey Cobb, an educational policy professor at the University of Connecticut in McMahon’s home state. “It’s not inconsistent with his approach in 2016 in hiring an education outsider.”
School district rankings often draw strong feelings. But do they matter?
Hearst Connecticut Media print
2024-11-16
But just how significant those rankings are and what the accuracy level is remains a question in some cases and multiple critics in Connecticut say some of the higher marks for districts and schools reflect wealth and resources, not necessarily effective teaching. The includes the recently released Niche school rankings, which graded each district in the state and ranked them in order.
"I don't think there's a great use for them, given the inputs that they use, which are limited," professor Casey Cobb of UConn's Neag School of Education said.
Thousands more CT residents could see student loan forgiveness under new Biden plan
CT Insider online
2024-04-12
Casey Cobb, a professor of education policy at the University of Connecticut, said he is sympathetic to the latter perspective but appreciates the Biden Administration's plan to ease the debt burden for those who have been paying the longest or whose balances have continued rising even while making payments.
"It's favorable to many of these former students who face heavy debt," Cobb said. "I think it's a welcome opportunity to give some relief to those who probably need it most."
Parents Turn to Learning Pods as an Alternative to In-Person Instruction
NBC Connecticut online
2020-08-24
Casey Cobb, a professor of education at UConn, said pods do come with a risk.
“What’s happening is a lot of the more privileged, advantaged families are able to do that because of their resources and means, while several other families may not have the resources. And it’s not always financial. It could be a situation of a schedule at home or work,” Cobb said.
Lingering questions remain about school desegregation in Connecticut
CT Mirror online
2018-11-29
Two academic studies have been done on how student growth was affected by enrollment in a diverse school in the Hartford region.
The first was by Casey Cobb at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education in 2009 and published in the Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis Journal.
Cobb said that his “best estimates of the effects of inter-district magnet schools on student achievement indicate that attendance at an inter-district magnet high school has positive effects on mathematics and reading.” He drew a similar conclusion for reading achievement for middle school students.
Articles
Transportation Equity in a School Choice Program
Technical Report2024
This report presents findings from a multi-method analysis of school transportation in the Greater Hartford School Choice program. The study was commissioned by the Connecticut Department of Education’s Regional School Choice Office (RSCO) per the Sheff Comprehensive Choice Plan (CCP).1 The CCP calls for a reassessment of the transportation program “to ensure that present practices do not inadvertently create significant disincentives for participation in Choice programs" (p. 36). The report presents four sets of studies, followed by our recommendations based on the findings.
Do School Choice Programs Contribute to the Resegregation of American Schools? Research Brief 15.
National Coalition on School Diversity2022
In general, controlled school choice policies that aim to integrate schools along the lines of race or ethnicity and socioeconomic status are most often successful in achieving that goal. Unregulated systems of school choice, however, tend to exacerbate school segregation (Cobb & Glass, 2009). This research brief summarizes research about charter schools and segregation and finds that the evidence shows that if school choice programs cannot or do not pay attention to social class and race, they generally increase segregation among schools. [This brief is adapted from "Public and Private Education in America: Examining the Facts" by Casey D. Cobb and Gene V Glass, published by ABC-CLIO in September 2021.]
Leader Developers: Perspectives of Mentor Principals in an Administrator Preparation Program.
Journal of Educational Supervision2022
Principal preparation programs use various components to develop candidates, including coursework, core assessments, and field-based internships or practicums. The internship represents an exceptionally high leverage learning opportunity (Lochmiller, 2014). The success of the internship depends highly on the abilities of a mentor via informal instructional supervision. Mette (2020) explains that supervision has a potential transformational quality. This study explores mentorships in a university principal preparation program through the mentor's perspective. We interviewed a sample of mentors nominated as effective by peer and program informants. We learned that mentors were deliberate in developing three specific skills --metacognitive ability, developmental efficacy, and learning-oriented goal setting. Mentor principals described these three elements as paramount to master before becoming a principal. We discuss implications for principal preparation programs to use mentors as
More than masks and critical race theory – 3 tasks you should be prepared to do before you run for school board
The Conversation2022-01-18
When people run for school board these days, they often are motivated to campaign on a controverisial topic. That’s according to Ballotpedia, a nonprofit that tracks political elections in the U.S.
In an analysis of school board elections in 463 school districts in 2021, the organization found elections that were once uncontested had drawn candidates who were “galvanized by one issue or another.”
Three issues came up the most. The most oft-cited issue was race in education, more specifically, the teaching of critical race theory. The second most frequently cited issue was school policies on the pandemic – that is, requirements to wear masks or get vaccinations, or school reopening. The third most-cited was sex and gender in schools, such as gender-specific facilities.
Magnet School Student Attrition: An Exploratory Analysis of Why Students Leave Report Prepared for the Regional School Choice Office Connecticut Department of Education Submitted by
Technical Report2021
This report presents findings from an analysis of attrition of students enrolled in interdisciplinary magnet schools within the Sheff region. There were two main strands of analysis. The first was a qualitative study of exit interviews from a sample of families with children who were enrolled in a Sheff region magnet school at any point between the Fall of 2017 and the Spring of 2020, but voluntarily terminated their child’s enrollment to attend another school. The rationale for terminating their child(ren)’s enrollment was discussed and the larger factors that influenced their decision making were noted. The second strand was a quantitative analysis based on secondary data provided to us by the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) as well as publicly available school-level data from the 39 facilities in the region. This portion of the analysis focused on whether students in non-transitional grades attending one of the schools returned to the same facility the next school year.
Leveraging the crisis for equity and access in the long term: A brief research report
Frontiers in Education2021
For years, crises have occurred in and out of schools. School leaders have had to make meaning of these crises and lead during them. Common rhetoric in today’s media describes the educational inequities children have faced as a result of the current crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to understand how school leaders respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we spoke directly to principals, listening for ways in which they confronted issues of inequity. Our research was guided by the question: How do principals advance equity for students and families while leading during the COVID-19 crisis? This study focuses on the opportunity’s principals have created during the COVID-19 pandemic to address issues of equity in their schools. We present three main findings resulting from our data analysis. Overall, our findings indicate principals acted upon two primary opportunities for achieving equity in their school community. The findings from our study illustrate two specific opportunities principals were presented with as a result of the crisis to engage in equity responses.
