Ed Talk: Teacher’s Union Chief Makes Her Case Against Tennessee’s Reform Mindset

Tennessee’s largest union of teachers has soured on many of the reforms it signed on to support just four years ago under the Race to the Top. The primary complaints from Tennessee Education Association president Gera Summerford revolve around standardized testing – how much, how important and how reliable it is.

“The entire reform movement has brought us to a place that concerns me a lot as an educator, and that is the idea that a test score is all we need to know,” Summerford says.

“In the public rhetoric right now, we use the term effective teacher as if we know what that is, as if we know that it’s a score on a one to five scale. And in fact, teaching is very complex and there’s not just one way to measure it. We understand that there are accountability measures that need to be used. But we also understand that a child is much more than a test score.”

Interview Highlights

If not standardized testing, than what?

“I would suggest that we look at ways to give some credibility to many different ways of measuring what students have learned. I’m in support of common assessments. We did that at my school, all of us who taught Algebra 1 would share in creating the six weeks test. That helped us all be accountable to one another. That helped us make sure we were all on the track with the students—getting them to the right place.”

On how backtracking from standardized testing sounds like going back to where Tennessee has come from:

“I think we had lower standard in our state. Frankly, when I came here from another state, and received my certification, the standards for my certification were lower here than they were in the state that I came from…TEA has always supported raising standards for students, raising standards for teachers, and I personally believe that when you raise expectations you see results.”

What about charter schools? Summerford says they haven’t become “labs of innovation” like they were supposed to, though she admits she’s never been inside of one.

“There should be an effort from the supporters of charter schools to live up to the promise that we heard years ago– that there would be innovations and lessons learned, and how to improve schools.  If the charter schools are being successful, if there are good things going on there, then I think those who authorize those schools should be willing to share the information and help us all learn from it.”

[box]Extra: Summerford explains why the union is now filing lawsuits over using student growth data in evaluations and how her organization is primarily interested in protecting “public education.”

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