Senate Mulls Bill to Let College Instructors Teach Lower Grades

A bill in the Tennessee Senate would allow college instructors to teach their specialty in high school. The measure would apply to anyone who teaches college, even part-timers.

The bill would require the Department of Education to grant a license to teach grades nine through twelve to any full-time college instructor who has taught two years, or any part-time adjunct who has taught at least four years.

Senate Democrats raised objections. Senator Andy Berke, a Chattanooga Democrat, says the bill values content knowledge but it ignores any lack of training in how to teach and manage a classroom.

“But we need teachers that can do it all. After all, even our state recognizes, currently, the importance of the ability to teach on top of content knowledge.”

Berke says up to 35 percent of a teacher’s evaluation is based on how he or she teaches, not the mastery of the subject.

The bill is sponsored by Senator Jim Summerville, Republican from Dickson and part-time instructor at Austin Peay Sate University. Summerville says he would take advantage of the law if it passes, joking that he’s not good enough to teach high school.

The bill was put off in the Senate until Monday [March 26], when critics are expected to propose an amendment to weed out people with previous convictions on moral grounds.

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Summerville says because he doesn’t intend to ask for a teaching license himself, any conflict of interest is more apparent than real.

“I’m an adjunct instructor, and I will declare a Rule 13, this is not in my interest. I’m not doing it for myself, but for people similarly situated who might want to teach in those grades.”

“Rule 13” is the Senate conflict-of-interest clause. If senators vote on something that affects their own professions, they announce “Rule 13” to make the conflict public.

Most of the opposition to the bill has been along the lines of Berke’s argument – that college teachers don’t necessarily know how to teach and manage a classroom full of non-adult students.

Read the bill here.

The bill hasn’t moved in the House, where it was assigned to the Education Subcommittee but never put on notice to be heard.