Dive Brief:
- New National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia met with President Barack Obama over the weekend and shared tidbits about the meeting with NPR.
- According to Garcia, Obama told her that he and Education Secretary Arne Duncan agree that there is too much testing. However, Garcia says that isn't the point, as the source of much of the union's frustration is the use of test scores in teacher evaluations.
- Garcia said she did not speak with Obama about the NEA's call for Duncan's resignation earlier this summer.
Dive Insight:
The NEA has been critical for quite some time of Obama's requirement that states use test scores to evaluate teachers, and it sounds like the former Utah elementary teacher is on the same page. While the NEA is typically depicted as being at odds with the Obama administration, the two actually have much in common, according to Garcia — Head Start, preschool, affordable college, and immigration reform, in particular. She says, however, that if high-stakes punishments hooked to standardized test scores don't end, none of that will matter.