Jermaine Gassaway on measuring student growth from where they start

Jermaine Gassaway is a superintendent, educator, and author who has spent his career dismantling educational inequalities rooted in zip code and access. From teaching in Detroit to leading schools in Nashville and now overseeing Movement Schools across Charlotte, Charleston, and Atlanta, he has built a record of measurable student growth in some of the country’s most underserved communities.

When Jermaine Gassaway was 14, he wrote to the Board of Education in Washington, D.C., asking for a transfer from an underperforming high school. The answer came back: denied, based on his zip code. That rejection led him to apply to The Piney Woods School in Jackson, Mississippi, where he was accepted on a full scholarship. It was the first time he felt successful, and it set the trajectory for everything that followed.

Today, Gassaway serves as Superintendent at Movement Schools, leading campuses across Charlotte, Charleston, and Atlanta. He joined Teach For America in 2010 and taught third through eighth grade in Detroit, where over 90 percent of his students scored advanced or proficient on state assessments. As principal at Rocketship Nashville Northeast Elementary School, he led the school to Reward status, the highest performance rating in Tennessee, and the school grew three times faster than any other elementary school in Nashville during the 2018-2019 school year. He has also written two books addressing teacher diversity and racism in education.

How did you move from teaching in Detroit to leading schools across multiple states?

I started as a Teach For America corps member in 2010 in Detroit. I taught third through eighth grade, and over 90 percent of my students scored advanced or proficient on the state assessment. That success opened doors, but it also clarified what I wanted to spend my time on. I became a Curriculum Coordinator, then moved to KIPP Charlotte as a teacher and Grade Level Chair. I joined Rocketship Public Schools as a Founding Assistant Principal in the DC-Baltimore area, then became principal at Rocketship Nashville Northeast Elementary. From there I became Director of Schools for Rocketship in Nashville and Fort Worth, and in 2023 I moved into my current role as Superintendent at Movement Schools.

The through line is equity. Every role I have taken has been in communities where students are underserved, and every role has asked me to prove that growth is possible when the work is focused and the expectations are high. I have moved a lot, but I have never moved away from that question.

What do you notice first when you walk into a school that tells you whether students are actually learning?

I look at student work on the walls. Not the decorated bulletin boards with perfect handwriting and no corrections, but the work that shows revision, mistakes, and feedback loops. If I see work that has been edited and improved, I know there is a culture of growth. If I see only polished final drafts, I worry that students are not being pushed to think critically or take risks.

I also listen to how adults talk about students. If I hear “these kids” or “given their circumstances,” I know we have a problem. If I hear teachers talking about specific students by name, what they are working on, and what growth looks like, I know the school is focused on learning and not excuses.

I define success as growth you can measure against where someone started, not where someone else finished.

What looks like a problem in a school but usually is not?

High staff turnover in the first year or two after a leadership change. People assume it means the new leader is failing, but often it means the culture is shifting and people who were comfortable with low expectations are leaving. If you are raising the bar, some people will self-select out, and that is not always a bad thing.

The real problem is when turnover happens in year three or four, after the new systems are in place. That usually means something is broken in how you are supporting people, not in the standards you are setting.

What do people consistently get wrong about your work?

They think it is about being strict or running a tight ship. It is not. It is about clarity. Students and teachers both perform better when they know exactly what is expected, when they will be assessed, and what support is available if they are struggling. The structure is not punitive. It is the opposite. It is what makes growth predictable and achievable.

What skill does someone need to be an effective principal that no graduate program teaches?

How to keep moving when you are the only one who believes something is possible. You can learn instructional leadership, data analysis, and budgeting in a program. You cannot learn how to stand in front of a staff that doubts you, a community that has been let down before, and a district that is watching for you to fail, and still make the decision you know is right.

That kind of resolve comes from experience, usually from having been underestimated yourself. I learned it at 14 when I was told my zip code determined my future. I learned it again as a first-year teacher in Detroit when people assumed my students could not reach proficiency. You either learn to trust your own judgment, or you spend your whole career waiting for permission that never comes.

What did you believe about school leadership five years ago that you no longer believe?

I used to believe that if you built the right systems, the right people would stay. I have learned that people leave for reasons you cannot always control, and that is okay. What matters is whether the systems you built can survive the departure. If your school only works because of one person, it is not a system. It is a dependency.

I also used to believe that hard work and results would speak for themselves. They do not. You have to tell the story of the work, over and over, or someone else will tell it for you, and they will get it wrong.

I do not think you can talk honestly about success without talking about the rejections that came first, because most of the time, the rejection is what points you toward the door that actually opens.

What mistake is worth letting a new teacher make?

Trying to be friends with students in the first month. Almost every new teacher does it, and almost every one of them learns the same lesson: students need a teacher, not a peer. You can be warm and still have boundaries. You can be affirming and still hold high expectations. But you have to establish the role first.

I let new teachers make that mistake because the correction is immediate and the learning is permanent. If I tell them in orientation, they nod and do it anyway. If they experience it themselves, they adjust, and the adjustment sticks.

What actually improved student outcomes at Rocketship Nashville Northeast when you led the school to Reward status?

We focused on reading growth, and we tracked it every six weeks using NWEA assessments. From August to December 2019, students averaged 1.66 years of growth in reading and 1.87 years of growth in math. That growth was not accidental. We built intervention blocks into the schedule, matched students to the right level of instruction, and adjusted groupings based on data.

The other thing we did was make growth visible. Students knew their starting point, their goal, and their progress. Parents knew it too. When everyone can see the growth, it builds belief, and belief changes behavior.

Is closing the achievement gap still the right goal, or has that frame outlived its usefulness?

The frame is still useful, but only if you define the gap correctly. The gap is not between students. It is between the education a student received and the education they deserved. That gap exists because of policy, not ability.

Where the frame breaks down is when people use it to compare students to each other instead of measuring growth over time. A student who enters third grade reading at a first-grade level and finishes the year reading at a third-grade level has closed the gap that matters. If we only measure them against students who started at grade level, we miss the growth entirely.

What is overrated in school reform right now?

Technology as a solution. Devices do not teach. Teachers teach. Technology can support instruction, but I have seen too many schools buy tablets and software and then wonder why scores did not improve. If you do not have strong instruction and strong relationships first, the technology will not fix it.

The other thing that is overrated is scale. People want to take a school model that works and replicate it in 50 cities at once. That almost never works. Growth is local. What worked in Nashville might not work in Atlanta, and what worked in Detroit might not work in Charlotte. You have to adapt to the community, the students, and the context.

What part of your job could AI replace, and what part could it never do?

AI could replace a lot of the data entry and reporting that takes up time. It could generate first drafts of schedules, analyze assessment trends, and flag students who need intervention. That would free up time for the work that actually matters.

What it cannot do is read a room. It cannot sense when a teacher is struggling and needs support before they ask for it. It cannot have the conversation with a parent who is angry and scared and needs to be heard before they can be partnered with. It cannot make the judgment call about when to hold a line and when to adapt. Leadership is relational, and AI does not do relationships.

Success has to be measured against your own starting point, or the word stops meaning anything.

If you were advising someone who just accepted their first principal role, what would you tell them to do in the first 30 days?

Listen more than you talk. Meet with every teacher individually, ask them what they need to be successful, and write it down. Meet with parent leaders, ask them what they want for their children, and write that down too. Then look for the overlap between what teachers need and what parents want, because that is where you start building trust.

Do not make big changes in the first 30 days. You do not know enough yet, and people are watching to see if you are going to respect what is already working before you start dismantling things. Earn credibility first. Change comes after that.

Has teacher diversity improved in the schools you have led, or is the gap still as wide as it was ten years ago?

The gap is still wide. In most schools I have led, students of color make up 80 to 90 percent of enrollment, but teachers of color make up less than 30 percent of staff. That gap has real consequences. Students need to see themselves in the adults who lead them, and they need to see that the people who look like them are not just in the classroom but in leadership roles too.

I wrote Unopened Books: Multiplying the 2% to address that gap directly. The 2 percent refers to the percentage of Black male teachers in the U.S. Increasing that percentage is not just about representation. It is about changing what students believe is possible for themselves.

What will still be true about school leadership in ten years?

Relationships will still be the foundation. No amount of technology, curriculum, or policy will replace the trust between a teacher and a student, or between a principal and a staff member. If you cannot build relationships, you cannot lead.

The other thing that will still be true is that the work is hard, and the people who stay in it are the ones who see growth as success. If you need perfection or recognition to feel like you are making a difference, you will burn out. If you can see a student go from reading at a first-grade level to a third-grade level in one year and feel the weight of that, you will stay.

At 14, you were denied a school transfer based on your zip code. Do zip codes still determine educational access in the same way today?

Yes, and in some ways it has gotten worse. School funding is still tied to property taxes, so students in low-income neighborhoods get less funding, fewer resources, and less experienced teachers. Charter schools and school choice have created some pathways, but they are not available everywhere, and they are not a solution to the underlying inequity.

The difference now is that people know it is a problem. When I was 14, the Board of Education did not even pretend the system was fair. Now there is at least a conversation about equity, even if the policies have not caught up. That conversation matters, because it creates pressure for change, but the change is too slow.

What stays true about teaching no matter what reforms or technologies come next?

Students learn from people they trust. That has not changed, and it will not change. You can have the best curriculum, the best assessments, the best technology, but if a student does not believe their teacher cares about them and believes in them, none of it will land.

The other thing that stays true is that growth takes time. There is no shortcut. You can accelerate learning with the right instruction and the right support, but you cannot skip the work. Students have to do the thinking, make the mistakes, and revise. Teachers have to plan, assess, and adjust. It is slow, and it is hard, and it is the only way it works.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Based on a profile questionnaire completed by Jermaine Gassaway.