Swimming Upstream

In anticipation of Tennessee Valley Authority building a model city in the geographic center of several school systems, those systems became members of the newly created Little Tennessee Valley Educational Cooperative (LTVEC). LTVEC was one of about seventy-five educational co-ops in the state when it hired its first executive director in 1973, and with the co-op still searching for its primary educational mission, no one knew how pivotal LTVEC would become to how schools across the state, and beyond, educate their students.

Later that same year, Tennessee school systems were mandated by law to identify and provide educational services to children with disabilities. LTVEC had finally found its mission. LTVEC employed Jerry Morton, who had just completed his doctoral studies in school psychology. Jerry helped recruit multiple doctoral-level graduate assistants and interns to develop the evaluation system and educational programs.

Swimming Upstream: The Little Tennessee Valley Educational Cooperative is Jerry Morton's factual account of rural school systems confronted with significant, mandatory change and of LTVEC's growth to meet the challenge and assist them in addressing that change. As with all organizations undergoing major change, some within those entities remained committed to the old ways.

Supporting those in the schools who embraced the new laws and overcoming the resistance to those laws became a major responsibility of the cooperative. LTVEC has recently been renamed the Tennessee Educational Cooperative (TEC). It is currently providing multiple services to school systems across the state. TEC is now one of only two known educational cooperatives left in Tennessee.

Why has this educational cooperative been a such a success when so many others have failed? That is the story that Jerry Morton engagingly shares in this book.