The tough tests facing New York’s new state education commissioner
Last month, New York tapped a new state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia. She is the 2015 Florida Superintendent of the Year who led the public schools in Hillsborough County for a decade before she was fired by the school board this past January with more than two years left on her contract.
Her firing surprised many people because Elia, a former teacher, had a good deal of support in Florida, not only from the Republican political and business establishment but also from the Florida Education Association, a teachers union, whose president, Andy Ford, said in a statement after she was hired in New York that she worked “to bring people together” and toward a “positive, proactive agenda.” He said: “New York will be lucky to have MaryEllen.”
Yet the Hillsborough board majority, which officially fired her without cause, had been on record as criticizing her, among other things, how she dealt with the panel, constituent complaints about too much high-stakes standardized testing, and a lack of services for special-needs students.
There has also been criticism about some of the reform policies she instituted in Hillsborough, which are analyzed in this post by Carol Burris, an award-winning principal in New York. Burris suggests how Elia can close divisions in the state’s education world that have resulted from the controversial implementation of the Common Core and Core-aligned tests under former commissioner John King. He quit last December after N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed unhappiness with him over botched Core implementation. Now King is managing the U.S. Education Department’s operations as a senior adviser to Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Burris, of South Side High School in the Rockville Centre School District, was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and was tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She has also written several books, numerous articles and posts on this blog about New York’s troubled implementation of school reform.
By Carol Burris
On May 26, the New York Board of Regents unexpectedly assembled in Albany to vote on a single item–the appointment of MaryEllen Elia as the new education commissioner of New York State. With the transparency of a papal selection, the vote was taken and then her name was announced, prompting New Yorkers to ask, “who?”
MaryEllen Elia was not an unknown for long. Internet sleuths shared newspaper articles, videos and tweets about the policies and practices of the woman who will be New York’s new education chief. She helped. She quickly The tough tests facing New York’s new state education commissioner - The Washington Post:
