The Buffalo News reports that MaryEllen Elia will be selected by the New York Board of Regents as the next state commissioner of education, replacing the controversial John King. The news was repeated by a Tampa television station.
The vote will occur sometime today, according to reports. When the news leaked, parents began bombarding the Regents with emails and tweets. As one said, “It is not over until the fat lady sings.” So, listen.
Elia was fired by the Hillsborough Board of Education last February in a 4-3 vote. The business community was upset. But critics complained about micromanagement, a top-down style, lack of transparency, and complaints from parents of students with special needs. One board member who voted to dismiss her “accused Elia of creating a workplace culture of fear and bullying, and failing to pay enough attention to minorities, including Hispanics.” Others, including parents, said that her disciplinary policies had a disparate impact on African American students.
Hillsborough County received about $100 million from the Gates Foundation to design and implement a value-added measurement system for evaluating its teachers. Its plan apparently included a promise to fire the 5% lowest performing teachers every year. Florida has a harsh style of accountability, launched by Jeb Bush and carried forward by Governor Rick Scott and the Republican-dominated Legislature and state board of education.
Her official biography on the district’s website says that the Florida State Board of Education named her the Dr. Carlo Rodriguez Champion of School Choice in 2008. She is a strong supporter of the Common Core (see the video on this website, where Elia is interviewed about Common Core).
So, New York, once a bastion of liberalism, is getting a state commissioner who supports value-added testing and school choice, like John King. This aligns with Governor Cuomo’s agenda of “breaking up the public school monopoly” and using test scores to evaluate teachers.
The biggest news in the state in the past year was the historic success of the Opt Out movement. Last year, 60,000 students refused the state tests. This year, nearly 200,000 did. If MaryEllen Elia is state commissioner, will she raise the stakes on testing? If so, don’t be surprised if 400,000 students refuse the tests next year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The death knell for public education as a bastion of excellence. Vam, drill and kill here we come.
Thrown out due to a tin ear by Floridians only to be rescued by NY State.
There must be something that we can do to give her the warm welcome she so obviously deserves!
Time to get creative!
The King is dead. Long live the “king.”
Oh, and Diane, this proves your point ; the “upgrade” is always worse!
Good one.
Teachers in Hillsborough County are evaluated, in some cases, by the test scores of students they do not even teach. Fits in nicely with Cuomo’s plan to set state level SLOs for teachers whose courses do not end with a state test. Will Elia also double down on the little-talked about stipulation that teachers must register with the state by July 1 of next year and that if they move or change their names, they have 30 days to notify the state. Why is no one questioning that policy?? But this woman undoubtedly is reformy enough to carry through with this.
Why wouldn’t they have to register. I have to with the state and be licenced and change my name appropriately in health care. Why not teachers?
Ultimately, Cuomo’s only plan is to get his hands on the teacher pension funds. All else is just a means to the end.
Absolutely.
“The board’s narrow 4-3 vote in January to dismiss her came after she was named a finalist for national superintendent of the year, and prompted Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews to call her termination “senseless and catastrophic” under a headline that read “Blunder of the year?”
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also came to her defense.”
Of course he did. A member of the “movement” was in trouble! All hands on deck!
It’s really instructive to watch where Duncan intervenes and where he “relinquishes”. Has he ever advocated on behalf of an individual who supports public schools? For a person who isn’t in The Club?
Bingo. Every time the universally despised Kevin Huffman was in trouble in TN we could count on either a Duncan visit or a random public statement about the educational “progress” being made in TN.
It’s an exclusive little club.
When public school supporters voted for President Obama did they know they were getting the entire “ed reform movement” entourage?
If New York doesn’t go South (fast enough), the South will come to New York.
Regression toward the mean (-spirited)
Schadenfreudians, eh!?!
Some of the tactics used in “Right to be Fired” Florida may have less impact in New York. New York teachers need to band together and use the power of many united to push against the unreasonable and illogical.
This is why hundreds of thousands of parents have decided the only recourse is civil disobedience. It is obvious the corporate “reformers” will never voluntarily heed our voices. Petitions, letters, speaking at public forums — we tried all that. In New York City we tried electing a progressive mayor who ran on a promise of supporting public schools and limiting the growth of charters. What did Cuomo do? How did he choose to honor the will of the people, as expressed in a democratic election? He immediately forced an expansion of charter schools on the city.
Democracy, evidence, common sense mean nothing to Cuomo and his allies. This ancien regime believes they know better in all things.
Well, they have met their intellectual and moral betters: the public-school parents and teachers of Bew York State. We got rid of King; if the next commissioner follows the same authoritarian path, we’ll get rid of her too. We will not rest until public schools and the officials charged with facilitating their work are once again accountable to our children and our communities — and no one else.
Yes, please excuse my typos! Didn’t know my phone thought “Bew” was a word…
I read it as “Be-ew” as in “stinks” as in “just like this appointment”.
I don’t know how good or bad this new commissioner will be, but I agree with your sentiments about Cuomo 100%.
Please excuse all typos. Sent from my iPhone
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Cuomo, Christie, Gates, etc. are digging in their heels in a war of attrition. They replace defeated privatizing agents like King with another privatizing agent in a pipeline full of corporate VAMmers produced by Gates and Broad money. The refusal of both teacher union leaders, Eskelsen and Weingarten, to organize their millions of members into a militant opposition to the private looting and dismantling of public schools, means that the parent opt-out movement is still the only force standing in the way of a total rout. B/c the teacher union leaders cling to their seats at the table of power, and those in power refuse to negotiate or compromise, we must escalate parental opt-out to protect our kids and our schools from these parasites. Wherever possible, we should also encourage wildcat teacher strikes like in Washington State which bypass Eskelsen and Weingarten to put teachers on the same page as parents. The Presidential election season is now on and it is the key platform through which to pose a codified agenda for public education to confront all candidates, whose fate will be affected by the millions of parents, teachers, and college-age electors whose votes they crave.
Let’s hope Karen Magee is prepared for battle.
This is discouraging and a brazen move by Cuomo. Does he need a hearing aid? Can’t he hear the voices of the men and women in his state that oppose the test? These are all reasonable and highly educated people. How can he ignore the voices?
He absolutely does not care about the voices…he cares only about pushing a privatization agenda…This is not a democracy!
Unfortunately, the only voices Cuomo pays attention to are the ones in his head saying “Teachers are Satan and must be testorcized from the schools”
I don’t think Cuomo needs a hearing aid. He’d learn more from a barbed-wire enema.
Now that image is brutal.
When will this nightmare end? We are fighting so hard to have them hear us and still our roars fall upon deaf ears. This is a public education system. PERIOD. The public should be the ones who decide who gets to fill these seats. What do we have to do to get that accomplished? THIS ISN’T WORKING! My children do not have the time for the New York Governor, Tisch, Duncan and everyone else to get their heads out of their asses.
This is just another example of people choosing a person and in this case it is the nys regents board selecting a human being to fit in with the agenda up in albany. Now. lets look at the choice. A sixty something year old woman still probably wearing a girdle sits on her fat a** and is looking to fire at least 5 percent of the NYS teacher work force. This choice or this woman is not chosen for her educational or intellectual expertise, she is chosen because albany needs a soldier to fight the battle. Yes, this girdle wearing soldier will now have to deal with ny teachers unions and the girdle might get tight and sweaty once she realizes that she is in a battle – and i do not mean tampa bay or disney world. The teachers in the bronx are ready for a sledge hammer approach and many here in the nyc system have fallen by the wayside…aka..mike bloomberg selected kathy black as nyc chancellor and she lasted all but 2-3 months before she was body slammed out of there never to be heard from again. Dennis walcott was the next choice and everytime he showed up somewhere all he heard was that he was mike bloombergs puppet. Before all of them was bottle coke glasses joel klein who was a lawyer given a position of educational chancellor…..excuse me while i laugh a bit…….anyhow, so now nys has a new whatever you want to call her and meryl tisch can now take a back seat and watch the on slaught taken off her back and on to this woman…oh this poor woman
The personal comments about her weight and age are really unnecessary. Sounds like there’s plenty of legitimate concerns about her as a leader – no need to resort to insult.
Hillsborough County Schools. I attended them.
They have been wholly owned subsidiaries of Gates for multiple years.
As usual, someone is moving on to spread the shame and blame game,
and the absurditites of VAM and SLOs for teacher evaluation.
A new logic:
All children are above average in Lake Woe Begone.
All women are beautiful in Lake Woe Begone.
Therefore all teachers are above average and do not need any of the absurdities related to an evaluation.
“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”
― Garrison Keillor, Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America
I believe the Reformers want to keep firing teachers until all are above average.
Raj, I don’t know why you come here to post. I rarely read anything but nonsense from you. I think you once said that you seriously were interested in the issues, but you post things like this and I realize you were just being as dishonest as the privatizers who you so admire. Do they pay you for your posts?
By the way, you should know that you aren’t doing them any favors when you say things like “All children are above average” in your very snide way. Your pals who support privatization are the ones saying that all children should be scoring above average on state tests or it is the fault of bad teaching. How all children can score above average on an exam that is scaled to have a certain % of students fall below standards is beyond my understanding, but then again, logic is not the strong point of the reformers you so admire. Dishonesty is.
I find it funny that you are completely unaware of your own irony.
Except that those who create the absurdity of VAMpire transfusion bubbles need evaluation for severity of their deforming grade.
If enough people rebel they will HAVE to listen. 400,000? Hope they get twice that. Seems like the only thing they understand is force. Tragic but how else to explain what is going on.
We’ve seen it all over the world on an international scale. Force is the only thing a bully understands–forget about reasoning, civility, rationality, or playing by the rules.
One of my ex-students said it this way:
“Violence isn’t the answer.
Violence is the QUESTION;
YES is the answer.”
I understand that Cathie Black came in a close second.
I wonder if it’s possible for a school distict, maybe a wealthy one, to raise taxes enough to be able to refuse state aid and secede from NYSED?
A girl can dream, can’t she?
And why should it not be possible for democracy to be participated in only by the privileged? Fairness and equality for the rich, and for you and me, well, that’s out problem . . .
The advertised 2:30 pm press conference has not happened. Is it possible that the new members of the Board of Regents have pushed back?
I heard all the Regents voted for her.
Oh–here we go again. Somehow ironic that this is exactly the “dance of the lemons” that was so well depicted in Waiting for Superman–except erroneously, w/”bad” teachers, rather than administrators & state ed. leaders. Also in the news–reported “recycling” of J.-C. Brizard (by way of Rochester, then Chicago)–to Buffalo! Is that happening?
I would say poor NY, but we’re all just as bad off–in Chicago, B3 (another one who found her way here via Cleveland & Detroit) is being handsomely paid while remaining “on leave” (while under federal investigation). Beautiful time to be on what amounts to a paid vacation–lovely summer weather, an abundance of festivals & lots of fun things to do here.
And, after this blows over (& it will), she’ll end up in another city. Again, “the dance of the lemons.”
UGH, Brizard was a JOKE here in Rochester! It is terrible what is happening in this State. Unfortunately, I feel like it’s really too late to do anything about it.
Let’s not condemn her before we even meet her … the Hillsborough Union president praised her … the Regents met for four hours in executive session, interviewed her in person, and unanimously voted for her. The new Board of Regents has four new independent members plus the voices of Regents Cashin and Rosa. She had to satisfy a tough group.
As teachers, hopefully, we never prejudge kids, let’s give the benefit to the new commissioner. Let’s judge her by her actions.
This is really commendable response.
Good comment. Interested observers should also scrutinize her early comments with her later actions. Is she like a politician–promising one thing but never delivering later on?
Indeed, give her the benefit of the doubt, but New York teachers should give her a very short leash.
“Indeed, give her the benefit of the doubt, but New York teachers should give her a very short leash.”
Absolutely agree.
Here’s a few tidbits. Read and make up your own mind.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/hillsborough-teachers-wrestle-with-rating-system/2213276
https://www.facebook.com/OlsonAndEliaMustResign
http://tbo.com/list/columns-jhenderson/henderson-elias-leadership-style-again-called-into-question-20140820/
We have seen the superintendent move mountains to get certain things done in this district,” Stuart said. “But when she ignores basic requests for information, it’s disrespectful. There are things we ask for that we don’t get. There is information we want that we don’t get.
“It’s like she’s saying, ‘We don’t know why you want it or what you’ll do with it, so we won’t get it to you.’ ”
That has been the chief complaint about Elia for a long time. As talented and capable as she is in many areas of her job, it’s not uncommon to hear that she is dismissive to anyone she thinks might oppose her. Her political skills are unquestioned and her accomplishments are many, but there is this issue of her leadership style.
“This is really low-hanging fruit for her,” Stuart said. “These are things that could be easily corrected, and it’s frustrating. She needs to have a relationship with all seven members of the board, not just three or four.”
Mets, did you want to add something notable from her record to balance Diane’s summary? I’m all ears. Meanwhile her record hardly matters in the way this process just trampled over parents, educators and taxpayers. This is an obvious quick-pitch meant to bypass scrutiny, debate and public input and that is indefensible.
“Royalty Rules in NY”
Democracy
Has felt the sting
Of Regency
And Queen and King
Mets can’t help it as pond scum is pond scum.
(That’s a baseball reference from the ’80s.)
don’t be naive…
Has Gov. Cuomo been declared brain dead yet?
Well, looks like New York will be getting more of the same. My wife teaches in Hillsborough County (she is the kindergarten teacher in this post: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/12/22/25602/), and she has never had anything good to say about Elia. Morale in that county is quite low. The county itself is a Bill Gates’ county, in its 5th of 7 years of the Gates’ Empowering Effective Teachers; Elia is one of the main reasons Hillsborough has that. She has not met a “reform” that she has not liked.
What she does have going for her is that, unlike most reformsters, she has been in education for a long time, starting as a teacher in New York (I’d be curious as to which schools she taught in). I’ll include her bio from the Hillsborough site at the bottom.
If you look at the most recent news reports about her being dismissed by the board, you’ll see a lot of bigwigs complaining that this excellent leader was dismissed because a few members of the board couldn’t get along. If you go back in time though, you’ll see that even the board members who supported her had issues with her leadership style. The truth is, if you go around stepping on toes everywhere you walk, eventually, someone is going to kick back. Here’s an article of just a sample of that: http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/board-says-no-to-superintendent-maryellen-elias-plan-for-armed-school/1270583
I view John King as pretty hapless. With Elia, you are essentially getting a more with-it, savvy John King. She does have an Achilles’ heel, though, and it will be interesting to see if New Yorkers can exploit it.
The Bio: MaryEllen Elia was appointed Superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools on July 1, 2005, following a nationwide search. District schools have successively earned more A and B grades each year of her tenure as superintendent. The district also earned its first overall A grade from the state of Florida for student achievement after her first year as superintendent, and has earned two more since then.
Ms. Elia, a lifelong educator, began her career as a social studies teacher in the state of New York in 1970. In 1986, she relocated to the Tampa Bay area after accepting a position at Plant High School as a reading resource specialist. She was promoted to several key positions in the district over the next 20 years.
She was the district’s first magnet schools supervisor. She was promoted in 1997 to the director of non-traditional programs where she managed all magnet schools, as well alternative schools and drop-out prevention programs. Ms. Elia was appointed general director of secondary education in 2002.
In 2003, she became the district’s chief facilities officer. In this role, she provided oversight of all new construction and was responsible for the maintenance and operation of more than 200 existing schools and educational facilities. She remained in this position until her appointment as superintendent.
In 2011, she received the College Board’s District of the Year Beacon Award and was recognized with the Florida Department of Education’s Data Leader of the Year award for leading the way in using education data to drive student improvement . In 2010, she received the Inaugural Governor’s Business Partnership Award presented by Governor-Elect Rick Scott and the Florida Council of 100; the Women of Distinction award from the local chapter of the American Association of University Women; CEO of the Year from the Florida Supplier Development Council; the University of South Florida-Anchin Center Exemplary Leadership in Education award; and the Network of Executive Women 2010 Executive Woman of the Year award. In 2009, Superintendent Elia received The College Board’s Outstanding Leadership award. She received the Florida Association of District School Superintendents’ Superintendent’s Award for Volunteer/Community Service in 2008/2009 and 2006/2007. In 2008, Mrs. Elia was named the Dr. Carlo Rodriguez Champion of School Choice by the State Board of Education. She was named Florida’s Superintendent of the Year by the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations in 2007.
Ms. Elia holds a bachelor of arts degree from Daeman College; a master’s in education from the University of Buffalo; a master of professional studies in reading from State University of New York at Buffalo; and certification in educational leadership.
“. . . and certification in educational leadership.”
From where??? Broad???
lol, I half expected it to be that, but I did a little checking, and she got here ed leadership cert. in 1989 from Nova Southeastern University.
I also found out where she taught in New York from 1970 to 1986:
Sweet Home Central School District
Amherst, NY
Teacher of Social Studies courses in Grades 9 –
12 including World Cultures, World History,
American History, European History Advanced
Placement, Crucial Issues, American
Government, and American Economics.
She did challenge all of the principals in her school district: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwdLCunuDh0
Looks like More Charter schools are in New Yorks future! In florida there is one school board per county that oversees funding for all the schools in the county, charter schools included.
We have one school board per district in NYS and thankfully somewhat tighter requirements for approving charters, so it’s not as easy to steamroll charters through the process.
Anti teacher and anti parent. She will make King look like a kitty kat!!
Parents still hold the power – vote out those whose HST testing views do not agree with yours; do not let Cuomo continue to bully parents, students and teachers, he is lost his mind thinking that he runs the world, not New York State. It is my belief that this maneuver by Cuomo will be his downfall. One can only hope!
Reblogged this on lit507 and commented:
An interesting turn of events in Education for New York State!
Really? She was fired in Florida, apparently not good enough for one of the worst school systems in the country, and somebody thinks she’s appropriate for NY?
I am a retired NYS teacher living in Hillsborough County FL. This is the 7th largest district in the Country. Elia is your gain and or loss. My daughter has worked under her as a teacher and administrator. The teachers , administrators, parents, press …loved her. They had a meltdown when a couple idiots on the Board fired her. The press crucified the Board for letting her go. Hundred stormed the Board meeting with testimonials..but a few on the Board were on a power trip. She was a ray of sunshine in a very screwed up trend of trying to discredit the teachers…so the GOP can privatize the schools in favor of corporate controlled schools for corporate profit.