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MaryEllen Elia |
Elia’s
appointment received praise from Randi Weingarten, president of the
American Federation of Teachers.... MaryEllen Elia put into place a teacher accountability
system that included evaluation by student test scores and pay based on
that evaluation.... The day after she was appointed, Elia stated
that “we have pushed Common Core into a box” and that New York has to
“repaint” the narrative.... Complaints from the parents of special-needs students include those over reactioni to the deaths
of four students with disabilities while under the supervision of
Hillsborough employees... Carol Burris
And let's not forget that Elia will do what she can to trash the opt out movement. (More on that later in my report on the Skinny Awards dinner last night).
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.
----Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/06/10/the-tough-tests-facing-new-york-new-state-education-commissioner/
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 made it clear where she stands on the Common
Core and the opt-out movement, in which hundreds of thousands of parents
have refused to allow their children to take high-stakes Common Core
exams. “Opt-outs are no good for teachers and no good for parents,” she said when visiting an Albany school the day following her appointment. During an interview a week later on Capitol Pressroom, she was all about the “A” word—”accountability,” mentioning it no fewer than 6 times.
Elia was dismissed by her school board
by a 4-3 vote in January. There were long-time tensions between her and
two members of the board, and her leadership became an issue in the
November 4, 2014, board election, in which an Elia opponent won a seat.
Two candidates of 14 expressed approval and five expressed disapproval
of her performance. Other candidates refused to weigh in during the
contentious election. Reports indicated the community was evenly split,
and her decision to display the campaign sign of a candidate running
against one of her board opponents was characterized as “juvenile” by The Tampa Tribune. You can learn more about her dismissal and how it influenced the school board elections here, here, here and here.
It
is clear that Elia, like most superintendents, has fans and enemies.
That is to be expected, and it is not necessarily an indicator of
whether or not she would be a good choice for the state of New York.
What she believes in, and with whom she has alliances, however, are
matters of interest as indications of the direction in which she might
lead. Below is summary of Elia’s involvement on five important topics.
Each discussion is followed by what I believe she will need to consider,
or reconsider, if she wants to calm the present tensions in New York
and chart a more productive path for our schools.
MaryEllen Elia put into place a teacher accountability
system that included evaluation by student test scores and pay based on
that evaluation.
In 2008, Elia’s district received a $10 million grant
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiatives in the
grant included: the establishment of an evaluation system based 40
percent on student test scores; the inclusion of test scores in
decisions to grant tenure and determine teacher career paths; merit pay,
which is referred to in the grant as “pay for performance”; bonuses for
principals and teachers who raise low-performing students’ scores; the
use of data for hiring; and the use of “data dashboards” to make
instructional decisions.
By 2012, the Hillsborough district had spent $24.8 million
on the grant’s initiatives, including using Race to the Top, additional
grants and district funds. District funds were 19 percent of all
expenditures, with $3.2 million spent developing a value-added model
(VAM) to measure teacher performance by test scores (a method many
assessment experts say is not a valid for this purpose). The $24.8
million was considered by RAND Education and American Institutes for
Research the AIR, which studied the spending for the Gates Foundation, a
“lower bound” estimate of the true cost.
Winning the grant was
heralded as a reform in which a teachers union had cooperatively worked
with a superintendent to enact evaluation reform. In his book, Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools,
Stephen Brill describes Hillsborough union president, Jean Clements, as
a union president who was “willing to embrace the Jeb Bush reforms
rather than take a hard line against them.” Brill reported that Clements
collaborated on the grant after being prodded to do so by the American
Federation of Teachers. (Brill
wrote that AFT President Randi Weingarten said that she was involved in
the negotiations of the Gates teacher evaluation grants, and the AFT issued a statement welcoming
the “unprecedented support” of the Gates Foundation for “efforts to
improve teaching and learning.” ) Elia wanted 50 percent of the
evaluation to be based on test scores; Clements insisted that it not be
more than 40 percent.
The
Gates grant has not been popular with many teachers in Hillsborough. In
2012, 30 Hillsborough teachers went to Jacksonville, Florida, to
participate in a televised discussion on merit pay and the evaluation of
teachers by test scores. You can listen to what they had to say here.
The teachers complained about the negative effects that merit pay and
evaluation by test scores had on their teaching. In December of 2014, a
month prior to Elia’s dismissal, the school board asked for a review of the evaluation program based on complaints. During that review, the once enthusiastic Clements voiced concerns. She told the school board that the system she helped put into place is considered by teachers to be “demeaning and unfair” and that teacher voice and input has decreased.
Elia’s
positions on teacher evaluation will be carefully watched in New York.
She is becoming commissioner at a time of parent and educator push-back
against the legislature’s revision of the teacher evaluation system—a
revision that gave student test scores far greater weight than before.
MaryEllen
Elia could win goodwill by arguing that her Florida experience tells
her that test scores should play a minimal role. She should share the
concerns of her teachers and ask for a year’s delay for implementation,
with an opportunity to recommend adjustments.
MaryEllen Elia is a true believer in the Common Core.
Elia argues
that we have had standards since the 1600s and that standards should be
revised and improved. She also credits the Common Core with promoting
active student learning. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who
does not believe that standards should be reviewed and changed, and that
learning should be active. But neither belief is dependent upon the
Common Core. New York parent and teacher Core concerns center on
developmentally inappropriate standards in the early grades, overly
complicated elementary math, and an overemphasis on close reading and
informational texts.
The day after she was appointed, Elia stated
that “we have pushed Common Core into a box” and that New York has to
“repaint” the narrative. That might be true if the majority of New
Yorkers did not understand why they are opposed to the Common
Core, but that is not the case. Elia will encounter very sophisticated
and organized parents who, for the most part, are not opposed to the
Common Core for political or ideological reasons, but for its effects on
students.
Rather
than try to tell parents that they should like something that they
clearly do not like, Elia should lead a thorough review of the standards
with an eye toward addressing concerns. The simple rebranding of the
Common Core, which occurred in Florida, will not work in New York. Elia
should investigate why the opt-out movement has become such a force in
New York by taking a long, hard look at the content of the tests, their
length and the cut-score setting process.
Elia supporters include teacher unions, leaders of the corporate reform movement and politicians
Elia’s
appointment received praise from Randi Weingarten, president of the
American Federation of Teachers, Hillsborough Union President Clements,
and Andy Ford, the president of the Florida Education Association. They
praised her collaboration with the FEA during the implementation of
difficult reforms in the Sunshine State. That statement was released the
day of her appointment, and can be read here.
Other fans include high-stakes test accountability reformer, Kati Haycock, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who praised Elia for including business leaders, unions and philanthropy in decision making.
Elia
also has allies in the political arena. According to Florida sources,
one of MaryEllen Elia’s close friend and supporter is Kathleen Shanahan,
who worked as chief of staff for Dick Cheney when he was vice
president-elect, and in the same position for former Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush, who appointed her to the Florida Board of Education. Shanahan led a
petition drive to keep Elia as superintendent and made a passionate plea to the Board of Education on her behalf, which you can listen to here. During Shanahan’s good-bye dinner as superintendent, she signaled her support
for the candidacy of Tampa mayor, Bob Buckhorn, for Florida governor,
and made clear that she would like to be his Florida commissioner of
education.
New York education commissioners have traditionally
kept an arm’s length from politics. Elia should consider continuing that
tradition. The divisions in New York are so deep, to be successful she
must listen to parents and teachers who are critics of the current
reforms and find solutions to their concerns. If she is seen as an
acolyte of Jeb Bush-style education reforms, tensions are will worsen.
Many New York parents and educators are looking for relief from testing,
not someone who tries to collaboratively make the best of test-based
accountability systems.
Serious concerns have been raised by parents of students of disabilities.
Complaints from the parents of special-needs students include those over reactioni to the deaths
of four students with disabilities while under the supervision of
Hillsborough employees. Parents of 7-year-old Isabella Herrera filed a
federal lawsuit that brought attention not only to what occurred, but also to Elia’s reaction. Parents have also publicly complained of the roadblocks they face when attempting to get their children needed services from the school district.
Many
New York State parents are active advocates of students with
disabilities, as well as outspoken opponents of the Common Core and
testing. It is important that the new commissioner show sensitivity to
their concerns as well as a willingness to address those concerns around
Common Core testing.
Complaints about discriminatory practices have highlighted unaddressed inequities in her former district.
Hillsborough is presently under investigation
by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The
investigation is a result of complaints made by retired educator,
Marilyn Williams, who claimed that there are pervasive patterns of
racial discrimination in both discipline and teacher assignment in
Hillsborough. One of the schools where suspensions and expulsions of
black students are highest is McLane Middle School. An in-depth report on the school puts the blame squarely on the school district policies that created it.
According
to the report, MaryEllen Elia, who was then head of the district magnet
program, put in place a choice system in an attempt to create a diverse
student body in the district’s middle schools. One of the consequences
of choice is that if students do not apply or are not accepted into
magnet schools, they are warehoused into what quickly become undesirable
schools. In the case of McLane, inner-city students ride buses in the
Florida heat for a 12-mile trip to a school with inexperienced teachers,
bad test scores and rampant violence. The problem, according to The Tampa Bay Times, has festered and worsened for over a decade.
Ironically,
the New York governor and the Board of Regents are presently
considering magnet schools for STEM, arts and technical programs to
reduce costs and give parents choice. Let’s hope that the new
commissioner informs them that choice programs always come with a cost
and they often result in failing schools for the kids left behind.
MaryEllen
Elia has a fresh start in a new place. For the sake of New York
students, let’s hope that in a blue state, a new MaryEllen Elia will
emerge and that her collaborative skills are used to create a new
direction.
2 comments:
I wish people who just face the truth once and for all:
evaluating teachers using students' test scores HAS NEVER WORKED.
It WILL NEVER work.
So STOP!
After she left for a vacation in March through June before stepping down, discussions at the district she led focused on the lag in academic achievement why it was the lowest compared to the other large school districts. That she presided over a district with the lowest graduation rates is troubling especially after she visited Buffalo City School District in July pressuring the school board to fix the schools in the time period of the Andrew Cuomo inspired "receivership " in one year under the superintendent and two under other outside control and leadership.
As a career educator knowing how difficult it is to "fix" schools in this his short period, it's troubling she pushes and demands the reform without reviewing it first. Why is she still working or has she resigned hersel to the status quo given her political associations described in this blog?
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