The members of the State Board of Regents on Monday elected Betty A. Rosa, a former New York City principal and superintendent, as the new chancellor, signaling a sharp shift in the state’s education policies after dramatic protests by parents.
Dr. Rosa has criticized the new, more difficult tests that the state introduced under her predecessor, Merryl H. Tisch, as part of its transition to the Common Core standards. She has suggested that the tests were designed so that many students would fail, giving policy makers a chance to point to a crisis in the state’s schools. On Monday, she said that if she had children in the grades taking the exams, she would have them sit out the tests, as the parents of more than 200,000 students did last year.
Board members are elected by the Legislature, and set education policy for the state.
Dr. Rosa’s election is an indication of how much both politicians and the public have turned against the policies promoted by Dr. Tisch, including the evaluation of teachers on the basis of state test scores. In December, the Regents placed a four-year moratorium on including the scores as a factor in teacher evaluations. Dr. Rosa has said she would like to make that change permanent.
Dr. Rosa, who represents the Bronx, was elected by a vote of 15 to 0, with two abstentions.
Dr. Rosa, 64, was born in New York City but spent much of her early childhood in Puerto Rico. She worked as a bilingual teacher in the city’s schools before becoming principal of Intermediate School 218, a middle school in Upper Manhattan. Later she was the superintendent of District 8 in the Bronx, which includes some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Karen E. Magee, the president of the New York State United Teachers Union, celebrated the election of Dr. Rosa, expressing optimism that she would listen to parents and educators, reduce the emphasis on testing and create “a fair and objective evaluation system.”
High Achievement New York, a group of business leaders, educators, parents and civil rights leaders that supports the Common Core standards in New York, issued a statement congratulating Dr. Rosa but expressing concern that she had been endorsed by parents opposed to the state tests.
“With today’s election, it is now time for the organizers of the so-called opt-out movement to finally take yes for an answer and stop urging children to refuse to take tests,” the group said. “And they must end their campaign to destroy higher standards.”
Dr. Rosa said in an interview earlier this month that she believed in high standards, but that she thought there should be more recognition of the challenges that schools serving poor students face in meeting them.
“It’s not that you’re using poverty as an excuse — it’s recognizing that it does have an impact,” she said. “I think that we really have to get to a place where we can have these honest conversations.”
