MaryEllen Elia, New York’s new education commissioner, sat down for an interview with the Syracuse Media Group and talked about her new role, Common Core, teacher evaluations, and much more.

She formerly served as superintendent of the Hillsboro County School District in Florida, one of the largest in the nation. In talking about her approach, she said that she’ll bring the lessons she learned from that position with her to this new position, specifically when it comes to teacher evaluations.

“Evaluation is a way to figure out if those new teaching methods are working, Elia said.” “I’m totally in favor of evaluations for teachers and making that valuable for them.”

While she’s in favor of teacher evals, she is against using them “as a yardstick to get rid of a certain amount of teachers.”

Regarding Common Core, she said that she’s in favor of it and will see its full implementation. But there is an added caveat to her support for it.

“We’ve got to step back and give teachers in the state the opportunities to get more accustomed and feel more comfortable…I think we have some work to do there,” she said.

In the hour long chat, she talked of more things, but she mentioned how school districts become successful by help from parents and the community.

“The community has to say, all children in our district count.”

I’m  interested to see how Elia’s new role plays out, especially in regards to teacher evaluations. Will she really use them to help teachers, or against them in an increasingly difficult standards environment?