Bill de Blasio’s selection of Carmen Fariña as the new schools chancellor has raised hopes among classroom educators for an end to the obsession with high-stakes testing and a renewed focus on teaching and learning.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew praised the mayor’s choice. “Carmen is a real educator,” he said. “She has a deep knowledge of schools and our system, and is on record criticizing Mayor Bloomberg’s focus on high-stakes testing. We look forward to working with her to help make sure every child has access to an excellent education.”

De Blasio’s signature education initiative — universal full-day prekindergarten — is contingent on state legislators’ approval of the tax measure this spring. But another campaign promise took effect immediately: a moratorium on school closings and co-locations. Mayor de Blasio vowed to maintain the moratorium until a system is put in place that respects parents and the school community by involving them in the decision.

Fariña said she would focus on professional development for teachers and improving middle schools. She vowed to bring the arts back into the classroom. Also high on her list: better communication and collaboration with parents, teachers and the wider school community.

Speaking of the changes that need to take place, Fariña said at the Dec. 30 press conference announcing her appointment, “There are things that need to happen but they need to happen with people, not to people.”

Fariña also reiterated Mayor de Blasio’s promise to move away from high-stakes testing. On her first school visit as chancellor, to MS 223 in the South Bronx on Jan. 2, she conceded that state and federal laws require many of the standardized tests that New York City students take, but she pointed out that the city had the ability to lower the stakes for these tests.

“I think it’s what we do with the test results that matters, versus the tests themselves,” she said.

The new chancellor is widely respected in education circles.

“Carmen was always on the cutting edge,” said former UFT district representative Robert Zuckerberg, who served as the UFT’s District 15 representative from 1986 to 2011 and worked closely with Fariña when she was a superintendent. “Her education background and abilities were extensive. She knows her business.”

He recalled her commitment to professional development — for everyone, including guidance counselors, school psychologists and secretaries.

“She had a lot of staff development going on in the district office and citywide,” he said. “Every licensed area was coming in for training on a monthly basis.”

Fariña has spent 40 years as an accomplished educator and administrator in the city’s school system. She is the first chancellor in more than a decade who didn’t need a state waiver to take the job.

Fariña’s classroom innovations made her a star early in her career in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. As a 4th-grade teacher at PS 29 in Cobble Hill in the 1970s, Fariña created a method of incorporating fiction and short stories into the curriculum that successfully engaged students and led to higher reading scores.

When the Department of Education called on her to develop a citywide core curriculum and teacher-training program based on her techniques, she was on her way. Fariña was named principal of PS 6 in Manhattan in 1989 and 10 years later returned to Brooklyn as District 15 superintendent.

Zuckerberg also worked with Fariña on the establishment of PS 372 in Park Slope as the Children’s School in 1992. The school pioneered the collaborative team-teaching model, now known as the integrated co-teaching model, in which a general education teacher and a special education teacher work together in pre-K through 5th-grade classes that include children with disabilities.

Her stint as deputy chancellor for teaching and learning under Chancellor Joel Klein was short-lived: She resigned the post in 2006 after two years because she did not agree with Klein’s approach.

Norman Fruchter, a longtime educational policy analyst and writer, said Fariña as superintendent had a knack for identifying the most successful principals and teachers. “I was always surprised at how she knew who was effective and who wasn’t,” he said.

Fariña, at the announcement of her appointment, said that she remains a teacher at heart.

“To me, all change happens in the classroom,” she said. “We know what needs to be done; we just need the freedom and inspiration to get it done.”