“The problem and inequities that have plagued our education system since long before COVID will still be with us even after the virus is gone. So, it is our responsibility, it our privilege, to take this moment and to do the most American thing imaginable: To forge opportunity out of crisis, to draw on our resolve, our ingenuity, and our tireless optimism, as a people, and build something better than we’ve ever had before.” – U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona
This week, the Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s nomination of Miguel Cardona as the nation’s education secretary. What a time this is in the history of the nation’s public education system. A former elementary school teacher, who ascended to principal; a former principal who ascended to assistant superintendent; a former assistant superintendent who ascended to the highest education position in Connecticut; a Connecticut native whose parents are from Puerto Rico; a former poverty-stricken school kid whose family lived in public housing now leads the nation’s public education system.
His administrative experience has prepared him to well understand the needs of teachers, the demands of unions, the concern of parents, the realities of finite resources, infinite challenges, and competing priorities.
His authentic experience as a Puerto Rican boy navigating the halls and classrooms of public schools and later college lends a deeply personal understanding of the “problems and inequities” that must be urgently addressed if we are to fix what plagues our education system and build something better than we’ve had before, as he so unapologetically asserts.
President Biden has promised that increasing school funding is a critical goal of his administration. He has proposed tripling the spending for Title I programming. He has even proposed forgiving student loan debt and making community colleges tuition-free. Those are welcoming conditions for Cardona as he takes office. Yet, Cardona inherits a litany of heated national debates all while standing in a position where past inequities and present crisis intersect.
In a recent Op Ed, National Urban League President Marc Morial said: “The Secretary of Education must … lead a nationwide conversation about education through a racial equity lens and that conversation must center on the needs of students from marginalized communities, clearly illuminate the impacts of the pandemic, and demonstrate how those impacts interact with and exacerbate hundreds of years of systemic racism.”
It is my belief that Cardona’s personal experience as an impoverished youth, teacher, administrator, husband, and father of two school-aged boys will imbue his platform priorities. During his confirmation hearing, Cardona said “if we don’t assess where our students are and their level of performance, it’s going to be difficult for us to provide targeted support and resource allocation in the manner that can best support the closing of the gaps that have been exacerbated due to this pandemic.”
But perhaps the most insightful proclamation of Cardona’s vision of public education was gleaned not from confirmation hearings or well-crafted quotes but rather from his twitter feed one day in February. It read simply: All means all. Wishing Secretary Cardona every success in his transition and beyond.