This article by Matt Barnum first appeared on Chalkbeat.org on December 23, 2020.
“I know just how challenging this year has been for students, for educators, and for parents,” Miguel Cardona said Wednesday in his first public comments since being tapped by President-elect Joe Biden to be the country’s next education secretary.
“For so many of our schools and far too many of our students, this unprecedented year has piled on crisis after crisis.”
Those weighty challenges will become Cardona’s own if he is confirmed. The current Connecticut schools chief faces both the short-term questions about how schools should handle COVID and long-term ones about how to address learning loss and intra-party divides about how to improve schools.
“There are no shortage of challenges ahead… no shortage of problems for us to solve,” he said.
Here are some of the questions Cardona would face as education secretary — and what we know about how he might address them.
1. How will Cardona use his (limited) power to influence school reopening decisions? And what will that mean for his relationship with teachers unions?
In introducing Cardona Wednesday, President-elect Biden reiterated his “ambitious but doable goal — of safely opening a majority of schools by the end of our first 100 days.” (This would be in the beginning of May, which is near the end of the school year.) Politico reported Wednesday that the Biden team is considering a massive campaign to pay for weekly testing of teachers and students to help accelerate school reopening.
As Connecticut’s education commissioner, Cardona has been an advocate for in-person instruction. “We have to maintain the social and emotional well-being of our learners,” he said last month.
“He is a real big proponent of keeping all classrooms open as much as possible,” said Jan Hochadel, president of the American Federation of Teachers Connecticut, which has disagreed with Cardona’s approach to reopening at times.
But Cardona has not mandated a particular approach. Despite cajoling, two-thirds of Connecticut students don’t presently have access to full-time in-person learning, reported the CT Mirror.
That places him in an oddly similar position as current Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who has also pushed for schools to reopen, citing data on learning loss and community spread. Nationally about half of students attend schools that are fully virtual, according to a recent estimate.
One key difference: DeVos has often approached the issue in a combative way, sharply criticizing teachers and their unions who are reluctant to return to buildings, while Cardona has maintained a collaborative relationship with local unions.
“We don’t always get the results we want, but at least we know we have a seat at the table and we’re part of the conversation,” said Hochadel.
2. Will Cardona let states cancel testing this school year?
This is one of the most practical and immediate issues that Cardona will confront if confirmed. Right now, states are still required under federal law to administer standardized tests in grades three through eight in spring 2021. But many state and local officials have argued that making testing work this year will be impractical, pointless, or distracting when so many students have not returned to school buildings. DeVos issued waivers last school year, but declined to do so again. Cardona could reverse that decision.
As state commissioner, Cardona got a testing waiver in 2020, but did not seek one in 2021, as some other state chiefs have. In fact, his department issued a memo defending testing. “State assessments are important guideposts to our promise of equity,” it reads. “They are the most accurate tool available to tell us if all students… are growing and achieving at the highest levels on the state standards.” That echoes the arguments of some civil rights groups that want testing to remain in place.
Still, Cardona has expressed skepticism about testing when it comes to linking scores with teacher evaluations, warning against “reducing a teacher to a test score.”
3. What will be Cardona’s overarching strategy for improving schools, during and after COVID?
“We must embrace the opportunity to re-imagine education — and build it back better,” Cardona said Wednesday, echoing a Biden campaign slogan. “For me, education was the great equalizer. But for too many students, your ZIP code and your skin color remain the best predictor of the opportunities you’ll have in your lifetime.”
The question will be what that “re-imagination” looks like, and how Cardona will try to make it happen. Will he focus on resource inequities? A national campaign to make up learning loss through tutoring? Diversifying the teaching profession, something he’s written about? Expanding access to bilingual education, which he has a degree in and has advocated for in Connecticut? More technology? School infrastructure? School integration?
In his comments Wednesday, Cardona didn’t get into specifics, but mentioned “universal early childhood education, and quality social and emotional supports for all of our learners,” as well as providing greater respect for teachers. Biden, for his part, has promised to triple Title I funding and increase teacher pay.
4. How will Cardona approach the school choice battles that defined prior administrations?
Unlike the Trump and Obama administrations, the Biden administration’s education department won’t be focused on the issue of school choice. But it’s not clear how Cardona will approach charter schools, which have long divided the Democratic party.
Cardona, who spent most of his career working in a public school district, has a thin track record on the issue. “Charter schools provide choice for parents that are seeking choice, so I think it’s a viable option,” he said during his Connecticut confirmation hearing. But neighborhood schools are “going to be the core work that not only myself but the people behind me in the agency that I represent will have while I’m commissioner.”
“He is much more of an educator than a politician or an ideologue — he’s not pro-charter or anti-charter,” said Dacia Toll, the CEO of Achievement First, a charter network with schools in Connecticut.
As education secretary, Cardona may be able to almost completely sidestep the question. One exception: The U.S. Department of Education regularly issues hundreds of millions in grants to help new charter schools start. Critics want this fund eliminated; charter advocates want it to continue.
5. How quickly, and how exactly, will Cardona reverse some of DeVos’ moves?
Campaigning for president, Biden promised to reverse a number of DeVos’ decisions, particularly around civil rights. The list of what Cardona could undo — or in some cases, re-do — is long.
DeVos scrapped Obama-era guidance attempting to reduce disproportionate suspension rates of students of color. She eliminated a document carving out how districts could consider students’ race in school integration plans, and she defunded a small grant program encouraging school districts to pursue integration. She sought to limit transgender students’ ability to use bathrooms and play on sports teams based on their identified gender. And, late in her tenure, she stopped enforcing a federal law limiting religious groups from accessing charter school funding, saying that it was unconstitutional.
Progressive and civil rights groups have made several of these items a key priority. The questions for Cardona, if confirmed, becomes how quickly he acts and whether he reverses DeVos in every area that he can.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.