On December 23, Connecticut Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona spoke, accepting President-Elect Joe Biden’s nomination to serve as Secretary of Education:
He said:
Mr. President-elect, Madam Vice President-elect — thank you for this opportunity to serve.
I know just how challenging this year has been for students, for educators, and for parents.
I’ve lived those challenges alongside millions of American families — not only in my role as a state education commissioner, but as a public school parent and as a former public school classroom teacher.
For so many of our schools and far too many of our students, this unprecedented year has piled on crisis after crisis.
It has taken some of our most painful, longstanding disparities and wrenched them open even wider.
It has taxed our teachers, our leaders, our school professionals and staff who already pour so much of themselves into their work.
It has taxed families struggling to adapt to new routines as they balance the stress, pain, and loss this year has inflicted.
It has taxed young adults trying to chase their dreams to advance their education beyond high school, and carve out their place in the economy of tomorrow.
And it has stolen time from our children who have lost something sacred and irreplaceable this year despite the heroic efforts of so many of our nation’s educators.
Though we are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel, we also know that this crisis is ongoing, that we will carry its impacts for years to come, and that the problems and inequities that have plagued our education system since long before COVID will still be with us even after the virus is at bay.
And so it is our responsibility now, and our privilege to take this moment, and 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 known before.
That’s the choice Americans make every day — it’s the choice that defines us as Americans.
It’s the choice my grandparents made, Avelino and Maria de La Paz Cardona, and Germana Muniz Rosa, when they made their way from Aguada, Puerto Rico, for new opportunities in Connecticut.
I was born in the Yale Acres housing projects. That’s where my parents, Hector and Sara Cardona, instilled early on the importance of hard work, service to community, and education.
I was blessed to attend public schools in my hometown of Meriden, Connecticut, where I was able to expand my horizons, become the first in my family to graduate college, and become a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent in the same community that gave me so much.
That is the power of America — in two generations.
And I, being bilingual and bicultural, am as American as apple pie and rice and beans.
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.
We have allowed what the educational scholar Pedro Noguera calls the “normalization of failure” to hold back too many of America’s children.
For far too long, we’ve allowed students to graduate from high school without any idea of how to meaningfully engage in the workforce while good-paying high-skilled, technical, and trade jobs go unfilled.
For far too long, we’ve spent money on interventions and bandaids to address disparities instead of laying a wide, strong foundation of quality, universal early childhood education, and quality social and emotional supports for all of our learners.
For far too long, we’ve let college become inaccessible to too many Americans for reasons that have nothing to do with their aptitude or their aspirations and everything to do with cost burdens, and, unfortunately, an internalized culture of low expectations.
For far too long, we’ve worked in silos, failing to share our breakthroughs and successes in education — we need schools to be places of innovation, knowing that this country was built on innovation.
And for far too long, the teaching profession has been kicked around and not given the respect it deserves.
It should not take a pandemic for us to realize how important teachers are this country.
There are no shortage of challenges ahead, no shortage of problems for us to solve.
But by the same token, there are countless opportunities for us to seize.
We must embrace the opportunity to reimagine education — and build it back better.
We must evolve it to meet the needs of our students.
There is a saying in Spanish: En La Unión Está La Fuerza.
We gain strength from joining together.
In that spirit, I look forward to sitting at the table with educators, parents, caregivers, students, advocates, and state, local, and tribal leaders.
There is no higher duty for a nation than to build better paths, better futures for the next generation to explore.
For too many students, public education in America has been a flor pálida: a wilted rose, neglected, in need of care.
We must be the master gardeners who cultivate it, who work every day to preserve its beauty and its purpose.
I am grateful for the chance to take on this responsibility. And I’m grateful to my own children — Miguel Jr., or, as we call him, Angelito, and my daughter Celine, and to my wife and best friend, Marissa — herself a middle school Family School Liaison.
And I am grateful for the trust you’ve placed in me, Mr. President-elect and Madam Vice President-elect.
I look forward to getting to work on behalf of all America’s children — and the families, communities, and nation they will grow up to inherit and lead.
Thank you.
All lip service while he still supports charter schools and school voucher programs.
Connecticut does not have a voucher program, and we don’t know where he stands on charters.
Joe Biden has said clearly that he opposes for-profit charters and any charter that takes funding from public schools.
See my post tomorrow at 9 am
It’s fine, but “the skills gap” was and is nonsense so they should all stop repeating it:
“There was only one problem. This was — or at least should have been — obviously wrong. Now, that’s not to say that trying to help workers keep up with the demands of an ever-changing economy is not a good idea. It is. But rather that acting like our failure to do so was a big part of the reason millions of people could not find work was as bad as ideas get. For one thing, it did not explain why people who were skilled enough to have a job in 2007 supposedly were not in 2008. And for another, it did not show up in any of the data, either. Indeed, if certain types of workers were in short supply, then the ones that existed should have seen their employment, hours, and wages all go up even in the face of the slow recovery. In other words, businesses should have been in a bidding war over them, and only them. But, as the liberal Economic Policy Institute has taken pains to point out, nothing of the sort was going on. What was happening instead was that all of these labor market indicators were falling for every profession, no matter how skilled they were. Which — surprise, surprise — is exactly what you would expect if our problem was one of inadequate demand rather than inadequate training.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/01/14/skills-gap-is-fixed-because-there-was-no-skills-gap/
BLAH BLAH BLAH….Isn’t this what they all say when they accept the Cabinet position of Education Sec? We will have to wait and see what path he chooses to follow and how he chooses to lead (or enforce). Concerning to me is the reference to education for the development of the workforce and the reference to silos (the magic of Charter schools?). The first 2 years of his term will be spent reversing or fixing what Betsy DeVos has broken. He will gain a lot of street cred if he comes right out and gives waivers for the standardized tests at the get go. This is a waiting game.
I understand, a bit, the emphasis on workforce. I remember too many of my minority students who were graduating having little to look forward to but low wage factory or service industry jobs as the height of their aspirations. Vocational ed needs to be strengthened along with our other goals. The goal of too many is just to be able to feed themselves and their families, but, make no mistake, it is a necessary goal before loftier aspirations. You can’t go very far if you can’t take care of basic necessities.
What can benefit education more than anything else is to go back to the gardening metaphors (mindset) and away from the industrial/market metaphors. Children need to grow, not compete.
nicely said
Great speech. It’s refreshing to hear praise for public schools and teachers, while acknowledging change that needs to happen. I am hopeful hearing him express commitment to collaboratively reimagining and rebuilding PUBLIC schools.
I am not expecting this from an education secretary….. but I would also love to hear an public official acknowledge and address the socio-cultural systems that students are part of. Healthy strong, public schools are important,…. but only a piece of a larger ecosystem of learning. The larger social contexts (families, support systems, neighborhood, peers, media exposure, access to health care, the economy…) are just as (if not more) important in how a child develops.
What an enraging speech! That was horrible! The Biden administration stinks and they haven’t even taken office yet. Did Cardona write that speech or did a billionaire have it written and placed on the teleprompter? It was the exact same sales ridiculousness they’ve been spouting for years. We true educators need to do something about this nonsensical zip code line they keep using over and over and over again over the course of decades. Cardona wants to reimagine education. He can reimagine my foot in his pants.
The zip code reference made me cringe too. This is right out the so-called reformers’ playbook, I would have preferred for him to say something about providing equity for students regardless of where they live.
That reference to “your zip code and your skin color” was a cringe factor for me as well in an otherwise encouraging acceptance speech.
The reference is the same old bait dangling on the same old hook on the same old line of the same old phishing rod reformers cast to catch eager charter school snappers.
“We must embrace the opportunity to reimagine education — and build it back better.”
Reimagining education can go in many directions. If we choose to reimagine education according to the vision of the 1%, we will have students passively sitting in front of screens all day and learning very little. If we choose to invest in more evidence based options for students that provide more opportunities for students, then reimagining will be a worthwhile undertaking. Time will tell in what direction Dr. Cardona takes the DOE.
Agree – I see the speech as hopeful – but it’s all in the nuance of what he is alluding to. What does he mean as “reimagine.” I would love to reimagine schools – but my vision may be very different from Mr. Cardona’s.
Maybe he has a similar vision to many of us on this blog – but is being careful with his words. Time will tell.
Here’s what the word ‘reimagine’ reminds me of: https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/5/8/21252576/no-current-nyc-educators-named-to-cuomos-reimagine-education-council, Cuomo’s Reimagine Education Council of billionaires. And this too: https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/458-19/de-blasio-administration-community-centered-public-private-challenge-open-20-new.
The danger is that Cardona is using the language of a techie, of someone who is willing to let tech corporations control curriculum with online competency-based programs and tests. It is an explosively dangerous attitude that his language and history make me suspect he has. Bill Gates wants to reimagine education.
Teachers don’t want to reimagine education. We want academic freedom and professional autonomy. We also want respect. And we will never get respect if politicians and media don’t stop saying education is broken and needs to be reformed from the top down.
Three thoughts –
1. He’s not DeVos or Duncan. His remarks are a far cry from what we’ve heard for the past few decades.
2. He’s an educator and eager. Hopefully Dr. Darling-Hammond will still be behind the scenes and let’s overwhelmingly educate from the field starting with an audience with Dr. Ravitch and Dr. Burris
&
3. Aren’t we beyond “zip codes”, “honesty about metrics”, and expected phrases that may have been bold and even risky to utter in some venues… 30 years ago?
Where we go next in education nationally parallels Eve Ewing’s commentary on school closings in Chicago. In the conclusion of her book ‘Ghosts in the Schoolyard.’ She describes the schools’ chief Barbara Byrd-Bennet describing Chicago’s “utilization crisis” and “need to move immediately to consolidate the schools, meeting the utilization committee’s criteria, and to move students to schools with better opportunities.”
(I liken that to “Yes, we know about zip codes and metrics”)
Dr. Ewing goes on to acknowledge the need for some closings but to keep out front and acknowledge the history, the broader story and effects, what the institution represents for the community closest to it and why that matters, the history beneath the schools’ history, decision-making AND —–> how “power, race, and identity inform” the answers to questions.
How deep will our new Secretary go before jumping on the well-funded, isolationist, unproven-after-all-these-years reforms bandwagon?
I am cautiously optimistic. This does not have the same reformer ring to it I have heard the last two decades. But I am often too optimistic!
LeftCoast; I share your concerns. The Democrats need to take a clear stand. After twenty years of constant chiseling away at the common good, Democrats still take the position of being agnostic on school choice, They should read about the sordid origins of so-called choice. Placing mostly black and brown students in separate and unequal schools should never be a neutral issue.
retired teacher, who are the Democrats?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/wall-street-giants-including-the-ceos-of-goldman-and-blackstone-are-pouring-money-into-the-campaign-to-defeat-aoc-in-a-june-primary/ar-BB15EJLt
They are trying run a Latina pawn against AOC. This is not surprising, but I do not think her constituents will fall for it.
Today Peter Greene’s latest post is one of his best. He calls out Democrats for refusing to take a stand on failed privatization In attempt to get corporate and progressive Democrats into the same big tent, the party is continuing to turn a blind eye to the looting of public education. In a way the selection of the ‘centrist’ Cardona is another flawed attempt by the Democratic party to make “don’t ask, don’t tell” about privatization the policy of the Biden administration.
Greene writes: “The way to fix poverty, racism, injustice, inequity and economic strife is to get a bunch of children to make higher scores on a single narrow standardized test; the best shot at getting this done is to give education amateurs the opportunity to make money doing it.” He is just getting started. This is one of Greene’s most insightful articles that challenges the Democratic Party’s weak commitment to our pubic schools and teachers. This is a “must read.” http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/12/democrats-need-new-theory-of-action.html
Thank you, retired teacher. You are right. Peter Greene’s post really hit the nails on their heads!
Yes, yes, yes. It is my fear that the ESSA will be reauthorized to not only keep the failed policy of mandatory annual testing in place but add mandatory monthly testing. I fear there could even be Race to the Top-style incentives added for putting entire curricula online: effectively mandatory daily testing. That’s what they’re doing right now in Cardona’s state of Connecticut, on his watch. Data equal dollars. The power brokers behind the scenes want more data. I consider the incoming Biden administration already guilty of colluding with the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club to cheapen education, and they will remain guilty until they prove themselves innocent.
This is a must read. Thank you!
Ed Johnson,
Any reference to zip code makes me cringe because I have heard it so often from the DFER-charter-TFA lobby.
They have not succeeded anywhere in making zip code irrelevant.
Zip code is a synonym for family income.
I would feel better if he had included soul food with his apple pie and rice and beans.