Ann P. Cronin is a former Connecticut Distinguished English Teacher of the Year, a school district administrator, and creator of award-winning programs for the teaching of English in middle schools and high schools. At her blog, she asks about Miguel Cardona’s vision for the future.
She writes:
When I ask Connecticut teachers about Miguel Cardona, those who know him or have worked with him say that he is really nice guy who knows what the challenges in our classrooms are, knows how to help teachers to improve their teaching, and respects public schools. All good.
The majority of Connecticut teachers who don’t know him personally say that he has been largely quiet as Commissioner and are critical that he seems more interested in keeping schools open than in caring about public health, including the welfare of teachers, students and students’ families during the pandemic.
But what is his vision for teaching and learning that he will bring to the U.S. Department of Education? When appointed Commissioner of Education in Connecticut 19 months ago, he stated that his goals would be to:
- Make a positive impact on graduation rates.
- Close the achievement gap.
- Ensure that all students have increased access to opportunities and advantages that they need to succeed in life.
It is reasonable to assume that the goals he had for Connecticut 19 months ago will be goals that he will now bring to the country. Those goals, however, are “old hat” and don’t have a record of being successfully accomplished.
The goals themselves are worthy ones, but they need a new interpretation which would give rise to a dramatically new vision and radical new actions. The questions are: What would that new vision and new actions look like? And is Dr. Cardona open to that vision and those actions?
Cronin points out that it easy to “raise the graduation rate,” as many districts now do, by offering “credit retrieval” or “credit recovery” courses, a quick computer course that involves minimal learning but provides credits. The goal ought to be, she says, not raising the graduation rate but something like the graduating of well-educated high school students. Currently, graduation rates make good headlines but can mean very little in terms of student learning.
Charter schools have mastered the trick of raising graduation rates by pushing out students who are unlikely to graduate on time.
She asks for something more: a genuine vision that involves improving the quality of education, not improving the data.
How refreshing!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane Yes, stating the goal of “raising graduation rates” doesn’t answer the question: HOW? What, then, does he think are the appropriate MEANS to that noble END? CBK
“Make a positive impact on graduation rates.”
Campbell’s law will lead this to erode any sense of accomplishment relating to graduation. If you do not have to work for it, you will really grow to not particularly care whether you get it.
“Close the achievement gap.”
Just because testing tells us that there is such a gap does not mean that the difference between groups of students is as bad as it looks or is worse than it looks. It does not even tell us if the source of the differences we perceive are societal or pedagogical.
“Ensure that all students have increased access to opportunities and advantages that they need to succeed in life.”
School is for getting people ready for the job market. Been there, done that. School is for democracy, not jobs. Training for employment should be cost incurred by the businesses that can save money by pinpointing the training for a specialized need. While I see the need for vocational training, it should not be the focus of our public education.
Cardona’s vision appears the same as any Broadie’s. It is the cheapening of education for profit, fiscal austerity for workers and welfare for the wealthy.
sad, sad reality
Thank you for this well-written, thoughtful letter. Ms. Cronin understands the issues in teaching and learning as well as in public education. I particularly enjoyed her understanding of equity.
“Looking at the big picture of poverty and racism with its complex causes beyond the classrooms will take vision and strong political action. It will switch the narrative from one of “failing public schools” to one of how can we adults and taxpayers not fail our public schools.”
The whole “failing public schools” narrative have been an excuse to justify placing mostly poor black and brown students in private charter schools. This process has been considered a “solution” without few attempts to confirm that privatization is helping students. Public schools bear the loss of funds with each student that is transferred into a private option. How is this continuous money drain working towards building equity in public education?
cx: has been en excuse, with few attempts
Vocational-Technical High Schools, in addition to Charter Schools, “have mastered the trick of raising graduation rates by pushing out students who are unlikely to graduate on time.” And those they push out need the vocational training, and are sent back to their local comprehensive high school, some during their Senior year. They do the same with any “discipline” issues. If a student looks as though they will be a discipline or attendance problem, BAM, right back to their local comprehensive high schools. They are “public schools”, whose entrance and retention standards equal those of a private school.
I’m fine with Cronin’s take on points 2 & 3, but not thrilled with the section on counting graduates. Please let us not have the fed Dept of Ed specifying to states how to count those beans as a back-handed way to discourage computer-course credit retrieval and charters failing to backfill. And keep their mitts out of how grads are doing 6 yrs later as a cudgel for deciding which schools get fed funds. Isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that got us into the mess we’re already in?
Perhaps he might begin by encouraging the US to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is something that we can use to reflect on where we are, inform our future decisions, and keep us accountable to human rights and not bogus academic data.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot for the past few days. The preface of our resistance on this should be something to the effect of, “As pleased as we are on your actions on the vast majority of issues confronting our nation, we have exactly the opposite view on your actions with respect to public education. Your policies seem to be (are) a continuation of the bipartisan assault on public education of the past two decades. We will fight you this issue until your administration acknowledges and repairs the polices of this shameful era.”
Agreed – such a typical boring response without a new, layered plan. Reading his three goals – it sounds like he doesn’t have any goals.
I HATE being so critical with someone who just got the job, but I truly feel education is our only way out of this mess – and I’m losing hope.
I find that well educated people denigrate raising graduation rates, because it is often done with quick solutions rather than in depth education. However, I would point out that young people need a high school diploma for most working class jobs. So please stop discouraging policymakers from focusing on graduation rates. Our young people need those diplomas.
I start from a different assumption than many of you. Poverty is the problem, not the quality of education. So let’s get a livable wage, health care for all and decent pensions and the quality of education will solve itself. The quality of education is not the cause of poverty; it is a reflection of poverty.
Lynne Weikart Poverty and education . . . . chicken and the egg? Some thoughts:
Often, psychological and social problems pervade a family immersed in economic poverty (as distinct from other forms of it) many of which can delay or destroy children’s learning capacities . . .the ones they bring to the classroom. And many of those problems are intergenerational. For instance, alcoholism is nothing if not long-term; and it can create and/or exacerbate other poverty-related problems. Its effects on the family don’t go away because someone makes more money working at a job; or actually “breaks through” and, with the help of a dedicated and visionary teacher, works hard and gets a degree from Harvard.
Raising the minimum wage CAN omit the need for a parent to work two jobs to make ends meet . . . it CAN make someone feel better about what they do in life; and it CAN help someone have more time where they MIGHT spend that time in good and educational ways with their children (instead of, say, gambling or drinking it away), etc., etc., etc.
So there are several chickens and several eggs where long-term human development and well-being are concerned? CBK
I am not convinced of the chicken and egg analogy. Using your example, alcoholism exists in many types of families, rich and poor. But we don’t automatically assume that if we assigned social services to the rich, that it would mean somehow their kids will do better in school. Clearly, with the rich, we don’t even think about social services. Somehow we think we can solve poor people’s problems but we are ignoring other classes. Why is that? Because we have all sorts of prejudices about poor people. I blame Oscar Lewis who convinced us that if poor people had money, they would drink it away, etc., etc. What he didn’t say is that would be just like rich people.
Lynne Weikart In the chicken-or-the-egg analogy I was referring to the “which came first” or which is more influential to the other . . . for the poverty-to-education relationship.
So that, when you write: “We don’t automatically assume that if we assigned social services to the rich, that it would mean somehow their kids will do better in school. Clearly, with the rich, we don’t even think about social services.”
What I mean by the analogy is that, rich or poor, family problems, using alcoholism as an example, can influence whether and how children learn. Recalcitrant economic poverty has its own set of problems, but then so can the indulgence and arrogance of the rich. Public education really does harbor the potential good influence of making a habit out of social and psychological development in any case. But economic poverty a big chicken that produces its own brand of eggs.
Also, you say: “Somehow we think we can solve poor people’s problems but we are ignoring other classes. Why is that?”
It may be that some “. . . have all sorts of prejudices about poor people.” In my view, the legitimacy of trying to “solve poor people’s problems” is a respect of others who are not faring well economically and otherwise . . . and that turns into a more democratic political view where the systematics of can be changed so that others really CAN help themselves if indeed they can. We always think the rich can take care of themselves where financial security is concerned? But I think your further observation is a good one:
“I blame Oscar Lewis who convinced us that if poor people had money, they would drink it away, etc., etc. What he didn’t say is that would be just like rich people.”
I think too many republicans read Ayn Rand and took it for a personal playbook instead of a story of stunted male development. I also think it joins “bootstraps” thinking, “welfare moms,” and “government handouts” on a list of excuses about why NOT help the poor or pay their fair share of taxes. As a BTW, below is a section from that Bill Moyers interview with Bandy Lee that relates to this discussion. I really loved that interview . . . thank you to whoever posted it first. CBK
BILL MOYERS: The inequalities at the end of this pandemic and of Donald Trump’s reign are going to be vast. That does not augur well for our democracy.
BANDY LEE: Our democracy has been eroding in tandem with the rise in inequality. We did a study of 40 countries — low, middle, and high-income countries — over several decades, looking at how their level of democracy affected violent death rates, suicides and homicides. A lot of democracies start out with a lot of violence because we don’t really measure the governmental violence that happened before. But it transfers onto individual violence for a while. And we were hoping that we would see with the democratization of multiple nations that there would be a dissipation of violent death rates. But what we saw was in fact a continuation, especially with the rise in inequality, with the adoption of unequal capitalism with democracy, it seems it cancels out the beneficial aspects of democracy that would prevent violence.