Miguel Cardona: Nominee Currently: Betsy Devos
Under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Education Department has rolled back some civil rights protections as well as Obama-era efforts to hold for-profit colleges accountable for poor outcomes. She has promoted alternatives to public schools and tried to slash federal funding for education. Biden is expected to reverse all of that, with more money for K-12 and higher education, new and revived civil rights protections and a focus on racial equity.
[Biden picks Miguel Cardona, Connecticut schools chief, as education secretary]
Miguel Cardona
Connecticut commissioner of education
Cardona, a former fourth grade teacher, was named Connecticut’s education commissioner last year. Previously, he served as co-chairman of a state task force examining achievement gaps. A low-profile pick, he has pushed to reopen pandemic-shuttered schools and is not aligned with either side in the education policy battles of recent years.
Source: Washington Post Reported by Laura Meckler.
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2021-01-04 How Education Secretary Nominee Miguel Cardona Works With Teachers Miguel Cardona, a former teacher, school administrator, and currently Connecticut’s education commissioner, was recently nominated to lead the federal Education Department. Cardona’s selection reflects a shift from those who spearheaded education policy under Joe Biden’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.
As president, Obama aligned himself with the pro–charter school PAC Democrats for Education Reform, which, as co-founder Whitney Tilson put it, was founded “to break the teacher unions’ stranglehold over the Democratic Party.” Obama tapped DFER’s top choice for education secretary—Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan—and for the next seven years Duncan pushed controversial reform policies, including charter school expansion, weakening teacher tenure, and tying teacher salaries to student test scores. Unions despised Duncan, and Obama, who largely left the dirty work to his appointee, made clear he approved of the job Duncan was doing. “Arne has done more to bring our educational system—sometimes kicking and screaming—into the 21st century than anybody else,” Obama said in 2015.
While Biden didn’t go so far as picking former National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García to lead the Education Department, the choice of Cardona has nonetheless been a relief to union advocates, who knew education reformers were lobbying behind the scenes for other candidates. It’s another example of how Democratic leaders have drifted away from the Obama-era agenda and more toward a platform focused on traditional public schools and their schoolteachers.
2020-12-22 Teachers Blast Biden’s Education Secretary Pick Miguel Cardona: ‘A Slap in the Face’ While his nomination has been met with praise by education groups like the American Federation of Teachers, the National School Boards Association and the National Education Association, some classroom teachers disagree.
“The big issue is that he’s not a teacher. He’s somebody who taught for a short amount of time on his way to becoming an administrator, which is not in and of itself a bad thing,” Salt told Newsweek.”We were told that we were going to have a classroom teacher, and this is not a classroom teacher,” she said.
During the president-elect’s campaign, Biden vowed to select a “teacher” to replace the current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, who has no professional experience working in a school or classroom.
2020-12-22 Biden picks Miguel Cardona, Connecticut schools chief, as education secretary
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