Federal

Biden’s Pick for Ed. Secretary: U.S. Must Help Schools ‘Forge Opportunity Out of Crisis’

By Evie Blad — December 23, 2020 3 min read
Miguel Cardona, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee for Secretary of Education, speaks after being introduced at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., Wednesday, Dec. 23, 2020.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The coronavirus crisis has taken some of the “most painful disparities” in America’s schools and “wrenched them open even wider,” Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona said as President-elect Joe Biden introduced him as his choice for U.S. secretary of education Wednesday.

Cardona laid out a two-fold vision of helping schools, educators, and families rebound from the pandemic while also addressing long-standing concerns about equity and opportunity.

“Though the nation is 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,” Cardona said in a speech in Wilmington, Del. “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.”

I, being bilingual and bicultural, am as American as apple pie and rice and beans.

Biden selected Cardona—a former teacher, principal, and district administrator who has been in his current role since 2019—to fulfill a campaign pledge to appoint a public school educator to lead the U.S. Department of Education.

Cardona, who grew up in public housing and started school as an English-language learner, won praise from a variety of education groups across the ideological spectrum when he emerged as Biden’s pick Tuesday. He is considered by many to be a less- provocative candidate than the current and former teachers’ union leaders Biden had also considered for the role.

“He understands the deep roots of inequity as the sources of our persistent opportunity gaps,” Biden said as he formally announced Cardona Wednesday. “And he understands the transformative power that comes from investing in public education.”

Biden said Cardona would help him execute his education platform: tripling federal funding for disadvantaged students, “fully funding” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and helping schools to create universal prekindergarten programs and raise teacher pay.

He also praised Cardona’s approach to reopening schools in Connecticut. While Cardona has stopped short of mandating schools to reopen for in-person learning, he has urged them to do so. His agency has provided supplies, created public service announcement videos, and held online forums to address concerns. That has drawn pushback from some educators.

Biden has pledged to push Congress for more funding to aid schools, even after it passed a bipartisan relief package this week. And he’s pledged to open schools within the first 100 days of his administration. That timetable lapses April 30, which is not far from the end of the scheduled school year in some states.

See Also

State Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona speaks with Berlin High School students while on a tour of the school on Jan. 28, 2020. Cardona met with students to hear about the issues they face and visited classrooms at the high school and Griswold Elementary School.
Connecticut Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona speaks with students at Berlin High School in Berlin, Conn., earlier this year.
Devin Leith-Yessian/Berlin Citizen/Record-Journal via AP

Cardona struck an empathetic tone when he discussed school closures and the struggles of remote learning.

“It has taxed our teachers, our school professionals, and our staff who already pour so much of themselves into their work,” he said. “It has taxed families struggling to adapt to new routines as they balance the stress, pain, and loss this year has given ... It has stolen time from our children.”

Cardona quoted Pedro Noguera, the dean of the University of Southern California school of education, saying “the normalization of failure” holds too many children back.

Among his concerns with the American education system: students graduate unequipped to “meaningfully engage with the work force,” including through high-skilled technical and trade jobs. Schools use “Band-Aids” to address inequality instead of laying a foundation through high-quality early- childhood education and social-emotional supports for students, Cardona said.

“And for far too long, the teaching profession has been kicked around and not given the respect it deserves,” he said. “It should not take a pandemic for us to realize how important teachers are this country.”

Addressing these problems will require resolve and optimism, Cardona said. He teared up when he compared that motivation to the choice his grandparents made when they moved from Puerto Rico to Connecticut for new opportunities.

And he drew parallels between his own personal story and the lives students in America’s schools, which have grown more diverse in recent years.

“I, being bilingual and bicultural, am as American as apple pie and rice and beans,” Cardona said. “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.”

Events

Teaching Profession K-12 Essentials Forum New Insights Into the Teaching Profession
Join this free virtual event to get exclusive insights from Education Week's State of Teaching project.
Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and K-12 education jubs at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Mathematics K-12 Essentials Forum Helping Students Succeed in Math

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal Trump Admin. Was Moving Ed. Dept. Programs Elsewhere Before a Court Intervened
The department had penned agreements with the U.S. departments of Labor and the Treasury to move programs, but was halted by court order.
8 min read
A Morehouse College student lines up before the school commencement, May 19, 2024, in Atlanta. The Education Department announced on July 18, 2024, that it is cancelling an additional $1.2 billion in student loans for borrowers who work in public service.
A Morehouse College student lines up before the school commencement on May 19, 2024, in Atlanta. The U.S. Department of Education had started to work with the U.S. Department of the Treasury on transferring its student loan portfolio, a new court filing shows.
Seth Wenig/AP
Federal Trump Admin. Adds Project 2025 Author to Education Department Staff
The appointment comes as Trump has already begun to embrace plans outlined in the controversial 900-page conservative policy agenda.
4 min read
A copy of Project 2025 is held during the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago.
A copy of Project 2025 is held during the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. The Trump administration has added the author of the conservative policy document's chapter on education to the U.S. Department of Education's staff.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Federal Trump Admin. Pauses Ed. Dept. Layoffs After Judge's Order
The U.S. Department of Education is slowly complying with a federal court order to reinstate staff.
3 min read
Phil Rosenfelt, center, an attorney with the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Education, is greeted by supporters after retrieving personal belongings from the Education Department building in Washington on March 24, 2025.
Phil Rosenfelt, center, an attorney with the office of general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education, is greeted by supporters after retrieving personal belongings from the Education Department building in Washington on March 24, 2025, the last day of work for hundreds of agency employees. The Trump administration has had to bump back the day it planned to stop paying laid-off staff.
Jose Luis Magana/AP
Federal Tutoring, After-School, and Other Student Services at Risk as Trump Cuts AmeriCorps
Deep cuts to programs across the federal government have left students without programming they'd come to count on.
8 min read
Members of the City Year program work at Isaac Newton Middle School for Math and Science in East Harlem during the MLK Day of Service on Jan. 20, 2025, in New York City.
Members of the City Year program work at Isaac Newton Middle School for Math and Science in East Harlem during the MLK Day of Service on Jan. 20, 2025, in New York City. City Year places AmeriCorps volunteers in underserved schools, but cuts to the federal service agency have led City Year to scale back some of its AmeriCorps volunteer-powered programs.
Courtesy of City Year New York