New Leadership at the USDOE

The education world has not had a lot to celebrate over the past year.  The weight and burdens of the pandemic, budget challenges, concern for the well being of students, and upheavals over everything from racial justice to safety restrictions have dominated education policy debates.  

But this week, anyone who supports public education will celebrate the ascendency of Dr. Miguel Cardona as the new leader at the U.S. Department of Education.  Cardona is expected to replace Secretary Betsy DeVos, who officially resigned from her cabinet post after the attacks on the U.S. Capitol January 6.  DeVos will likely go down in history as the worst Secretary of Education in the history of our Republic.  DeVos's lack of education experience, not only made her completely unqualified for the job, but her tenure will forever be stained by the outright hostility to P-16 public education. But enough about the past, history will record her abuse of predatory for-profit institutions as well as her indifference to the role of public education-- especially to at-risk students. 

Secretary-designate Cardona, not only brings a more qualified public school pedigree to the job, his background and experiences as a Spanish-speaking student that learned English through public school ELL programs offers a unique perspective that will likely shape his tenure. 

While DeVos did little to support the most disadvantaged students, a Cardona-led department will seek to transform this role.  In addition to ELL programs, one area that is very promising, especially to schools in Kentucky, is his support for full-service community schools.  

Many policy experts expect to see Cardona expand the current USDOE discretionary grants program for Full-Service Community Schools.  These schools provide comprehensive academic, social, and health services for students, students’ family members, and community members that will result in improved educational outcomes for children. We will discuss this model in more detail in a subsequent blog.

The Cardona years will prove to be a breath of fresh air for education in the U.S.  His support for programs such as community schools, pre-K education, ELL, and calls for better funding of IDEA and ESSA will be critical in realigning the department to support schools in addressing issues like poverty and civil rights.  

For the past 20 years the USDOE served as an accountability sheriff emphasizing with the use of high stakes testing around a very narrow definition of success. This culture of testing as the sole way to hold schools accountable has been the biggest mistake of the current generation in public education. Most educators have no objection to accountability; in fact the occasional test can help students learn. It is critical to hold students, teachers, schools and districts to high standards. Yet there exists a multitude of recent evidence from groups such as the National Academy of Sciences, the National Education Policy Center among others, demonstrating that the national testing mania of the past two decades has done more harm than good, particularly with minority and low income students.

The original intent of the expanded role of the federal government in education in the 1960s was to champion equity and serve as a great leveler so that each child living in poverty would received an additional 40 percent of the state’s average spending. Neither the federal government nor the states have ever appropriated sums of this magnitude.

Well-supported schools with substantial resources can make an important difference in student's lives, but it is unrealistic to expect schools to be the nation’s primary anti-poverty program, particularly with a sole emphasis on accountability and without adequate resource support and wraparound services. Doing so is as unfair to children as it is to educators. It is a false promise. It is critical that the safety net for the most vulnerable children in our society be protected. 

It will be refreshing to have Miguel Cardona as an advocate at the national level. As his background and experience demonstrate, he understands and supports the needs of our most vulnerable and disadvantaged students and the resources needed by educators to serve them.