WASHINGTON (AP) — As Republican states worked to restrict history teaching in schools and ban transgender athletes, President Joe Biden’s education chief said he was focused on what mattered most: sending more social workers to schools, summer school expand and build a pipeline of up-to-date teachers.
In an interview during his final days in office, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he was seeking distance from the struggles of Republican governors who he said were eager to make a name for themselves.
“I will not be distracted by culture wars,” Cardona said. “It’s nonsense and I think the people who spread it are being ridiculous. I don’t have to help them.”
Cardona said he wanted to be remembered for “content, not sensationalism.” He helped reopen schools after the COVID-19 pandemic. He oversaw a historic grant of federal aid to America’s schools. Under his watch, more than 5 million Americans have had their student loans canceled.
But his time in office will also be remembered for the politics that surrounded him. Conservatives and some experts now say the COVID school reopening has been too snail-paced, citing persistent academic deficits and troubling trends in juvenile people’s mental health. Even after the pandemic, education became a battleground as conservatives banded together to eliminate what some call the “wokeness” promoted by educators in the classroom. Republican states have passed laws restricting school teaching about race and sexuality, and many have passed laws and rules banning transgender athletes in school sports.
Cardona said he did what he could to push back. The Department of Education investigated civil rights complaints in cases of alleged discrimination. He issued a groundbreaking rule expanding Title IX, a sex discrimination law, to protect LGBTQ+ students.
But he reached the limits of his authority. A federal judge struck down the Title IX rule and Republican states ignored his pleas to promote diversity in education.
“We have seen what I think is a step backwards in terms of student rights in this country,” he said. “The reality is that the federal government plays only a limited role in state politics.”
Cardona, 49, came to office after a rapid rise in the education world. The son of Puerto Rican parents, he was a fourth-grade teacher, principal and district administrator for years before becoming Connecticut’s education superintendent. Biden had promised to appoint a secretary with teaching experience as a counterpart to Trump’s first education secretary, the pro-school philanthropist Betsy DeVos.
Early in his term, Cardona tried to apply the bully pulpit to bring Republican governors into line. In letters to the governors of Florida and Texas, Cardona discussed mask requirements and COVID testing. He says he changed course after finding out that’s exactly what they wanted – a national platform to attract attention ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
He said it was not a good time to spend his time “confronting a governor who desperately wants to be Biden’s biggest opponent so he can make it in the presidential election.”
The political battles extended into the courts, where Republican states successfully killed some of Biden’s key education plans, including widespread student loan cancellation, a more generous student loan repayment plan and his Title IX expansion.
Other plans collapsed after failing to gain support in Congress, including a push for free community college.
Still, Cardona says there were more wins than losses. Under Biden, the maximum Pell grant for low-income college students saw its largest augment in a decade. More than a million public sector workers have had their student loans canceled after the Education Department revamped a problematic program. New laws allowed schools to hire 16,000 mental health professionals.
“What we have done will have a tremendous impact on our schools,” he said. “If there are more school social workers, psychologists, more reading teachers, more after-school programs and more summer programs than in the history of our country, 50 million children out there will benefit.”
Cardona tried to downplay what critics called one of the lowest points of his tenure – a botched overhaul of the federal financial aid form known as the FAFSA. Congress directed the Education Department to simplify the notoriously sophisticated form, but a series of glitches led to months of delays in college financial aid decisions.
Critics called it a crisis and predicted the frustration would deter some students from attending college at all. Cardona pushed back on that idea, pointing to up-to-date data from the National Student Clearinghouse that showed freshman enrollment increased this fall.
Cardona called the FAFSA update a challenging time that “really tested us.”
“And in my opinion,” he said, “we passed the test.”
In a farewell speech on Tuesday, Cardona urged his outgoing colleagues not to despair, even as they wonder whether the next administration will reverse policies and cut budgets. Cardona said he leaves with hope “because I have never bet against the teachers and students of our country.”
They are the ones “who will write the next chapter, who will decide the fate of public education,” he said. “There is no single education secretary or president who will do this, and no single leader can break our resolve.”
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