Miguel Cardona, who rose from fourth-grade teacher to President Joe Biden’s education secretary, fiercely defended the federal agency that oversees the nation’s public schools and that President-elect Donald Trump wants to eliminate.
Cardona, a first-generation Puerto Rican from Connecticut, became the state’s first Latino education commissioner. As he prepares to leave the U.S. Department of Education, he warns against Trump’s promise to “abolish” the department and let each state individually “run education.” Trump has picked former wrestling executive Linda McMahon to oversee the department, a position that requires Senate confirmation.
“Protecting the Federal Ministry of Education means protecting the rights and opportunities of students. Otherwise you will have systems that look completely different in one state than in another, and not everyone will have the same chance to succeed in this country,” said Cardona, one of the four Hispanic members of Biden’s cabinet.
In an interview with NBC News this week in New York City, Cardona said he is very proud to be part of “a government that looks like America” and to have worked with a team of people who “come from the classroom.” .
Miguel Cardona in Washington, DC, on May 14.
State and local governments have long been responsible for education, setting rules and providing most of the funding for schools. Although the federal department does not mandate curricula or influence most school policies, it administers federal grant programs and provides billions of dollars in additional funding to high-poverty K-12 schools – as well as covering the costs of education for students with disabilities. It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program and determines what colleges must do to participate.
Due to a mandate from Congress, the Department of Education is charged with assessing student progress nationally and developing ways to improve education. It also collects statistics on enrollment, school crime, staffing and other topics that support this mission.
Most importantly for Cardona, the department is charged with enforcing civil rights laws to prevent discrimination in federally funded schools. He sees this as an important reason to protect the department.
“We don’t want to go backwards,” Cardona said.
“There are about 65 million students in this country who need civil rights protections, who need a department that can make sure the dollars go where they need to go,” he said.
“Students need their districts and states to get guidance on how to support children,” especially when it comes to addressing mental health and school violence, Cardona said. “That’s what we do. We offer that support.”
Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, told NBC News in a statement that the president-elect “believes school choice is the civil rights issue of our time” and will “ensure all families have access to a quality education, no matter what.” their zip code.”
“Trump will improve academic excellence for all students,” the statement said, “by expanding access to school choice, empowering parents to have a voice in their child’s education, supporting great teachers and putting education back to the states where it belongs.”
A look back
The Covid-19 pandemic, the fight for student debt relief and the end of affirmative action were among the issues the country grappled with during Cardona’s time as Secretary of Education.
When Cardona first came to power, more than half of the country’s schools were closed. “People forget that,” he said, recalling nine months of work to reopen them.
Students struggled with the mental health impact of the pandemic and years-long lockdown, leading the Ministry of Education to deploy more than 16,000 social workers and counselors to tackle the problem.
Cardona said providing these resources was one of his proudest accomplishments, as well as increasing Pell Grants, federal scholarships and forgiving more than $176 billion in student loans to nearly 5 million people during his time in office.
Courts have repeatedly blocked the Biden administration from implementing its one-time student debt forgiveness plan to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student debt for more than 40 million borrowers. Therefore, the government provided debt relief under four existing debt forgiveness programs: the Early Cancellation of Savings for Valuable Education, the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, the Total and Permanent Disability Forgiveness Plan, and the Income-Driven Repayment Plan.
Cardona worries about a future dismantling of these programs, saying they have “given people the ability to go to college, buy homes and move on with their lives.”
As a former teacher and public sector worker, Cardona said he took some comfort in having boosted debt forgiveness for public sector people who had been paying off their loans under the Public Service Loan for a decade or more Forgiveness program. “This was something that was passed by Republicans and Democrats in 2007,” he said.
“We provided debt relief to people who deserved debt relief, and I’m proud of that because a lot of people are questioning that,” Cardona said. “The same people who didn’t complain when we bailed out an airline industry or banks; we were bailing out working-class Americans who worked hard.”
Miguel Cardona in Washington, DC, on April 30.
In an interview with NBC News NOW on Wednesday, Cardona said many of the public servants receiving debt relief are “people we said we needed in our classrooms” during Covid, but also “firefighters, police officers, veterans; everyone we called essential’. benefiting from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program four years ago.”
“No other government has come close to the debt relief we have provided and fixing a broken system,” he said.
‘Good problems’
Cardona warned that “there will be a period of rain before the rainbow comes out” when it comes to education in the US.
“Students of color, who have historically been overlooked in admissions processes, have less access than they did three years ago,” Cardona said, referring to the Supreme Court decision banning selective colleges and universities from using race as a factor in admissions. “It will make us less competitive as a country if only some of our students have access to higher education.”
According to Cardona, previous state-level bans on race-based affirmative action have given the country a glimpse of the consequences of banning such a practice on a national scale.
In the nine states where bans occurred, research found that enrollment of students from underrepresented communities fell, even when other factors, such as class, were weighed more heavily.
“That’s probably going to happen in this country,” Cardona said.
Cardona said he looks at a rubber bracelet he wears on his right hand that reads, “Good Problem,” in memory of the late Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who famously fought for civil rights.
“He fought, when he was young, to gain freedoms that were denied to students. He sacrificed a lot so that we could move forward as a country,” Cardona said. ‘Yes, we are entering a dark era where they want to close the Ministry of Education and stop positive discrimination. … But we must come together as a country and fight for what we believe – just like Congressman John Lewis did.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
