Andrea Gabor has some good ideas about what the new Secretary of Education must do.
President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for education secretary, Miguel Cardona, will face a host of pandemic-related challenges that have disproportionately affected the nation’s neediest students. In addition to learning setbacks, the prolonged isolation has caused social and emotional trauma.
The challenges will continue to mount once the Covid-19 crisis is over.
Government resources will be strained at all levels, and continued Republican control of the Senate would likely limit extra funding available for K-12 education.
In the absence of significant support for state and local governments, beyond the money included in any year-end stimulus package, Cardona, who has been Connecticut’s education commissioner, will need to concentrate on closing funding inequities between poor and affluent school districts in order to avoid the kind of educational setbacks that followed the 2008 recession.
Although recent data indicate that the learning losses this CONTINUE READING: Andrea Gabor: First Tasks for Secretary Cardona: Cancel Standardized Testing, Pursue Equity | Diane Ravitch's blog
