Not many people outside Connecticut are familiar with President-Elect Biden’s choice for Secretary of Education. He went to public schools. He has worked in public schools his entire career. His children go to public schools in Meriden, where he lives. He is not aligned with DFER or Chiefs for Change or any billionaire-funded “reform” group.
Politico points out two stances that Dr. Cardona has taken that will concern many parents and teachers. In his own state, he has pushed to resume annual testing this spring, despite the pandemic. Also, he has prioritized reopening schools, which will please some but anger others.
For those of us who question the value of annual testing, a policy not found in any high-performing nation, the resumption of high-stakes testing will be a mistake when so many children have had unequal opportunity to learn. DeVos offered blanket waivers in the spring of 2020 but said she would not do it again in 2021. Students and teachers should not be required to take tests that are sure to demonstrate what we already know: Students in CONTINUE READING: Politico: Will Dr. Cardona Push 2021 Testing? | Diane Ravitch's blog
Unlike public schools, private businesses like charter schools spend millions of public dollars a year on advertising and marketing.
Putting aside widespread fraud and corruption in the segregated charter school sector, this is an enormous waste and abuse of public funds, especially at a time when public schools are being starved of much-needed public funds and struggling to meet the needs of students. This is money that can and should be invested in teaching and learning, where it is most needed.
Many are also wondering why privately-operated charter schools need to spend so much public money luring students and families through advertising and marketing if, as charter school proponents repeatedly claim, they are so good, so attractive, and so superior to public schools?
The situation is doubly absurd when it comes to cyber charter schools, also known as virtual charter schools. These privately-operated online charter schools have even fewer “costs” and less overhead than poor-performing brick-and-mortar charter schools, yet they feel comfortable diverting precious public dollars to lure parents and students. Perhaps the worst part is the bang-for-the-buck part: virtual charter schools are notorious for their abysmal academic record and very low graduation rates. Cyber charter schools CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Spend Millions On Advertising and Marketing | Dissident Voice
Like most educators around the country, I don’t know much about Dr. Miguel Cardona other than that he comes from years of classroom experience and that he was the head of public schools in Connecticut.
I have always thought that the importance of having a teacher head the federal education department was overstated.
First hand teaching experience is valuable in setting policy, but not the only thing.
I have been in too many heated conversations among my teaching colleagues about what constitutes good teaching practice to believe that practice alone will get us to CONTINUE READING: A teacher will head the department of education. – Fred Klonsky
When he was assistant superintendent of schools in Meriden, Miguel Cardona — the state’s new education commissioner — would take new teachers on a tour of the city’s neighborhoods.
He did it because he wanted the teachers to understand the diversity of their students — from those living in half-million dollar homes to those from housing projects.
“The experience motivated the teachers to get to know their kids better,” Cardona said, “and be more actively involved in the community as new teachers.”
Born in a housing project in Meriden to parents who moved here as children from Puerto Rico, Cardona, 44, believes strongly in family and community as well as in the potential for each child to be successful.
The state’s first Latino commissioner of education recalls being the victim of stereotyping as he was growing up.
“For Latino children from communities that are below the threshold of poverty, you know you’re not typically thinking, the data doesn’t suggest that they’re going to be the next principal of the school … or state education commissioner,” Cardona said. “There were times throughout my youth that I think people had lower expectations than they should have. It just made me hungrier.”
“It’s not lost on me, the significance of being the grandson of a tobacco farmer who came here for a better life, who despite having a second grade education was able to raise his family and create that upward mobility cycle,” he added.
Cardona said the values instilled in him — “hard work, service to others, CONTINUE READING: Who is the new U.S. Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona?
On Monday, President-elect Joe Biden announced former public elementary school teacher and union member, and current Connecticut Commissioner of Education Miguel Cardona as his pick to lead the U.S. Department of Education.
“When a record number of Americans turned out to vote for President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, they sent a resounding message demanding justice, stronger public schools and more opportunities for all students — Black and white, Native and newcomer, Hispanic and Asian alike,” said former science teacher and NEA President Becky Pringle.
“In these tough times, students, educators, and families face unprecedented challenges — from the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis to the systemic racism that has held back too many students for too long. We look forward to partnering with Secretary-designate Miguel Cardona in taking on these challenges together,” Pringle said.
Cardona will work as part of the Biden-Harris administration to invest in the nation’s public schools — because all students deserve a safe, welcoming, well-resourced school, no matter where they live. As a person of color, he is an inspiration to many, particularly students who will see in him a reflection of their own experiences. With a deep knowledge of the issues impacting students inside and outside the classroom, Secretary-designate Cardona knows that we must make improvements for our students by tackling issues such as housing insecurity, hunger, and economic instability, to help our students succeed.
Here are five things you should know about Cardona’s policies that have educators excited:
He has experience teaching in public schools
Cardona began his career in education as a fourth-grade public elementary school teacher before becoming the youngest principal in the state at age 28. In 2012 he was named Connecticut’s principal of the year and served as co-chairman of the Legislative Achievement Gap Task Force.
Cardona is someone who respects educators as the professionals that they are, will listen to our experiences as the people who know the names of our students, and will ensure that we have a voice in developing and implementing education policy.
He will be a welcome change from Betsy DeVos
Unlike DeVos, Secretary-designate Cardona will ensure that the federal government’s role in education is to improve access and opportunity for every student. He is someone who will defend our CONTINUE READING: Five reasons educators are excited about Miguel Cardona - Education Votes
In my final reflection for the semester of my doctoral studies (don’t ask me how it’s going), I considered what it meant to get an education. Over and again in this space, I’ve considered how there’s a big difference between schooling and education. Schooling is a set of processes characterized by the desire to show students a given set of ideas and materials. Education is the learning that this process is supposed to produce. But, as is the axiom, just because someone is teaching doesn’t mean another person is learning and, what’s more, just because someone is learning doesn’t mean they’re in a place where schooling is happening.
But it also begs the more onerous question: where did education fail us?
As human beings, we’re naturally curious. From birth, we soak in a plethora of sensory information about ourselves, other people, and our surroundings. For many of us, schooling serves as a deterrent to that rendition of education because we’re introduced to what society means by education: a set of explicit and implied knowledges this society wishes to impart through multiple methods to its youngest children. But, if education starts as a process of discovery and curiosity and constricts to an ever-narrowing list of items so the student can participate on multiple levels of society, then what did this schooling do to get this country – and the world – like this?
Specifically, where did education fail us?
Anti-intellectualism may not be enough to fully describe the breadth of our world’s problems. In this country, the line of thinking asks us to believe in systems – public, private, charter, whatever – that ultimately calcify the inequity our country professes to want to CONTINUE READING: Where Did Education Fail Us? | The Jose Vilson
William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have a proposal for what children should do after the pandemic: Play.
They write at CNN.com:
When the novel coronavirus is no longer as great a threat and schools finally reopen, we should give children the one thing they will need most after enduring months of isolation, stress, physical restraint and woefully inadequate, screen-based remote learning. We should give them playtime — and lots of it.
William Doyle 
Pasi Sahlberg As in-person classes begin, education administrators will presumably follow the safety guidelines of health authorities for smaller classes, staggered schedules, closing or regularly cleaning communal spaces with shared equipment, regular health checks and other precautions. But despite the limitations this may place on the students’ physical environment, schools should look for safe ways to supercharge children’s learning and well-being.We propose that schools adopt a 90-day “golden age of play,” our term for a transitional period when traditional academic education.
Play gives children a wide range of critical cognitive, physical, emotional and social benefits. The American Academy of Pediatrics, representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, stated in a 2012 clinical report that “play, in all its forms, needs to be considered as the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children,” including for children in poverty, and noted that “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also reported “substantial evidence that physical CONTINUE READING: Doyle and Sahlberg: After the Pandemic, Children Need to Play | Diane Ravitch's blog
If Regents exams are canceled, and if no student can fail, how exactly are we supposed to come to a fair evaluation system? We can't use Danielson. The participation in online classes, or in socially-distanced masked classes, is something altogether different from that which we've experienced over our careers.
I am big on classroom participation. I love when kids act spontaneously, and nothing makes me happier than seeing some kid get up an take a class over. However, I can't count on that happening, and my plans ensure we'll be doing something productive if it does not. I can't guarantee on any given day that kids will carry me to highly effective. (If you can, more power to you.)
Nonetheless, Danielson herself said that her rubric laid out an ideal, and wasn't intended as a rating system. Of course, that didn't stop her from taking a shit-ton of cash to allow it to be used that way anyway. In fact, it didn't stop her from writing some kind of online rubric too, hoping to cash in further. It's Spaceballs II, The Search for More Money.
Let's say we finally agree on something, just for the sake of argument. Let me ask you this--how many times have CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: Can We Agree on a Fair Evaluation System?
(OF course, I finished this post at about 3:55 PM Eastern time, so there's plenty of time left for folks to crank up the disapproval)
So now we know who the new guy is (probably) going to be, and an awful lot of folks are asking who he is and whether we should be delighted or upset or whatever.
Diane Ravitch notes that he hasn't taken a position on many of the hot-button issues, like charters. But she notes:
Having read his Twitter feed (@teachcardona), I get the impression that he is a very decent and concerned administrator who cheers on students and teachers.
This is a reblog of Diane Ravitch’s commentary on President Elect Joseph Biden’s appointment of Dr. Miguel Cardona as the next Secretary of Education.
President-Elect Joe Biden selected Dr. Miguel Cardona, Commissioner of Education in Connecticut, to be his administration’s Secretary of Education. The Washington Post wrote about him: President-elect Joe Biden is set to nominate the commissioner of public schools in Connecticut as his education secretary, settling on a low-profile candidate who has pushed to reopen schools and is not aligned with either side in education policy battles of recent years, two people familiar with the matter said Monday. Miguel Cardona was named Connecticut’s top schools official last year and if confirmed will have achieved a meteoric rise, moving from an assistant superintendent in Meriden, Conn., a district with 9,000 students, to secretary of education in less than two years. He was born in Meriden to Puerto Rican parents who lived in public housing. He began his career as a fourth-grade teacher and rocketed up the ranks, becoming the state’s youngest CONTINUE READING: EXTRA: Biden Appoints Dr. Miguel Cardona as Education Secretary | janresseger |
Last evening the Biden Administration selected Dr. Miguel Cardona, the State Superintendent of Connecticut, as his Secretary of Education.
We congratulate Dr. Cardona who has dedicated his life to public schools–as a public school teacher, principal, central administrator and State Superintendent. We are delighted that the son of parents born in Puerto Rico was chosen for Secretary. His humble beginnings are in stark contrast with those of the present Secretary, Betsy De Vos..
Dr. Cardona is the product of neighborhood public schools. He sends his children to public schools. His life’s work has been immersed in public schools. He did not attend the Broad Academy nor become a Jeb Bush Chief for Change. He has never claimed that three great teachers in a row will cure poverty, nor has he ever said that charter schools are the answer.
Although Dr. Cardona was not NPE’s first choice, we are pleased that none of the four candidates that DFER lobbied for were selected. Thank you to all of you who follow us on Twitter and were willing to push back on our campaign to stop the DFER picks.
Here are Diane’s comments on the selection from her blog today:
Dr. Cardona has not taken a position on the major issues that define the major education policy battles of the past two decades. He has been critical of excessive testing but does not oppose the use of standardized testing on principle. He has been critical of test-based evaluation of teachers (a major element of Race to the Top) because he knows that it doesn’t work. He is neither for nor against charter schools, even though Connecticut experienced some of the worst charter scandals in the nation (think the Jumoke charter chain), is the home base of the Sackler-funded ConnCAN (which morphed into 50CAN, to CONTINUE READING: NPE's Thoughts on the Selection of Miguel Cardona for Secretary of Education - Network For Public Education
President-elect Joe Biden has selected Connecticut education commissioner, Miguel Cardona, as the next US secretary of education.
Cardona was appointed state superintendent in Connecticut in August 2019. According to Cardona’s Linkedin bio, he earned his bachelors in education from Central Connecticut State University (1993-1997) and several degrees/certifications from the University of Connecticut: masters degree in bilingual and bicultural education (1999-2001); education leadership certification (2001-2003); Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in educational leadership and administration (2007-2012), and executive leadership certification (superintendency and educational system administration (2012).
Cardona was an elementary school teacher in Meriden, CT, for about five years, but for some reason, he has not included this info on his Linkedin bio. He does list his five years as an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut (2015-2019) and his many administrative positions, including ten years as principal (2003-2013), two years as an evaluator (2013-2015), and four years as an assistant superintendent (2015-2019), all with Meriden Public Schools.
Cardona is clearly not fly-by-night when it comes to professional time in public education; however, his time in the K12 classroom is limited, and it was long ago (presumably between 1997 and 2003). It’s not Teach for America “token teaching,” but it is not a K12 classroom career. It’s more like an CONTINUE READING: CT Ed Commissioner Miguel Cardona to be Next US Ed Sec | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog
It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog. The Corona Virus has forced me to address so many things virtually, that the last thing I’ve had the energy for was sitting down in front of the computer for yet another thing. I didn’t even want to think about an Op-Ed. However, the current chatter about returning to schools has me thinking about how Black children are once again being used to serve the needs of Whites. This is not a new slight-of- hand—claim something serves the needs of “the least of these” but in reality, the rich continue to get richer.
The current conversation regarding re-opening school is all about how closed schools are hurting the most vulnerable students—Black students, Latinx students, English Language Learners, poor students, and students with disabilities. But, in truth the parents clamoring the most about opening schools are the parents of the most privileged children. They are concerned that their children’s resumes are being tarnished by missing all of this school. They are comparing their children’s progress with that of their private school peers who they perceive to be moving ahead of them. They are concerned that their kids’ inability to participate in varsity sports and athletics may be hurting their scholarship chances. They are recognizing that having their kids at home and having to plan for each and every hour of their school day or perhaps having to sit beside them and assist with their virtual learning does not help one climb the corporate ladder. Actually, none of these reasons for wanting schools to be opened is a bad one. Just say that’s why you want schools to open!
Don’t pretend you have some deep conviction to the education of Black children. If that’s your motivation, where was it last year when school was in session? Weren’t Black children struggling then? Weren’t they over identified for special education CONTINUE READING: Stop Using Black Children as an Excuse to Open Your Schools | Black&Smart
