Many questions on future of schools
It wasn’t long ago Connecticut was at the center of a national debate on school reform. As the state again makes national news on the education front, it should mark an endpoint to that misguided effort.
But other crises come first. A major reason behind Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona’s selection to run the
U. S. Department of Education was his drive to maintain inperson learning in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly every national news account has led with that fact.
“He kept our schools open,” Gov. Ned Lamont said a few days ago, which will come as news to a lot of students and their parents around Connecticut.
It could be argued that Lamont and Cardona, whatever they said publicly, skipped out on their decision- making duties in leaving the choice on reopening up to individual districts. The state of Connecticut required that districts come up with plans for all contingencies before this fall’s resumption of classes — in- person, fully remote or a hybrid of the two — and then let towns make their own call. A few have been operating almost as normal, while others have yet to see a day of school that wasn’t online. Most are somewhere in between.
Superintendents are doing their best in an impossible situation, but it’s not clear what Cardona is getting credit for here. About a third of Connecticut’s public school students currently have the option to attend school full time and in person, according to the CT Mirror, and Connecticut spent months well below much of the country in coronavirus prevalence. This is not what Biden says he’s looking for nationally.
Biden says reopened schools are a top priority. “If Congress provides the funding we need to protect students, educators and staff; if states and cities put strong public health measures in place that we all follow, then my team will work to see that a majority of our schools can be open by the end of my first 100 days,” Biden said earlier this month.
That would be good news, but it’s at odds with what other stakeholders want to see. How Cardona handles those competing interests will define the start of his tenure. Eventually, that will change, and the questions facing K- 12 schooling for the past generation will be back at the forefront.
On those issues, it’s not clear where Cardona stands. He hasn’t spent much time running the state Education Department, and most of it has been COVID- dominated.
He’s a former teacher and principal, and has an inspiring life story. Still, though it predates his tenure, it’s worth remembering how recently Connecticut saw a push toward many of the worst ideas in school reform. Reformers targeted the state and its cities, especially Bridgeport, with unproven, teacher- unfriendly plans that pushed standardized tests and charter schools, all of it cheered on by Democrats such as Dannel Malloy.
National Democrats made a villain out of Betsy DeVos, who has been running President Trump’s Department of Education for four years, and for good reason. But it wasn’t long ago that the difference in their approach and hers was a question of degree. Many top Democrats favored plans that leaned toward privatization; DeVos took it further and was more upfront about it.
That fad seems to have run its course, at least on the Democratic side of the aisle, and the question of school reform has mostly been quiet under Lamont. Still, it would be good to know where Cardona comes down on these questions. He has the profile of a public- school champion, but he should be asked tough questions about failed national education plans of the past. These include No Child Left Behind, which once required steadily rising standards that would have eventually demanded 100 percent proficiency from all students on standardized tests, as well as its Obama- era successor, Race to the Top.
Sen. Chris Murphy had a viral moment four years ago in questioning DeVos about her support for guns in schools when she declared that among the dangers to guard against was, somehow, grizzly bears. He will probably have a more cordial conversation with Cardona. That doesn’t mean he, and the rest of the Senate, shouldn’t find out where he stands.