The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Cardona calls for return to classroom
Nominee for education secretary testifies before Senate panel
WASHINGTON — Connecticut Education Commissioner Miguel Cardona stepped closer to assuming the nation’s highest education job Wednesday and shouldering the immense burden of safely reviving America’s schools during the coronavirus pandemic.
President Joe Biden’s nominee for Secretary of
Education, Cardona committed to helping all the nation’s schools safely reopen within Biden’s first 100 days in office, building on his experience in Connecticut during his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday. Senators on both sides of the aisle expressed his classroom teaching experience and his personal upbringing learning English in
school made him a solid fit for the job.
“We are here today in the midst of one of the most challenging school years in American history,” Cardona said. “It would be my greatest privilege, if confirmed, to forge opportunity out of this crisis.”
Cardona is expected to receive broad support in the Senate for his confirmation. A bipartisan group of 11 governors, including Gov. Ned Lamont, urged the Senate to back him Wednesday. The Senate is expected to vote on his confirmation soon.
During the hearing, senators pressed Cardona on how he would get students everywhere back in the classroom. Biden is pushing for Congress to approve over $150 billion for schools and universities to help achieve this goal.
Sen. Richard Burr, RN.C., asked Cardona if students and teachers must be vaccinated before resuming teaching in person, as some teachers unions have called for. Cardona said he supported regular surveillance testing for COVID-19 and prioritizing educators for vaccinations, but Connecticut and other states have found ways to safely return students to the classroom without immunizations.
“There is no substitute for a classroom experience for our students,” Cardona said. “We have to do everything we can to safely reopen schools.”
In Connecticut, Cardona issued detailed guidance to schools on how to reopen for in-person learning this fall, but did not mandate schools bring students back to the classroom.
“As our state’s commissioner, he lead the effort to reopen Connecticut’s schools earlier than most people thought was possible and he did it in a way that didn’t divide teachers and parents and students,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who introduced him to the committee. “He’s going to make a great secretary of education.”
Cardona, 45, was the first Latino to serve as Connecticut’s education commissioner. Growing up in a Puerto Rican family in Meriden, Conn., Cardona learned English in school and was the first in his family to go to college.
Despite the havoc the pandemic has forced on schools and universities, Cardona said it was his priority to make the U.S. education system a place that can give opportunity to all students, no matter their background, by investing in public education and early childhood education and improving access to college or career training.
“For me, education opened doors,” Cardona said. “That is the power and the promise of America. But it is not a promise kept for every student.”
Generating the most high-tension exchanges of the hearing, several senators asked Cardona whether he would permit transgender students to compete in women’s athletics. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Education issued a decision that a Connecticut policy allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls sports violated the girls’ civil rights.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spent five minutes pushing Cardona on how he would handle the issue, saying it was “bizarre” and wrong to let transgender athletes, whom he called “boys,” compete with women on the playing field because they may be larger or physically different. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said “boys should be competing with boys… on the athletic field.”
Cardona said he believes schools have a legal responsibility to provide access to extracurricular activities to all students, including transgender students, and noted “discrimination based on gender is illegal.”
Senators also questioned Cardona about how he would improve career and technical education, schooling in rural areas, support students with learning disabilities and respond to charter schools.
Cardona is highly respected in education circles, but he doesn’t have much experience in politics, especially at the national level. Democrats celebrate the fact that a teacher will again lead the U.S. Department of Education, after the leadership of President Donald Trump’s secretary, Betsy DeVos, a Republican donor and school choice champion.
Of charter schools, Cardona said he’s seen excellent ones in Connecticut, especially in Stamford, but his primary mission is to improve all neighborhood schools so students don’t feel they need to seek a better alternative.
“My passion really is to ensure quality schools, period,” Cardona said.
Lamont appointed Cardona to be the state’s commissioner of education in August 2019.
Cardona attended and spent over two decades of his education career at Meriden Public Schools, where he taught fourth grade. He rose to become the youngest principal in the state at age 28 and then became assistant superintendent. Senators on both sides of the aisle noted his “meteoric rise” in education circles.
“It’s the stuff of legend, almost mythical except it’s based on real hard work and solid values gained from his parents,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who introduced Cardona.
Cardona was born in public housing to a Puerto Rican parents that spoke only Spanish at home. Murphy described how the Cardona family is wellknown in Meriden for helping build up the city’s Puerto Rican festival and through Cardona’s father’s work as a police officer in the community.
Like many students across the country, he learned English at school. He got his bachelor’s degree from Central Connecticut State University and his masters in bilingual/bicultural education and his doctorate in education from the University of Connecticut.
Cardona was joined at the confirmation hearing by his wife and two high school-aged children.