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برچسب: Promote

  • ‘Fixing the core’: U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona vows to promote equity

    ‘Fixing the core’: U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona vows to promote equity


    U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, left, speaks to members of the Education Writers Association at annual conference.

    Credit: Mallika Seshadri / EdSource

    Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona answered questions about this year’s rocky rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid Application (FAFSA), civil rights violations and Covid recovery, among other topics, on Thursday, at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. 

    Erica L. Green, a White House correspondent for The New York Times moderated the discussion — which was followed by a Q&A from the audience. 

    “I have the opportunity to see as a father, what my daughter and my son are experiencing as students, and it fills me with joy to see the promise, the opportunities that are available,” he told the audience in his opening remarks. “And that’s what we’re fighting for in this Biden/Harris administration.”

    Here are the highlights from his discussion on current issues in education, which have been edited for length and clarity: 

    Does the department understand the “gravity” of this year’s rocky FAFSA rollout?

    As frustrating as it was to be a secretary of education, to see the delays and the setbacks that we were having, I know it was much more frustrating for families, for students, for school leaders. But we’re also aware that this system, right now, is going to get better, and it’s going to continue to get better every year. You know, we’re at 10.4 million submissions. We’re 11% lower than we were last year, which is something that we’re working directly to address. Then applications are being processed. We’re working with colleges very closely. We’re working with superintendents, parents, community partners — (this) is all hands on deck.

    Did student loan debt take precedence over the FAFSA rollout? 

    As a first [generation] college student, the system wasn’t working for too many Americans in this country. … I would be more frustrated with myself if I looked back and I didn’t do anything about it (the FAFSA rollout).

    We’ve been devoting resources to FAFSA since we got in. We recognized early on that it needed to be delayed, and we continue to find ways to move it along. But no, the idea of we took resources away from (the effort to reduce student debt) to do that (revamping FAFSA) is false. 

    We have a very aggressive agenda to fix a broken system. We fix Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Seven thousand people got it in four years over the last administration. Ninety percent of people were denied. Now we have over $50 billion just in debt relief for teachers, nurses, service members, people that are serving our community. So, there is a lot of work that we are doing to fix a broken system. Improving FAFSAs is part of that. 

    Is the Office of Civil Rights ready to tackle a constantly growing load? 

    There’s an influx of practices that promote exclusion, that target students who, many times, are already vulnerable. We’re seeing, in many states, laws being passed that really, in my opinion, divide and make students feel less welcome in schools.

    We are prepared. We are pushing for additional funding for investigators when these cases come forward. But we’re also being proactive through our officer-based partnerships. We’re not waiting for incidents to happen to then address it. We’re working very closely on creating materials (and) guidance resources. We work very closely with university leaders, K-12 leaders on what they could do. We redesigned our website to make sure that the resources that we have in D.C. are two clicks away….

    We are working proactively but also being very intentional about communicating with both Democrats and Republicans that we have 60 less investigators now than we did in 2009. We have about three times as many requests for investigations. We need to make sure that we’re not just talking about supporting our students, but making sure we’re funding it. 

    Will cases be resolved by the end of this year? 

    Some cases take over a year because what the investigation request comes in as, often changes once we get people on the ground investigating. …  I don’t want to speak to timelines and investigation in a hypothetical sense. 

    I will tell you they’re priority for OCR (the Office for Civil Rights). And what we’re doing is communicating the resolutions that we come up with. You know, the goals of these investigations are not just to say you were wrong, but to say this student was harmed, and you have to provide restitution. How are you going to do that so that this doesn’t happen again? We want to lift those up and make cases out of those in a way that other universities can learn from it.

    How should districts navigate attacks to pipeline programs for specific demographics? 

    Let me start off by sharing an experience that I had: I was speaking at a commencement, and the word “equity” was scrubbed out of my bio. Let that sink in for a second. 

    The level of scrutiny that our leaders are under is ridiculous. In my conversations, whether it’s a college leader or a district leader, they’re telling me we have to navigate this. This is political interference. … We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure students feel welcome, are seen for who they are, respected, and let the political stuff stop at the doorstep. 

    Is the department prepared for potential attacks to key civil rights cases?  

    Nothing really surprises us. … We’ve seen book bans just take over. Forty-seven percent of the books that were banned were books on LGBTQI or BIPOC-themed. … What was once done in the shade is now being done in the sunlight. It doesn’t surprise me. We are prepared. I trust our educators to know how to make students feel welcome and supported and how to create a community in our schools. 

    Has the administration had an opportunity to be aggressive to get schools on track post-Covid? 

    We released the Raise the Bar strategy early on. We’ve been focusing on comprehensive schooling. … We were up to $200 million in full-service community schools, which helped address chronic absenteeism, parent engagement. … We’re focusing on career pathways. We have more states now that have career pathways. We have teacher apprenticeships in 30 states. We had zero when I came in. 

    In terms of mental health, we have 40% more school social workers, counselors, 25-30% more nurses. … What we’re doing is focusing on the core of what works. We know good teaching and learning works. We are really raising the bar on the teaching profession. … We’re defending public education, focusing on good Title I programming, making sure our students have access to multilingualism in this country. I’m talking about embracing multilingualism as a superpower. 

    What do you want to be remembered for?

    We’re focusing on fixing the core of education — literacy, numeracy, giving students access to higher levels of that, addressing inequities in our schools by addressing mental health issues, by making sure we have a professional workforce that is respected and is going to want to come back. 

    We’re losing teachers. We have a lot of schools in our country that have 20-30% of the teachers are substitute teachers. So we’re doing that, and we’re improving affordability and access to higher education. To me, there’s no silver bullet. … It’s about really being student-centered and making sure we’re focusing on the things that actually move the needle in the classroom, while also addressing inequities by being bold.

    Are Jewish students’ civil rights violated under Article 6 of the Civil Rights Act when that Jewish student is told that Israel should not exist?

    If a student feels that they are being attacked for who they are — their faith or who they are, where they come from — and they feel that they’re being violated, or they feel harassed, it is the responsibility of the college to act. And if the investigation comes forward, it’ll be reviewed by the Office for Civil Rights.

    Is anti-Zionism a civil rights Article Six violation? 

    We do take into consideration anti-Zionism in the investigations that we’ve made, as the executive board in the last administration requires us to do. 

    What are your thoughts on diversity, equity and inclusion bans? 

    Those programs are intended to make sure that (students) feel welcome on those campuses. That’s the bottom line. And there’s a myth out there that they promote only some and not others. Well then, fix it. I believe a lot of the issues that we’ve had in this country — in the last two months on campuses — could have been corrected with strong programs that support diversity, equity and inclusion, because they teach students, and they embrace a culture where you can disagree but still be a part of a community, which is what we didn’t see on some campuses. 

    So for me, as a Latino, it really concerns me because I remember my experience when I was the first one in my family going to a college, and I didn’t know anyone there. It’s programs like that that helped students like me, 30 years ago, feel welcome, seen and unapologetic for who they are. 

    What is the department’s plan to fund districts to reduce absenteeism? Is the department willing to call for grant proposals to address the challenge? 

    A big part of the focus of those full-service community schools is focusing on attendance. The funding for that since the president took office … is five times more. In our budget, we have a proposal for $8 billion. A big chunk of that would be for addressing chronic absenteeism. And there’s already $250 million in grants. 

    Do you release any form of guidance on book bans? 

    The biggest difference from my current position to every other position I’ve had since I was a fourth grade teacher is that I don’t influence, promote, dictate curriculum. Those decisions are state level decisions. … 

    For me, as a teacher, CRT (critical race theory) is culturally relevant teaching. … When we teach in a way that’s culturally appropriate with materials that reflect the beautiful diversity of our country, students engage better. We talk about chronic absenteeism, right, making students feel welcome and seen. We have the opposite happening. …

    We are engaging through our Office of Civil Rights to provide support for those districts and how to handle situations like that and inform districts of what the rights are. We actually sent folks from the Office of Civil Rights … to states when requested to help them understand how to navigate political terrain, while doing what’s right for kids.  

    Where does special education fall in your top 10? 

    It’s very high, I would say; you know, definitely one of the priorities, but we address it by saying we need to fund our public schools. When I talk about defending public education, I recognize there are students with disabilities that need to make sure that public education dollars don’t dry up. 

    You know, when I was a school principal, we had ratios of like 25 to 30 students with special needs with one teacher. Those ratios just get higher. School counselor-to-student ratios are like 600 to 1 in a lot of parts of our country. When I talk about making sure we’re funding public education, it’s the students with disabilities that also are said to lose a lot if you don’t do that. … 

    I’m not into shiny things, I’m into what works in the classroom: funding Title I, funding our classrooms. Giving our schools the resources that they need will go to those special education students as well. …

    Special education students or regular education students first. We can’t put them in a corner, put them in a box and say “these are your resources over here.” Every teacher should be qualified to serve students with disabilities. 

    Have schools spent enough Covid relief money on the priorities you outlined?

    I do believe that districts focus on academic recovery, mental health support and making sure that facilities are safe for students to return. … 

    As these … dollars sunset, we’re passing the baton back for state and local leaders who recognize that when used well, we get students back to school, we close achievement gaps, we provide the mental health support that our students need. So, let’s not take our foot off the gas pedal. And, we have a blueprint of those priority areas that work, and we see data from our districts that show, when used well, it does work. We just can’t stop now. 





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  • What Can the Federal Government Do to Promote Learning?

    What Can the Federal Government Do to Promote Learning?


    On May 10, Dana Goldstein wrote a long article in The New York Times about how education disappeared as a national or federal issue. Why, she wondered, did the two major parties ignore education in the 2024 campaign? Kamala Harris supported public schools and welcomed the support of the two big teachers’ unions, but she did not offer a flashy new program to raise test scores. Trump campaigned on a promise to privatize public funding, promote vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, home schooling–anything but public schools, which he regularly attacked as dens of iniquity, indoctrination, and DEI.

    Goldstein is the best education writer at The Times, and her reflections are worth considering.

    She started:

    What happened to learning as a national priority?

    For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy.

    At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle.

    President Trump has been fixated in his second term on imposing ideological obedience on schools.

    On the campaign trail, he vowed to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”Since taking office, he has pursued this goal with startling energy — assaulting higher education while adopting a strategy of neglect toward the federal government’s traditional role in primary and secondary schools. He has canceled federal exams that measure student progress, and ended efforts to share knowledge with schools about which teaching strategies lead to the best results. A spokeswoman for the administration said that low test scores justify cuts in federal spending. “What we are doing right now with education is clearly not working,” she said.

    Mr. Trump has begun a bevy of investigations into how schools handle race and transgender issues, and has demanded that the curriculum be “patriotic” — a priority he does not have the power to enact, since curriculum is set by states and school districts.

    Actually, federal law explicitly forbids any federal official from attempting to influence the curriculum or textbooks in schools.

    Education lawyer Dan Gordon wrote about the multiple laws that prevent any federal official from trying to dictate, supervise, control or interfere with curriculum. There is no sterner prohibition in federal law than the one that keeps federal officials from trying to dictate what schools teach.

    Of course, Trump never worries about the limits imposed by laws. He does what he wants and leaves the courts to decide whether he went too far.

    Goldstein continued:

    Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one. Governors and congressional leaders are defending the Department of Education as Mr. Trump has threatened to abolish it. Liberal groups are suing to block funding cuts. When Kamala Harris was running for president last year, she spoke about student loan forgiveness and resisting right-wing book bans. But none of that amounts to an agenda on learning, either.

    All of this is true despite the fact that reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades, after a pandemic that devastated children by shuttering their schools and sending them deeper and deeper into the realm of screens and social media. And it is no wonder Americans are increasingly cynical about higher education. Forty percent of students who start college do not graduate, often leaving with debt and few concrete skills.

    “Right now, there are no education goals for the country,” said Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of education after running Chicago’s public school system. “There are no metrics to measure goals, there are no strategies to achieve those goals and there is no public transparency.”

    I have been writing about federal education policy for almost fifty years. There are things we have learned since Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. That law was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s agenda. Its purpose was to send federal funds to the schools enrolling the poorest students. Its purpose was not to raise test scores but to provide greater equity of resources.

    Over time, the federal government took on an assertive role in defending the rights of students to an education: students with disabilities; students who did not speak English; and students attending illegally segregated schools.

    In 1983, a commission appointed by President Reagan’s Secretary of Education Terrell Bell declared that American schools were in crisis because of low academic standards. Many states began implementing state tests and raising standards for promotion and graduation.

    President George H.W. Bush convened a meeting of the nation’s governors, and they endorsed an ambitious set of “national goals” for the year 2000. E.g., the U.S. will be first in the world by the year 2000; all children will start school ready to learn by 2000. None of the goals–other than the rise of the high school graduation rate to 90%–was met.

    The Clinton administration endorsed the national goals and passed legislation (“Goals 2000”) to encourages states to create their own standards and tests. President Clinton made clear, however, that he hoped for national standards and tests.

    President George W. Bush came to office with a far-reaching, unprecedented plan called “No Child Left Behind” to reform education by a heavy emphasis on annual testing of reading and math. He claimed that because of his test-based policy, there had been a “Texas Miracle,” which could be replicated on a national scale. NCLB set unreachable goals, saying that every school would have 100% of their students reach proficiency by the year 2014. And if they were not on track to meet that impossible goals, the schools would face increasingly harsh punishments.

    In no nation in the world have 100% of all students ever reached proficiency.

    Scores rose, as did test-prep. Many untested subjects lost time in the curriculum or disappeared. Reading and math were tested every year from grades 3-8, as the law prescribed. What didn’t matter were science, history, civics, the arts, even recess.

    Some schools were sanctioned or even closed for falling behind. Schools were dominated by the all-important reading and math tests. Some districts cheated. Some superintendents were jailed.

    In 2001, there were scholars who warned that the “Texas Miracle” was a hoax. Congress didn’t listen. In time the nation learned that there was no Texas Miracle, never had been. But Congress clung to NCLB because they had no other ideas.

    When Obama took office in 2009, educators hoped for relief from the annual testing mandates but they were soon disappointed. Obama chose Arne Duncan, who had led the Chicago schools but had never been a teacher. Duncan worked with consultants from the Gates and Broad Foundations and created a national competition for the states called Race to the Top. Duncan had a pot of $5 billion that Congress had given him for education reform.

    Race to the Top offered big rewards to states that applied and won. To be eligible, states had to authorize the creation of charter schools (almost every state did); they had to agree to adopt common national standards (that meant the Common Core standards, funded wholly by the Gates Foundation and not yet completed); sign up for one of two federally funded standardized tests (PARCC or Smarter Balanced) ; and agree to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students. Eighteen states won huge rewards. There were other conditions but these were the most consequential.

    Tennessee won $500 million. It is hard to see what, if anything, is better in Tennessee because of that audacious prize. The state put $100 million into an “Achievement School District,” which gathered the state’s lowest performing schools into a new district and turned them into charters. Chris Barbic, leader of the YES Prep charter chain in Houston was hired to run it. He pledged that within five years, the lowest-performing schools in the state would rank among the top 20% in the state. None of them did. The ASD was ultimately closed down.

    Duncan had a great fondness for charter schools because they were the latest thing in Chicago; while superintendent, he had launched a program he called Renaissance 2010, in which he pledged to close 80 public schools and open 100 charter schools. Duncan viewed charters as miraculous. Ultimately Chicago’s charter sector produced numerous scandals but no miracles.

    I have written a lot about Race to the Top over the years. It was layered on top of Bush’s NCLB, but it was even more punitive. It targeted teachers and blamed them if students got low scores. Its requirement that states evaluate teachers by student test scores was a dismal failure. The American Statistical Association warned against it from the outset, pointing out that students’ home life affected test scores more than their teachers.

    Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 failed. It destroyed communities. Its strategy of closing neighborhood schools and dispersing students encountered growing resistance. The first schools that Duncan launched as his exemplars were eventually closed. In 2021, the Chicago Board of Education voted unanimously to end its largest “school turnaround” program, managed by a private group, and return its 31 campuses to district control. Duncan’s fervent belief in “turnaround” schools was derided as a historical relic.

    Race to the Top failed. The proliferation of charter schools, aided by a hefty federal subsidy, drained students and resources from public schools. Charter schools close their doors at a rapid pace: 26% are gone in their first five years; 39% in their first ten years. In addition, due to lax accountability, charters have demonstrated egregious examples of waste, fraud, and abuse.

    The Common Core was supposed to lift test scores and reduce achievement gaps, but it did neither. Conservative commentator Mike Petrilli referred to 2007-2017 as “the lost decade.” Scores stagnated and achievement gaps barely budged.

    So what have we learned?

    This is what I have learned: politicians are not good at telling educators how to teach. The Department of Education (which barely exists as of now) is not made up of educators. It was not in a position to lead school reform. Nor is the Secretary of Education. Nor is the President. Would you want the State legislature or Congress telling surgeons how to do their job?

    The most important thing that the national government can do is to ensure that schools have the funding they need to pay their staff, reduce class sizes, and update their facilities.

    The federal government should have a robust program of data collection, so we have accurate information about students, teachers, and schools.

    The federal government should not replicate its past failures.

    What Congress can do very effectively is to ensure that the nation’s schools have the resources they need; that children have access to nutrition and medical care; and that pregnant women get prenatal care so that their babies are born healthy.



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