Education Secretary Miguel Cardona arrived at the Monitor Breakfast on September 13 with “gifts,” as he called them: a stack of thick, glossy booklets titled “Raise the Bar,” touting his department’s goals. He had just come from a back-to-school bus tour of the American heartland and was feeling, he says, “more optimistic than usual.”
Dr. Cardona shared how satisfying it was to put a face to policy, “whether that’s early childhood programming in Illinois or after-school programming in Minnesota. It is good to see that students are involved.”
Still, he hastened to add that these are challenging times for education, whether it is the continued efforts of primary and secondary education to recover from the pandemic ‘learning loss’, the teacher shortage, or the ministry’s new plan of Education for student debt relief after the Supreme Court ruled. the previous program was cancelled. In June, the Supreme Court also ended affirmative action — race-conscious admissions — at colleges and universities, an issue that Dr. Cardona is clearly close to her heart. He was born in Meriden, Connecticut, to Puerto Rican parents, and English is his second language. He was the first in his family to go to college.
“Higher education has changed the trajectory of my life and the lives of my children,” said Dr. Cardona, the father of a college sophomore and a high school student.
Now the secretary is going after “legacy admissions” – the practice of giving preference to students with alumni or donor connections. that the Monitor has dealt with. In July, his department launched a civil rights investigation in Harvard University Admissions Practices.
Dr. Cardona insists he has no prejudice against elite universities – their presidents “understand what we’re trying to do” – despite his decidedly non-alitarian background. After attending a technical high school, he spent four years repairing cars and then enrolled at Central Connecticut State University.
“I knew I couldn’t fail because my parents sacrificed too much for the opportunity to go to college,” says Dr. Cardona.
Today, he talks about visiting schools that “help homeless kids, students living in cars, get their degrees. I want to take that to the next level.”
I’m glad the Monitor’s two education reporters — Jackie Valley, who lives in Nevada, and Ira Porter, who lives in Delaware — were able to come to Washington for breakfast. Jackie’s reporting can be found here: Education Secretary: America’s higher education system is ‘broken’. And the audio of the session can be found here.