WASHINGTON – Outgoing U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, speaking at a Tuesday event in the U.S. Department of Education headquarters, touted actions taken by the Biden administration to reduce student loan debt, manage pandemic aid to schools, and increase academic and mental health supports for students.
He also pleaded for future investments in public education.
"Public education is the great equalizer, the foundation of economic opportunity in our country and the bedrock of our democracy," Cardona told a roomful of about 200 department staffers, policymakers, advocates, students and others. "Is it perfect? No, it's not. That's why we work so hard to make it better."
In a few days, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president, and new political appointees will be named to lead the various Education Department offices. There will likely be funding and policy changes through new or revoked executive orders and in budget requests to a Republican-majority Congress.
Trump and some conservative policymakers have supported expanding private school choice to give families more options for the schools their children attend. The incoming president has also vowed to close the Education Department to put more decision-making in the hands of states and school districts.
Tuesday's event, held to highlight initiatives over the past four years as the Biden administration exits,, had an upbeat feel — featuring speeches from senior department officials, videos of Cardona visiting K-12 schools and colleges, a Q&A with students, and songs performed by students from the Washington Latin Public Charter School in the District of Columbia.
Cardona both expressed hope for the future of public education and bitterness over what he called efforts to create distrust in public education, including "manufactured hysteria over critical race theory, the book bans, the fearmongering over students who just want to be accepted for who they are, and belong in school."
Cardona, a former teacher, principal and state education commissioner, said that when President Joe Biden tapped him to be education secretary in early 2021 in the midst of the pandemic crisis, he approached the job differently than his predecessors by not pushing top-down mandates or promising that the department had all the answers.
"This team would be about substance, not sensationalism in education," Cardona said. "This team would be about results and not rhetoric. It'll be about embracing evidence and fighting for what we know works in our schools."
He added: "It should remind all of us of the significance of President Biden's decision, at a moment of crisis, nonetheless, to have a teacher and not some billionaire donor lead the Department of Education.”
Both of Trump's education secretary picks fall into the category of wealthy donor to Republican candidates: Betsy DeVos, a fund-raiser and school voucher proponent, served in his first term, and he has named Linda McMahon, former president and CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Education Department for his second term.
Cardona urged public school advocates not to be silent over the next four years of the Trump administration.
"Our educators, our students and parents, our communities across the country, the people who support them, they're the ones who will write the next chapter, who will decide the fate of public education," Cardona said. "There's no one education secretary or president that does that, and no one leader can break our resolve.”