Teachers had hope when President Biden chose Miguel Cardona to be education secretary, an educator, that he’d be different from the billionaire corporate shill, protector from grizzly bears, and school choice proponent Betsy DeVos. There’s still hope for that, but there are also reasons to wonder.
Cardona’s reactions to the Covid crisis seem eerily like DeVos’s playbook. He’s more diplomatic, and he doesn’t directly attack teachers, but during Covid, he wants all schools open and glosses over teachers’ fears and concerns about their students.
Parents are upset with Cardona for a controversial letter solicited from the National School Board Association comparing protesting parents to domestic terrorists. He has since apologized and seems to be in step with those Republicans who want to keep schools open during the Omicron surge.
For teachers, Cardona’s tweets during Covid have been discouraging. Some call them gaslighting.
As teachers struggle to teach and keep students out of pediatric wards, Cardona recently tweeted:
Having a lazy Sunday? Use this time to make your vaccination or booster appointment. https://t.co/CeHVnDvTGo
— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) January 9, 2022
In general, the Biden administration wants no excuses when it comes to opening schools, but schools don’t always have access to the necessary mitigations. Many teachers have already been vaccinated and boosted.
Cardona seems to visit those who agree with him, recently talking to teachers in Indiana while Chicago teachers struggled to negotiate with their mayor over their concerns about in-person school.
Especially troubling, while there, he sat down with entrepreneurs (edupreneurs) Hope and Wade King, celebrity teachers and co-founders of Get Your Teach On.
The occasion was sponsored by The Extra Yard for Teachers, a nonprofit connected to football claiming to empower teachers with makeovers, like adding technology or this public school library.
The Wades emphasize reimagining education if one can call it that, including much talk about rigor and how to align subjects to Common Core. They sell conferences and videos, including social-emotional learning templates, for $125 a pop. Both taught in public schools and moved to the Ron Clark Academy (RCA), a nonprofit private middle school with glitz and glamour.
Today, in Indiana I sat down with @heyhopeking & @heywadeking at the Extra Yard for Teachers Summit to speak about @usedgov’s commitment to supporting educators across the country & investing in their futures and the futures of their students. pic.twitter.com/kiLSuKo6qu
— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) January 9, 2022
Ron Clark, the Oprah celebrated teacher and motivational speaker (not sure whether he has an education degree), sold his Essential 55 book telling middle schoolers how to behave. He marketed his strict positivity, became a celebrity, got a movie about himself, and started his school in Atlanta. He now also sells online courses.
Why is Cardona meeting with those connected to Get Your Teach On and RCA? What’s the message to America and public school teachers during this challenging time when schools see the exiting of teachers and staff?
In 2010, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the Ron Clark Academy’s success came at a price few public schools could achieve, spending $18,000 per student compared to the $8,900 per pupil of a public school. Delta, Coca-Cola, Oprah, and the Great American Insurance Group are big donors with additional sponsors.
Public schools know few such donors, at least not the kind who let teachers teach the way they know best, and none have shown kind hearts to teachers struggling with students while facing Covid. Any philanthropy connected to public schools is venture philanthropy, where those doing the giving get something back.
Teachers can only dream of getting such treatment, as they run to Walmart to buy basic school supplies with their meager salaries, or beg on Donor’s Choose for cleaning supplies.
While the Secretary of Education boosted advertising for the Wades, Chicago teachers were shut out of remote learning and rarely given a voice on the news.
Cardona’s Get Your Teach On visitation takes us back to DeVos’s divisive Catholic and private school visits during Covid, her ignoring of teacher pleas, as she made claims that all was well, and her belief in school choice.
We’d hoped Cardona, chosen by a President married to a teacher with a doctorate, would break the longtime cycle of education secretaries, those with no teaching experience, and that there’d be true understanding and compassion for public school teachers, the critical job they do, and problems they face.
One might have welcomed Cardons’s positivity for a while. Vaccines became available. Schools were slowly getting back to business, not perfect, but manageable. But Omicron changed that, and concern and overwhelming responsibility returned.
Cardona, like President Biden, inherited a challenging situation; there’s no doubt about that, but they seem oblivious to the damage Covid has left public schools in its wake.
Some worry it will end public education altogether.
Teachers don’t have much hope right now. It often feels like Covid is being used to end their teaching careers.
Maybe Cardona will surprise America and turn around and be more realistically involved with the real problems teachers face while he continues to reach out to parents.
Cardona’s December 21 letter about labor shortages includes good ideas, but he should talk about this more and see how it can be implemented.
I hope Cardona is a teacher leader and not a corporate shill for school privatization. I hope that’s the case and that he definitely isn’t related to DeVos.
You always raise such important issues! How frustrating to be a teacher during these times.
So agree. Tough for parents and teachers. Thank you, Adele.
Recently spoke to a teacher in a nearby district about the conditions in her district. They are back in person with less than perfect mitigation protocols in place. Cardona is (willfully?) blind to the reality on the ground for many if not most PUBLIC school districts.
That’s what I hear as well. Many teachers and subs are out sick. It is especially tough on those in classes with poor ventilation. Some teachers are leaving their windows open in the cold!
Don’t hold your breath about Cardona. He was a part of the great charter school expansion in CT. We were happy to see him go, but knew he wasn’t going to help us on the National level.
Really? I had no idea. Thanks for the information.
The Center for American Progress is one substantial locus of the problem. CAP advocates for charters. WaPo and the NYT informs readers that CAP speaks for the Dem. party.
Peter Edelman and John Podesta are on the Board of CAP’s Action Fund. (I’ve seen a video of Podesta with Hoover’s Chester Finn asking donors to support school-privatizing candidates.) Jonah Edelman is co-founder of Stand for Children. Josh Edelman worked for the Gates Foundation’s education campaign before transitioning to Biden’s admin. In June, Marian Wright Edelman posted letter at the site of the organization she founded, Children’s Defense Fund. It praised Stand for Children.
In states like Indiana, the state conferences of conservative religion take credit for school choice legislation.
To some, privatization appeals because it creates an opportunity to take Main Street’s assets. To those in conservative religions it’s an opportunity to create a Christian nationalist state. And, to the rich, privatization is a way to avoid taxes. And, to racists, it enables segregation.
CAP board member, Tom Daschle, has a lobbying firm, Daschle Group. It was on a lobbying list for Strive aka K-12 Inc. Daschle also founded BiPartisan Policy Center.. Legislation that benefits the rich needs bi-partisan support. Last summer, Daschle and his son contributed to the campaign of K Street’s darling, Sen. Sinema.
Thank you for sharing this. It’s appreciated. Stand for Children has helped the charter school movement. Now there are so many nonprofits I’ve lost count. But Republicans and Democrats are both for school privatization in their own ways.
As far as support for Sinema, however, maybe they didn’t know how different she would be when it came time to vote. Just guessing.
Like most educators, I had high hopes for Cardona, too. When will we ever learn? Just another highly polished, corporately sponsored mouthpiece for those with the power. A spinmeister for sure, as teachers like my daughter scramble to find yet another rapid test after her 5th “close contact” in the past month.
Oh no. I’m so sorry, Karen. I know how worried you must be. Let’s hope Omicron is on its way out!