Let’s get right to the good news. Miguel Cardona, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice as Education Secretary, is a public housing alumnus! He apparently describes his earlier self as a ‘“goofy little Puerto Rican kid” born in a public housing complex in Meriden. It’s always nice to be able to celebrate a “world leader born in public housing” story to offset an American obsession with those inevitable, much cherished “criminal drug-dealing degenerates born in public housing” ones. Read more in Inside Higher Ed: Biden’s Choice for Education Secretary
So, is the Cardona appointment itself also good news? Cardona’s experience as an educator, most recently as Connecticut’s Education Commissioner, restores a public school focus to the national agenda. The outgoing Republican administration has been preoccupied channelling public funding to private schooling, to the detriment of an already creaky public schooling system. Read more in THE CONVERSATION: Through her divisive rhetoric, Education Secretary DeVos leaves a troubled legacy of her own
But is a Connecticut senior educator truly the man for the national job? A depressing article details the de-facto segregation of education in Connecticut thanks to what, superficially at least, appears to be an enabling conspiracy of both action and inaction at the state and local levels of government.
It’s pretty much a truism in free market economies that education is essential to provide an elevator out of poverty. Better education allows individuals and families to achieve higher incomes with which to migrate out of public housing and voucher-supported poor quality private housing.
For all of Cardona’s experience in the betterment of public schooling for middle and upper class Connecticut children, to what degree was he a fellow-traveller in a state with desperately inadequate schooling for children of low and no income residents?
Let us hope that Connecticut’s abysmal record of segregated education has developed in opposition to Cardona’s personal vision and entirely beyond his control as Commissioner of Education. Read more in CT Mirror: Billions in school construction in CT hasn’t made a dent in segregation — but this year, things could be different
