How Will Biden’s Proposed Education Secretary Try To Narrow Gaps? Here Are Some Clues
His paper trail includes some encouraging signs--and some caveats.
Will Biden’s pick for education secretary focus on what’s needed to finally narrow stubborn “achievement gaps”? His paper trail includes some encouraging signs—and some caveats.
President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Miguel Cardona, Connecticut’s education commissioner, as his nominee for secretary of education. Cardona, whose parents were born in Puerto Rico and who started school speaking only Spanish, doesn’t need anyone to tell him that too many students struggle unnecessarily in our current education system. Narrowing gaps between students still learning English and their peers has been a major focus of his career.
But decades of federal efforts to help English-language learners and other disadvantaged students—and improve education outcomes overall—have had little effect. What’s needed is a radically new approach, focusing on what gets taught in classrooms. It’s not clear Cardona is fully committed to that approach, but there are indications he could be convinced.
Cardona’s rise has been fast, which means he hasn’t left much of a record indicating what he might do as secretary. Before becoming Connecticut’s highest education official just over a year ago, he was an assistant superintendent in Meriden, a district of fewer than 8,000 students, where he previously served as an elementary school teacher and principal. But even in relatively low-profile positions, he apparently shined: he became the youngest principal in the state at 28, and was named principal of the year in 2012.
Despite some teachers’ union opposition, Cardona has received high marks for his push to physically reopen the state’s schools during the pandemic. His approach entailed understanding that conditions vary by locality, along with encouraging districts to reopen without mandating it.
But what about his priorities beyond the pandemic, and his views on what’s needed to achieve educational equity? Probably the most revealing document on that score is a report issued in 2014 by a state task force he chaired. Much of the report, ambitiously titled “A Master Plan to Eliminate the Achievement Gap in Connecticut,” consists of platitudes about “effective learning strategies” and “high-quality model curricula” that are “evidence-based.” Without more specifics, it’s hard to know what those phrases mean.
Still, I found a few nuggets in the report that shed light on how Cardona might approach some key obstacles to achieving educational equity. With the caveat that the document was the work of a committee—and that it’s six years old—here they are, along with my thoughts about what might prevent him from getting at the root causes for our lack of progress:
All children should get systematic instruction in how to read words in the early grades. Although the report never mentions the word “phonics,” the task force endorsed a previously issued state “blueprint for early reading success” that urged “explicit, systematic teaching of word-identification skills, including phonics instruction and instruction in phonemic awareness” (which means hearing the individual sounds in words).
That shouldn’t be big news, since there’s long been a scientific consensus in favor of that kind of instruction for all children, not just those diagnosed with reading disabilities. But it remains a controversial issue, largely because many educators still see phonics as unnecessary or soul-deadening, or both. Previous secretaries of education, including Betsy DeVos, have embraced the idea of phonics, but the pushback continues—and many students never learn to decode words well.
One promising aspect of the task force report is its recommendation that “new and current faculty members” at schools of education “have expertise in the science of reading and research-based practices.” The resistance to phonics—and general lack of knowledge of how reading works—on the part of those who train teachers in reading instruction is a huge part of the problem. It won’t be easy to resolve, but if Cardona trains his attention on education schools, it could make a big difference.
The curriculum should be rich and broad rather than narrowly focused on reading and math. The report briefly notes that as schools have come under pressure to raise reading and math scores, subjects like social studies, science, and the arts have been pushed out of the curriculum, especially in elementary grades. Many students do “need more time on task to become proficient in math and [English language arts],” the task force asserted. But they went on to say:
“They also need time to develop the scientific knowledge, the historical awareness, and the creative thinking and problem-solving skills that come from a well-rounded education. Low-income students, in particular, need exposure in school to a rich array of topics, skills, and knowledge, because they are less likely than their more affluent peers to receive this exposure at home or through extracurricular activities pursued outside of school. … By offering students engaging learning opportunities that appeal to their diverse skills, interests, and learning styles, well-rounded schools may combat the high dropout rates that plague low-income communities.”
This is all well and good (aside from the reference to “learning styles,” the widely held assumption that different individuals learn best in particular ways, which is backed by little or no evidence). But it would have been even better to draw an explicit connection between spending more time on social studies, science, and the arts and better reading comprehension. It’s not just that these subjects are engaging for students, or that they promote “problem-solving skills.” They also provide the knowledge and vocabulary that authors of more complex text assume readers possess—and that many don’t. So the kids who appear to need “more time on task” in English language arts may actually need more time on history and science.
It also would be nice to know if Cardona understands that teachers need to start building children’s academic knowledge beginning in the early grades, largely through reading aloud from sets of books that delve deeply into specific topics and then leading discussions about the content. Currently, the standard approach to reading comprehension is to focus on practicing supposed “skills” like “finding the main idea,” skipping from one topic to another.
One of the report’s more troubling recommendations is that students in kindergarten through third grade should get at least two hours of “language arts” every day. If that consists mostly of practicing comprehension skills and strategies, as it does in most schools, millions of children will continue to miss out on the knowledge and vocabulary they’ll need to understand what they’re expected to read in years to come—knowledge and vocabulary their more advantaged peers can pick up at home.
Disadvantaged students need better access to Advanced Placement classes. In theory, this makes sense. In practice, even many motivated students lack the background knowledge and skills that could enable them to do AP-level work—because they got nothing but a steady diet of reading and math until high school (with “reading” consisting mostly of context-free practice in comprehension “skills”). The task force report urges vaguely that all students should be prepared for AP-level work, and that schools should “provide the necessary supports” that will enable them to succeed.
The only two supports likely to work are intensive tutoring, which is difficult to provide at the needed scale, and—more promisingly—explicit writing instruction that is grounded in the content of the curriculum and begins at the sentence level. At one high school serving disadvantaged students, the results in an AP U.S. history class underwent a complete transformation after a writing method based on those principles was adopted. Initially, only two out of 23 students passed the AP exam, with the minimum passing score of three. Three years later only two students out of 28 did not pass the exam. Those who passed all scored a four or a five. The teacher, who taught the class both times, attributed the change to the impact of the writing method.
Of course, Cardona—like any U.S. secretary of education—will have no direct control over what gets taught in American classrooms. But just as previous secretaries have exerted a powerful indirect influence on day-to-day instruction—not always for the better—so could he. Cardona clearly cares deeply about the students our education system has failed, and he’s said to be a good listener. Let’s hope he’ll listen to some of the education leaders around the country who have been pioneering a new approach that provides all children with what they need to succeed.
He could start with two who were mentioned as candidates for his prospective job: Sonja Brookins Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools, and Sharon Contreras, superintendent of schools in Guilford County, NC. I’m sure they would be glad to explain what they’re doing and why.
This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.