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Biden selects Miguel Cardona, educator of Puerto Rican origin, as Secretary of Education

2020-12-23T01:19:38.888Z


Carmona is currently a school commissioner for Connecticut, where he was born. If confirmed in office by the Senate, he will need to determine what happens in schools for the rest of the pandemic and implement important promises from the president-elect for public education.


Miguel Cardona, who for decades was a Connecticut elementary teacher and principal of schools, is emerging as the next Secretary of Education.

President-elect Joe Biden, who will take office on January 20, announced Cardona's appointment on Tuesday.

Cardona's parents are

Puerto Rican

and for years they depended on public housing programs.

Initially, he only spoke Spanish, so he says he had problems when he started going to school.

Cardona has said that is why he focused on bicultural and bilingual teaching when he was a teacher.

"I think public education is the biggest equalizer. It certainly was for me," Cardona told Connecticut lawmakers in February last year.

The 

appointment of Cardona is also the latest in a Latino to the cabinet Biden,

joining the likes of

Alejandro Mayorkas, Cuban-American appointed as secretary of Homeland Security, and Julie Rodriguez Chavez, the future director of the Office of

Intergovernmental Affairs.

A new COVID-19 detection test would be the salvation of schools in the country

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Cardona's background

contrasts with that of Betsy DeVos,

the current Secretary of Education to outgoing President Donald Trump, who studied only in private schools, is the

daughter of millionaires and had no teaching experience

before being appointed to that position.

[How safe is it for elementary schools to have face-to-face classes?]

If confirmed in office by Congress, Cardona will have the task of determining

how the situation of schools is developing in the midst of the pandemic

, whether to reopen them or not, as well as to implement various plans and proposals of Biden for education.

Among those plans is 

the promise to give more funding to the nation's public schools

and the proposal that tuition for

public

colleges

and universities be free for those who live in a household with an annual income of less than $ 150,000.

[The suspension of payments of federal student loans is extended until the end of January]

"If states and cities establish strong public health measures that are followed, then my team will work to ensure that most of our schools can be open by the time my first 100 days in office are over," Biden said in early December. .

Academic record

Cardona is currently Commissioner of Education in the state of Connecticut, a position to which he was appointed in 2019. There he

made the decision that certain schools could reopen for face-to-face classes,

as determined by the districts based on infection data.

In July, when he announced that decision, Cardona said he was especially

concerned about the impact that distance learning has had on certain communities

, either due to lack of internet access or because certain students do not receive the necessary attention.

Online education: the new challenge for students during the pandemic

Aug. 28, 202002: 03

During his tenure as school commissioner, emergency funds were distributed to install Plexiglas in classrooms and to

distribute computers to students who did not have access to them.

A third of Connecticut students were allowed to take face-to-face classes until mid-December by decision of their school districts, according to the Connecticut Mirror.

Cardona has a long history of educational experience especially in public schools.

Beginning in 1998, he was a 4th grade teacher in his home district Meriden, Connecticut, until in 2003, at age 28, he became the

principal of the state's youngest school.

[School closures due to pandemic delay poor and minority children in math and reading]

In 2012 he was named Principal of the Year by the

Connecticut Association of Schools

, which

highlighted several programs that Cardona created as drivers of more equitable education.

For example, a literacy initiative called the

Million Word Club,

or the

Million Word Club,

which rewards students who get to read that many words and the

Success Time

program

, or Time for Success, which established periods of average time for teachers to give individual attention to certain students to help them improve their reading.

Cardona has a

master's degree in bicultural and bilingual teaching

and a doctorate in education, both from the University of Connecticut.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2020-12-23

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