Free Daily Headlines :

  • COVID-19
  • Vaccine Info
  • Money
  • Politics
  • Education
  • Health
  • Justice
  • More
    • Environment
    • Economic Development
    • Gaming
    • Investigations
    • Social Services
    • TRANSPORTATION
  • Opinion
    • CT Viewpoints
    • CT Artpoints
DONATE
Reflecting Connecticut’s Reality.
    COVID-19
    Vaccine Info
    Money
    Politics
    Education
    Health
    Justice
    More
    Environment
    Economic Development
    Gaming
    Investigations
    Social Services
    TRANSPORTATION
    Opinion
    CT Viewpoints
    CT Artpoints

LET�S GET SOCIAL

Show your love for great stories and out standing journalism
CT VIEWPOINTS -- opinions from around Connecticut

Miguel Cardona, who are you?

  • CT Viewpoints
  • by Ann Policelli Cronin
  • January 22, 2021
  • View as "Clean Read" "Exit Clean Read"

Miguel Cardona introduces himself to the country after being nominated to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education: 'I, being bilingual and bicultural am as American as apple pie and rice and beans. For me, education was the great equalizer, but for too many students, your zip code and your skin color remained the best predictor of the opportunities you’ll have in your lifetime.'

President Joe Biden has nominated Miguel Cardona, the current Connecticut Commissioner of Education, to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education. Anyone he nominated would be better than Trump’s Secretary of Education. But who is Miguel Cardona and what is the vision that he brings to the U.S. Department of Education and to the teaching and learning in all of the schools in this nation?

APC

Ann Policelli Cronin

When I ask Connecticut teachers about Miguel Cardona, those who know him or have worked with him say that he is really nice guy who knows what the challenges in our classrooms are, knows how to help teachers to improve their teaching, and respects public schools. All good.

The majority of Connecticut teachers who don’t know him personally say that he has been largely quiet as commissioner and are critical that he seems more interested in keeping schools open than in caring about public health, including the welfare of teachers, students and students’ families during the pandemic.

But what is his vision for teaching and learning that he will bring to the U.S. Department of Education? When appointed Commissioner of Education in Connecticut 19 months ago, he stated that his goals would be to:

  1. Make a positive impact on graduation rates.
  2. Close the achievement gap.
  3. Ensure that all students have increased access to opportunities and advantages that they need to succeed in life.

It is reasonable to assume that the goals he had for Connecticut 19 months ago will be goals that he will now bring to the country. Those goals, however, are “old hat” and don’t have a record of being successfully accomplished.

The goals themselves are worthy ones, but they need a new interpretation which would give rise to a dramatically new vision and radical new actions. The questions are: What would that new vision and new actions look like? And is Commissioner Cardona open to that vision and those actions?

New vision for increasing graduation rate

The first step in reinterpreting those goals would be to change the term “graduation rate” to something like the graduating of well-educated high school students. Currently, graduation rates make good headlines but can mean very little in terms of student learning.

Increasing the number of students graduating is now often accomplished through something called “credit retrieval.”  “Credit retrieval” allows students to make use of often dubious computer programs that, in no way, equal courses in academic subjects, yet the students get credit for the academic courses. In doing so, students increase the graduation rate for their schools but do not have adequate learning experiences.

Charter schools have another way to increase their graduation rates. They “counsel out” students who are likely to not graduate before the students get to be seniors which leaves only a pre-selected group as seniors and, unsurprisingly, they all graduate. And, lo and behold, the charter school has a high graduation rate. For example, one year at Achievement First’s Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut, 25 students out of 25 students in the senior class graduated, but 64 students had been in that class as ninth graders.

With a new vision, a way to count the students who receive a high school education is to not count the number of students who receive diplomas but rather count how many of the students who begin as ninth graders complete the coursework necessary for graduation. For example, some innovative public high schools hold Saturday classes with actual teachers instead of plugging kids into computer programs. The applause should be given to high schools who deliver a quality education to all the students who begin their high school education in the school not to the schools who either give credits without the academic content and skills or who dismiss those who won’t make for a good statistic.

With a new vision, the statistic to calculate is to follow up on the students six years after their high school graduation to see how many hold jobs and/or have graduated from college. Then we can know how successful their high school education was and how meaningful it was that they graduated from their high school. Increasing graduation rates, as it has been addressed in the past, gets us nowhere.

New vision for closing the achievement gap

Closing the achievement gap is a hackneyed expression that needs a new vision. That vision begins with redefining “achievement” and redefining “gap.”  Achievement, since the publication on A Nation at Risk, has meant the attainment of good standardized test scores.

Standardized test scores are always correlated with the income of the parents of the students taking the test. The test scores tell us nothing about the quality of the teaching and learning in the school. We can raise test scores most efficiently by getting wealthier kids into the school.

The other way to raise those scores is to teach to the test. All commercial test prep courses and online free test prep courses claim that taking those prep courses will improve test scores. And they do. They do because standardized tests measure only one skill: the ability to take a standardized test. But that is not achievement.

A new vision for learning in the 21st century can mean that students are engaged learners who are able to think critically, problem solve, collaborate with others, demonstrate initiative, speak and write effectively, access and analyze information, explore their own questions, and use their imagination as described in The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner of Harvard University. No standardized test has ever, or can ever, measure those skills.

The goal of “closing the achievement gap”, based on standardized test scores, will serve only to highlight the disparity between the affluent and the poor. Even more importantly, the goal of “closing the achievement gap”, as measured by standardized test scores, guarantees that the students who most need a quality education will be relegated to test prep in a school’s efforts to raise its standardized test scores and will continue to suffer from their lack of real teaching and real learning long after they leave our schools.

As for the “gap,” the gap that we should be addressing is not the gap between the standardized test scores of the kids in affluent towns with the standardized test scores of the kids in struggling cities, but the gap between what all kids can do before we teach them with what they can do after we teach them. We should be working our brains full-time exploring how to help each student to reach further, to know more, to try harder, and to accomplish what that student never thought possible.

That’s the gap our schools should be closing: the gap between students’ current assumptions about their possibilities as thinkers and learners and their eventual accomplishments. That is a goal with a vision that is worthy of our energy and investment. That goal can be measured by high quality, teacher-created, and externally-validated performance tasks and can never be assessed by standardized tests.

A new vision for creating equity

And what are those “opportunities and advantages that children need to succeed in life?”

We know exactly what they are because they are the opportunities and advantages of many of the students in our affluent, largely white schools. They are the opportunities and advantages denied to other students due to poverty and racism. The new Secretary of Education could take on these underlying problems of poverty and racism that affect children for every minute they are in school and which any school cannot prevail against without appropriate funding, personnel, academic resources, and social services. Looking at the big picture of poverty and racism with its complex causes beyond the classrooms will take vision and strong political action. It will switch the narrative from one of “failing public schools” to one of how can we adults and taxpayers not fail our public schools.

Miguel Cardona?

So where is Miguel Cardona with this proposal to rethink his goals and implement the vision and actions suggested here?

I don’t know. What I do know is that I will send this post to my Senators and hope that they ask him during his confirmation hearing.  I suggest you do the same with your senators.

We, as a nation, so desperately need a new interpretation of old goals and a new vision and a new plan of action for our schools. Only then can our schools be all that they are meant to be. Only then can our children be all that we know they can be.

Ann Policelli Cronin is a consultant in English education for school districts and university schools of education. She was Connecticut Outstanding English Teacher of the Year 

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines and submit your commentary here.

Sign up for CT Mirror's free daily news summary.

Free to Read. Not Free to Produce.

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit newsroom. 90% of our revenue comes from people like you. If you value our reporting please consider making a donation. You'll enjoy reading CT Mirror even more knowing you helped make it happen.

YES, I'LL DONATE TODAY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SEE WHAT READERS SAID

RELATED STORIES
The marijuana legalization debate must be based on facts
by Will Jones III

In response to my earlier piece on why Connecticut lawmakers should reject marijuana commercialization,  Brendan Ruberry wrote a rebuttal that, on its face seems scathing, but to be clear, the attempted rebuttal falls flat and well off the mark.

Equity for women and girls essential to rebuild Connecticut’s economy
by Jennifer Steadman and Michelle Riordan-Nold

As Connecticut’s economy seeks to recover and rebuild, our success as a state will depend on how we respond to the disproportionate adverse impact of the coronavirus pandemic on women and girls, particularly women and girls of color.

Connecticut immigrants deserve health insurance
by Brooke Lifland, MD; Tanner Bommersbach, MD; Marco Ramos, MD PhD; and Eden Almasude, MD

Connecticut should pass House Bill 6334 to expand health insurance to all immigrants regardless of status. Our state wisely chose to protect the immigrant community by using Emergency Medicaid funds to cover expenses associated with COVID-19 testing and treatment for residents who were excluded from Medicaid based on their immigration status.

Truth or consequences: The impact of lie-based politics
by Charles M. Ericson and Sedona Ericson

A radio show by the above name, emceed by a man named Ralph Edwards, became a big hit starting in 1940. It eventually became a TV show, and all told, it lasted for decades. The format of the show was to be asked a question, and if it was not answered truthfully, the contestant submitted to undertaking a silly stunt of almost any kind. The show seemed reflective of a culture that valued untruth for perceived rewards, however trivial.

Recreational marijuana and sports gambling will be all around us
by Steven Block

It is likely that every other state in the Northeast will regulate both marijuana and sports gambling within a few years. The passage of these important bills in 2021 will allow Connecticut to become a competitive force in the region rather than an island of legislative stagnation.

Support Our Work

Show your love for great stories and outstanding journalism.

$
Select One
  • Monthly
  • Yearly
  • Once
Artpoint painter
CT ViewpointsCT Artpoints
Opinion The marijuana legalization debate must be based on facts
by Will Jones III

In response to my earlier piece on why Connecticut lawmakers should reject marijuana commercialization,  Brendan Ruberry wrote a rebuttal that, on its face seems scathing, but to be clear, the attempted rebuttal falls flat and well off the mark.

Opinion Equity for women and girls essential to rebuild Connecticut’s economy
by Jennifer Steadman and Michelle Riordan-Nold

As Connecticut’s economy seeks to recover and rebuild, our success as a state will depend on how we respond to the disproportionate adverse impact of the coronavirus pandemic on women and girls, particularly women and girls of color.

Opinion Connecticut immigrants deserve health insurance
by Brooke Lifland, MD; Tanner Bommersbach, MD; Marco Ramos, MD PhD; and Eden Almasude, MD

Connecticut should pass House Bill 6334 to expand health insurance to all immigrants regardless of status. Our state wisely chose to protect the immigrant community by using Emergency Medicaid funds to cover expenses associated with COVID-19 testing and treatment for residents who were excluded from Medicaid based on their immigration status.

Opinion Truth or consequences: The impact of lie-based politics
by Charles M. Ericson and Sedona Ericson

A radio show by the above name, emceed by a man named Ralph Edwards, became a big hit starting in 1940. It eventually became a TV show, and all told, it lasted for decades. The format of the show was to be asked a question, and if it was not answered truthfully, the contestant submitted to undertaking a silly stunt of almost any kind. The show seemed reflective of a culture that valued untruth for perceived rewards, however trivial.

Artwork Grand guidance
by Anne:Gogh

In a world of systemic oppression aimed towards those of darker skintones – representation matters. We are more than our equity elusive environments, more than numbers in a prison and much more than victims of societal dispositions. This piece depicts a melanated young man draped in a cape ascending high above multiple forms of oppression. […]

Artwork Shea
by Anthony Valentine

Shea is a story about race and social inequalities that plague America. It is a narrative that prompts the question, “Do you know what it’s like to wake up in new skin?”

Artwork The Declaration of Human Rights
by Andres Chaparro

Through my artwork I strive to create an example of ideas that reflect my desire to raise social consciousness, and cultural awareness. Jazz music is the catalyst to all my work, and plays a major influence in each piece of work.”

Artwork ‘A thing of beauty. Destroy it forever’
by Richard DiCarlo | Derby

During times like these it’s often fun to revisit something familiar and approach things with a different slant. I have been taking some Pop culture and Art masterpieces and applying the vintage 1960’s and 70’s classic figures (Fisher Price, little people) to the make an amusing pieces. Here is my homage to Fisher -Price, Yellow […]

Twitter Feed
A Twitter List by CTMirror

Engage

  • Reflections Tickets & Sponsorships
  • Events
  • Donate
  • Newsletter Sign-Up
  • Submit to Viewpoints
  • Submit to ArtPoints
  • Economic Indicator Dashboard
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Commenting Guidelines
  • Legal Notices
  • Contact Us

About

  • About CT Mirror
  • Announcements
  • Board
  • Staff
  • Sponsors and Funders
  • Donors
  • Friends of CT Mirror
  • History
  • Financial
  • Policies
  • Strategic Plan

Opportunity

  • Advertising and Sponsorship
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Use of Photography
  • Work for Us

Go Deeper

  • Steady Habits Podcast
  • Economic Indicator Dashboard
  • Five Things

The Connecticut News Project, Inc. 1049 Asylum Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105. Phone: 860-218-6380

© Copyright 2021, The Connecticut News Project. All Rights Reserved. Website by Web Publisher PRO