Dr. Miguel Cardona on Skill Development and Educational Equity
"This week's very special guest is the US Secretary for Education, Dr. Miguel Cardona. Secretary Cardona is one of three children, whose grandparents moved from Puerto Rico in the 1960s for better opportunities in the mainland United States. That experience, and his bicultural upbringing, have helped shape Secretary Cardona's passion to serve all students and improve their opportunities for success. Secretary Cardona began his career as a fourth-grade teacher at Israel Putnam Elementary School in Meriden Connecticut. In 2003, at the age of twenty-seven, he was named principal of Meriden's Hanover School, making him the youngest principal in Connecticut. In 2019, Governor Ned Lamont appointed him as commissioner of education, the first Latino to hold the position. During his tenure, he helped oversee state schools' response to the COVID-19 pandemic, where he expressed concerns over the long-term mental health impacts of remote education on students. In March 2021, Secretary Cardona joined President Biden’s cabinet as the 12th US Secretary for Education. Secretary Cardona's focus throughout his career has been on raising the bar for equity and excellence in education for all learners. This focus guides his leadership of the U.S. Department of Education, in service of the nation's 65 million students, ranging from pre-kindergarten to adult learners.
Hello everyone. I am
Chris Hyams, CEO of Indeed.
My pronouns are he
and him and welcome
to the next episode
of Here to Help.
For accessibility I'll give
a quick visual description:
I'm a middle aged man
with a salt and pepper beard.
I'm wearing a dark blue sweater and behind
me is a collection of books and records.
At Indeed, our mission is
to help people get jobs.
This is what gets us out of bed
in the morning
and what keeps us going all day.
And what powers that mission is people.
Here to Help is a look
at how experience, strength and hope
inspires people to want to help others.
My very special guest today
is the US Secretary for Education,
Dr. Miguel Cardona.
Secretary Cardona is one of three children
whose grandparents moved from
Puerto Rico in the 1960s for better opportunities
in the mainland U.S.
That experience and his bicultural
upbringing have helped shaped Secretary
Cardona's passion to serve all students
and improve their opportunities
for success.
Secretary Cardona began his career
as a fourth grade teacher at Israel Putnam
Elementary School in Meriden, Connecticut.
In 2003, at the age of 27,
he was named principal of Meriden’s
Hanover School,
making him the youngest principal
in Connecticut.
In 2019, Governor Ned Lamont appointed him
as the Commissioner of Education,
the first Latino to hold the position.
During his tenure,
he helped oversee state schools
response to the COVID 19 pandemic,
where he expressed concerns over the long
term mental health impacts
of remote education on students.
In March of 2021, Secretary Cardona
joined President Biden's cabinet
as the 12th U.S. Secretary for Education.
Secretary Cardona’s focus
throughout his career, has been on raising
the bar for equity and excellence
in education for all learners.
This focus guides
his leadership of the U.S.
Department of Education
in service of the nation's
65 million students,
ranging from pre-K to adult learners.
Secretary Cardona,
thank you so much for joining me today.
-Chris, I'm glad to be with you.
It's great to have a conversation
with you again and look forward to it.
Thank you.
-Fantastic.
Well, we always start these conversations
with the same question,
how are you doing right now?
-I'm doing great.
I always say I'm doing great.
I'm blessed.
I have a wonderful family.
I have an opportunity in my career
to help children,
so you won't hear complaints from me
-Fantastic.
Well, at Indeed, our mission,
as I said, is to help people get jobs.
And I'm always curious
how people got their start.
Can you tell us a little bit
about your first job?
-My first job? Wow.
I, I was literally flipping burgers back
when we flipped the burgers.
I worked at McDonald's at 15 years old,
and I often share that
and I share with pride.
I learned a lot of the skills,
organization, teamwork
and managing a group
because I was able to move on
into different leadership positions.
And to this day, when I see my first boss,
who still owns his own restaurant,
I see him
and I talk to him and and we
we talk about the good old days.
But that was my first job.
My first job in education after graduation
was a fourth grade teacher
and once a teacher, always a teacher.
I served 21
nine-year-olds and I was like 22.
So I think I was like 12,
13 years older than them.
But it was just an amazing experience
to get into the teaching profession.
-That's incredible.
My second job out of college,
I had one job for about six months.
I was working in an adolescent psychiatric
hospital, working with young addicts
and alcoholics,
and then I took a job substitute teaching.
My wife and I moved to
a small town in rural Vermont.
I substituted
for about three months,
and then I taught special education
in public high school for two years.
But during substitute teaching,
I started out in high school
and then I got put in fourth grade
for a week, and that was so much harder
than anything else I had done.
So, very impressed.
So you spent your whole career
as an educator
after McDonald's
and are now at the helm of the US
Department of Education,
and your experience shapes the decisions
that you make every day to create a more
equitable system for learners in the U.S..
Can you talk about
what are the most important items
on your agenda as Secretary for Education?
-Sure.
You know, I think it's important to
to ground what I say.
In my lived experience,
not only as an educator.
I was a school teacher.
I was a school principal,
I was a district leader
and then state leader
before becoming Secretary of Education.
So for me, it's
the values, the goals are similar,
regardless of position,
to provide opportunities for students
to reach their God given potential,
and reduce
gaps in opportunities
and outcomes
between different groups of students.
So that's been the goal and making sure
that excellence is is for everyone,
not just for some.
So that's always been the goal
at the Department of Education.
We work really hard to try to frame it
around key goals.
We call it
raise the bar, lead the world, right.
I think we've normalized in our country
not leading an international
ranking list on reading and math.
And quite frankly,
I believe we need to be at the top.
We need to push ourselves
to continue to perform
at what I believe
is at the highest levels.
So what does that mean?
A strong focus on literacy, numeracy
and STEM,
a very strong focus
on reimagining schools.
Our schools are designed
the way they were two pandemics ago.
We have to evolve our schools’
mental health supports undergirding our systems.
It's not enough anymore
to have an emergency room
model of mental health
supports in our schools.
Also making sure
that our teachers,
our educators have really,
in my opinion, over the last decade
have been subject to a lot of disrespect.
I want to make sure that we're respecting
the profession, we're
honoring our educators, and we value
what they bring to the table.
So I'm really pushing for
highly qualified teacher support
for educators because as a student’s
need changes,
we need to make sure we're supporting
our educators who are meeting their needs.
And then the last two buckets,
and this is only K-12.
I'll get to the higher ed later.
But the last two buckets is promoting
multilingualism and giving students
an opportunity to learn another language
or maintain their native language.
Because many times our schools almost,
you know, whether intentionally
or unintentionally, just kind of erase
their native language and culture,
only to then offer prestigious electives
in high school for another language.
And then making sure that we're providing
better pathways
to career and college for our students
developing skills.
And I know Indeed
is really focused on skills.
So for me,
we need to make sure
we're developing skills in our students
so they can have choices
when they graduate.
That's the K-12 agenda.
Higher ed, very simple.
Affordability,
accessibility into higher education.
-Fantastic.
Well, so, you know, one of the things
that we explore in these discussions is
a little bit, like you
said, how that lived experience informs
what it is, and inspires
you to do that, what you're doing.
As I mentioned,
your grandparents moved from Puerto Rico
to the mainland for better opportunities.
Can you talk about how that experience
shaped your perspective
on the role of education in society?
-Absolutely.
I mean,
I think the best way to kind of describe
how I think about that
is, you know, my grandparents,
when they came here,
they came with very little.
And they came with the intention of giving
their children a better opportunity.
I always say they traded the paradise
of Puerto Rico
for the projects
in Connecticut, for the cold.
But they did it because they knew
that opportunities existed
and those opportunities became available
for my parents
and for me through public education.
We had only what
the public schools provided.
So that means that they knew
they sacrificed a lot
so that the doors of public education
could open for their children
and grandchildren.
And in just two generations, I'm
now advising
the President of the United States
on education for all students.
I think that's the power of education.
That's the power of public education.
That's why I always say
it's the best profession.
But I look at their story, right?
What they had to give up
so we could have access to education.
And I see they had the potential to.
They had the potential.
You know, I look at my grandmother, my
grandfather, hard workers and all that,
but if they had the same opportunities
I had, they could have continued as well.
So, you know, they do inspire me.
And they remind me also that
there are many first generation families
that are moving in here
who have the same potential
and drive and ambition and desire
that my grandparents had.
And we need to look at those folks
as future Secretaries of Education, too.
You know, it just it to me,
it really comes full circle.
-Fantastic.
So you had mentioned a couple of minutes
ago about this idea of raising the bar.
Can you talk about why it's so important,
what you mean by that?
And then talk maybe a little bit
about this back to school bus
tour in 2023 called Raise the Bar?
-Sure.
So, you know, for the educators
that are paying attention
and seeing what we're doing,
you know, I've been in education
for about 25 years, and
I know that at the federal level,
there's always a desire
to create something shiny and new
and say, this is the way we fix education
across the country.
And often times
these strategies go away
when the person bringing them in goes away.
For me,
raising the bar means doing what we know
works better.
It means being serious about addressing
those things that we know
our students need.
I mentioned them before: strong literacy
instruction, strong
numeracy instruction, schools
that are innovating, right?
So you'll see a lot of our grants
go toward those things.
I mentioned Raising the Bar includes
a better continuum
of mental health
supports for students and educators.
Right, highly qualified
teachers and teacher support
and teacher professional development.
That to me is raising
the bar. It’s not a shiny
silver bullet
that's going to come out of left field.
This is what we know works.
And then it's providing multilingualism
and pathways to college and career
for our students, but doing that better
so that all students have access,
so that all students can graduate,
if they want, high school
with 12 college credits.
So that's the Raise the Bar formula.
All right.
And then the Raise the Bar bus tour,
we visited five different
states in the Midwest.
I've been on three amazing bus tours
where we get to talk to educators
and parents and students
about what it means
and what we're doing and really elevate
the best practices that are out there.
You know, it's funny because
you don't need the answers in D.C.
We have them across the country.
But what we have our pockets of excellence
and it's my responsibility to lift up
those districts, those educators,
those schools that are really defying
the odds, closing gaps,
providing opportunities
for students, meeting students
mental health needs by being innovative.
And these bus tours, man, they give me
the opportunity to go through
different states and pop into schools
and talk to students directly.
And it's just really one of the highlights
of my
my job as secretary of education
is to get out there
and see what's actually happening
in our schools.
That's the best part of the job.
-So I know that one of the key
areas of focus
is really just recruiting more teachers.
And in August of 2022 Indeed was very
proud to join the White House and others
to help support filling
open roles in schools across America.
We launched
our own program, Indeed for Education,
and we committed $10 million
to help school
districts fill their open positions.
And it was an amazing experience
to get to partner
with so many public schools
and districts around the country.
And I want to talk about some of the
challenges and goals for hiring teachers.
But first, we have a PSA,
a recent PSA for Teach Dot Org
and 1 million teachers of Color.
And I'd love to have us run that first.
-Teachers are dynamic leaders
shaping a new generation,
innovating to prepare students
for our fast changing world.
They're skilled experts, discovering
a universe of solutions, telling stories,
inspiring, mentoring,
connecting cultures, leading by example.
Teaching is a journey that shapes lives.
Are you ready to begin?
Explore teaching at Teach Dot Org.
-So we currently have a shortage
of educators across the U.S.
Can you talk about what makes the field
of education such a rewarding career?
Why should more people become teachers?
-First of all, you're being modest Indeed,
has really stepped up across the country.
And I want to give you credit
where credit is due.
We appreciate the $10 million investment.
We also appreciate the spotlight
you're putting on this Chris.
You recognize the importance of education.
Your whole team does.
So, you know, we're standing at
the White House and having conversations.
You know, everybody agrees there
we need to do more.
You've stepped up Chris.
Indeed has stepped up.
So thank you.
It is the best profession.
It is by far the best profession.
I feel blessed
as I said earlier, that I am able to work
with students and families and help them.
You know how many people
I've talked to that,
you know, later on in their career,
they're like,
you know, I want to I want to give back.
I want to get into education.
It's an extension of your life's purpose.
And that sounds a little hokey,
but it is an extension of your life's
purpose, of your values.
But for far too long,
the profession has not gotten
the respect it deserves.
And when we talk about teacher
shortages, to me
that's a symptom of a teacher
respect issue in this country.
So what
I talk about is bringing back
the ABCs to teaching.
You know,
everybody loves acronyms in education.
We need more, right?
For me, the ABCs of teaching are Agency,
making sure that we respect educators
as professionals.
They're trained in this.
Most have Master's or more,
and we need to make sure
that we recognize and respect the agency
that they bring to the profession.
And B stands for better working conditions.
And by better working conditions,
I mean ensuring that teachers
who are working really hard
to help their students academically
have in their schools colleagues
that could help students
with mental health needs.
Better working condition
means that you have reasonable class size
and that there's appropriate
supports, high quality materials.
Better working condition means making
sure there's professional development
opportunities for teachers
to continue to grow and
pathways
for them to grow in the profession,
even if that means
not leaving the classroom.
Maybe they want to stay in the classroom,
but they have additional opportunities
to continue to grow.
Bettter working conditions
during COVID meant you had clean air,
you had appropriate materials.
You're not in classrooms
that are 95 degrees
in the summer without air conditioning.
You know, better working conditions,
thus respect to educators.
And then C, ABC.
Remember!
C is competitive salary. In this country
we have normalized
the fact that teachers make on average 24%
less than people with similar degrees.
I'm standing up
and saying enough is enough.
You know, when teachers are advocating
for competitive salaries
so they don't have to drive Ubers at night
or bartend on the weekends,
you know, people often say, well, geez,
you know,
they're not student centered
if they're asking for more.
No, we want a highly qualified workforce
to give our students the best.
They deserve a competitive salary.
So those are the ABCs of teaching.
We're not just talking about it.
We're doing something about it.
We've committed billions of dollars
for teacher professional development.
You know, the president, within months,
President Biden
ushered in the American Rescue Plan
that provided $130 billion
to help recover and provide supports,
which include
making sure that our teachers
are supported as well.
And we're seeing some progress.
I mean, we're seriously working
with states and putting pressure
to make sure that salaries are
competitive.
We've seen 29 states include in their
last budget an increase in teacher salary.
And we're going to keep pushing
that because we know,
you know, when we
when we support our educators,
our students are going to get the best.
You know, I always say, because you'll
appreciate this, we want Finland results,
but we're not putting in the Finland
investments.
Right?
So for me, we're really working on it.
Another thing that I think
I'm really proud of and we're working on
is, you know, name another profession
where you have people working for free
for four months. That doesn't exist.
But we expect it from our student teachers.
Maybe that's part of the reason
why we're not getting people
and teachers of color
coming into the profession.
So we're working on
a teacher apprenticeships.
Three years ago
there were zero states that had them.
Today there are 29 states that have them.
But because we've been pushing
really hard.
So those are the types of things
that we're trying to do
to make sure we're lifting the profession
because it is the best profession.
-So in that PSA that we showed,
one of the organizations
mentioned there is 1 Million Teachers of Color.
Can you talk about the importance
of diversity in the teaching profession?
-Absolutely.
You know, I said the ABCs of teaching.
If I were to add a D there,
it would be diversity.
You know, over 50% of our students
identify themselves
as students of color, and I think
it's around 20% of our educators.
I want to make sure that our students
see themselves as educators as well.
And it helps when students
see and learn from people
that have similar backgrounds as them.
It just it helps their learning.
It helps with them feeling connected,
a sense of connectedness and makes the
the pedagogy culturally appropriate
where we're needed
in order to engage students
and keep them connected.
So, you know,
the 1 Million Teachers of Color
and Teach Dot Org and Indeed and
the Department of Education, we're all
on the same page that we need
to make sure that the diversity
of the profession
reflects the diversity of our country,
or else we're sending a message
that this profession is not for you.
So we have to be intentional about that.
And we are, you know,
at the Department of Education, we have
grants
that are specific for pipeline programs.
So when we work in our communities
of color, predominantly
students of color,
we need to have pathways that connect them
to a teaching program and then bring them
back into the same community.
Like me.
I went to school
and I became a teacher and a principal,
an assistant superintendent
in the same district that my parents
moved into from Puerto Rico.
And that gives me a connection
to that community
and an understanding of that community
that helps students achieve.
And I think across the country, it's
not just my opinion.
There's empirical data that supports
when students have teachers of color,
they all achieve better.
And for Black and Brown students, the
achievement rates increase significantly.
So we need to make
this an intentional focus.
-I think
you've covered a whole range of things
that we need to be doing.
Can you talk about
what are some of the specific things
the Department is doing right now
to address teacher
shortages and diversity?
-Definitely. So, you know
we have billions of dollars going toward
teacher professional development.
We, you know, it seems indirect,
but when we fix the public service
loan forgiveness program,
and I'll speak maybe 10 seconds on that,
if you're a public servant
and you've served for ten years
and you've been paying your loans
for ten years,
you're eligible for loan forgiveness.
It's that simple.
When we came into office in the last
four years, there was only 7000
people across the country
that benefited from that.
Okay?
98% of the people were rejected.
We got that number up to $50
billion in debt relief.
Over 750,000 people have gotten,
I was in an airport today
and I was stopped by someone that got
public service loan forgiveness. Teachers,
school principals, para educators,
all are eligible. Law enforcement,
military service members, firemen.
They're all eligible now.
So, you know,
when you think about having debt,
we want to make sure that teachers,
district leaders, their debt
after ten years is discharged.
So we're working on that.
We also have the SAVE program,
which is kind of an indirect as well.
Right.
So if you go into the teaching profession,
you have undergraduate debt
and you're going into a profession
where you don't want to spend
so much of your money
paying off college loans,
you can sign up now for the save plan,
which wasn't here a year ago.
This is brand new.
The Save plan will take undergraduate
student loan debt
and cut it in half this July.
It's going to be cut in half.
So it's only 5% of your disposable
income versus 10%.
And we're doing that
to give more people an opportunity to say,
I want to go to college
and I'm going to be able to afford it.
We have the Augustus Hawkins Grant.
We put things like $30 million
to have pipeline programs
to increase diverse teachers. All total
there’s about $2.6 billion in teacher
support programs, teacher
quality programs,
professional development programs
For the teachers
that are paying attention
and just watching right now, historically,
you know,
we tell you we need you to be trauma
informed in your instruction, right?
We tell you to understand
how the needs of the child have changed,
and then we give you 15 to 20 minutes
of professional development
and they expect you to be experts.
We're trying to stop that.
We're investing
in professional development
to give teachers
the tools that they need to be successful.
As a former fourth grade teacher
and a school principal,
I know these are critical to make sure
we're supporting our educator workforce
and ultimately supporting our students.
-So, I know that we're
talking specifically
about the teaching career, but
you're also working on helping ensure
that all students have access to a variety
of career pathways, and this is a key
priority of your administration,
specifically through the unlocking career
success
that you use to help young
people prepare for careers of the future
with access to well-paying jobs
in innovative industries.
Can you tell us a little bit about this
initiative?
-Sure, and I’ll frame it kind of thinking,
you know,
the pandemic disrupted education.
And I think we'd be failing our kids if
we built it back the way it was in 2019.
Our schools are designed,
as I said earlier,
for two pandemics ago.
The same way they were two pandemics ago.
So I'll give you a quick vignette.
2021 I was
serving as Secretary, I was
transitioning to Secretary role.
My own children,
I had two teenagers
in high school at the time,
were going to school three days a week
on Week A and then learning from home
two days a week.
And then they would flip it.
The following week
they would go to school two days a week
and learn from home three days a week.
It was a hybrid version
to reduce the number of people
in the hallways
to reduce transmission rates.
When the pandemic ended,
everything went back to normal
the way it was before.
And I'm thinking to myself,
why can't we give students who are high
performing and able to do this,
an opportunity
to learn outside the school walls
and go to an internship or learn
by getting experience
in a high skill, high paying career
that interests them, instead of going back
to the same model that we had.
We have launched
the Unlocking Career Success strategy
with the intention of evolving.
I don't use the word reform,
evolving our high schools
to give students
an opportunity to get career advisement,
to get up to 12 credits in college,
in high school,
in a connected career
that they're interested in.
To give them workplace
experience
through an internship or externship,
and to make sure that they're able
to get credentials while in high school.
It could be a CNA credential, it
could be an OSHA credential.
It could be computing
If they want to go into cybersecurity.
Let's give them some skills,
some credentials that they could walk out
and start
thinking about their future
in a way that's tangible.
You know, those days of
why am I learning this?
Well, we want to reduce those, right?
We want to give students
pathways to careers.
So the Unlocking Career Success
strategy is really having high schools,
two year colleges,
four year colleges and industry partners
sitting at the table together to program
and plan
to give students options
when they graduate.
And one one last thing about this.
Look, I'm excited about this, but I'm
also feeling that excitement alone
is not going to do it.
I have a sense of urgency
because the Invest in America
work of our president,
to get CHIPS and Science Act passed,
the infrastructure plan
and the climate provisions
under the Inflation Reduction Act,
there will be millions of high
skill, high paying careers available.
We gotta get moving here.
We can’t do business as usual.
The careers are going to be there.
There are billions of dollars in commerce
intended to help develop workplace
pipeline programs.
I want to make sure that our schools
our two year colleges and our four year
colleges are connected
to that unlocking career success.
If you visit Ed Dot Gov, ED dot gov,
you'll find it
there under our Raise the Bar Strategies.
I'm really excited about it.
It's time
we make sure we skill up our students
so they have more
options when they graduate.
-Fantastic.
Well, our time flew by here.
I know you're a very, very busy man,
so I'll just very quickly ask
the last question that we always ask,
which is, with all the challenges
that we've been through
as a nation, as a world
over the last three, four years,
what gives you hope for the future.
-Children. That's a simple one.
Children.
I was in Parkland, Florida, earlier
this week
for very difficult conversations.
And I spoke to students
and they inspired me.
They gave me hope for our future.
I visited a Pathway program
in Washington, DC on Wednesday,
and I spoke to high school students
that were talking about their future
with such excitement. I visited fourth
grade students at a bilingual school
or a school that's teaching
multilingualism, and they give me hope.
Our best days are ahead of us.
Our best days are ahead of us.
We need to respect the profession.
We need to lift the profession.
Thank you Indeed for what you're doing
and for folks who are interested,
check Teach Dot Org, check out
the Department of Education website.
It's all over Indeed.
We need you in this profession.
Our students are waiting.
Thank you.
-Secretary Cardona,
thank you so much for joining us today.
And thank you so much
for everything that you're doing
for all students
all over the country and everywhere.
-Appreciate you, Chris. Thank you.