Former U.S. Secretary of Education

FALLS VILLAGE, Conn.—Innovation is the answer, according to former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, who spoke Friday evening at Housatonic Valley Regional High School about issues facing young adults and their educators. 

The program was sponsored by the Salisbury Forum, which offers monthly speaker forums on issues that affect people’s lives globally and locally.

In a program titled “Evolving Education,” Cardona, who served as education secretary under the Obama Administration, used Simon Sinek’s leadership construct—”Why, How and What”—to frame his approach to public education. 

When adapted to his core philosophy of educational equity and transformation, “Why” becomes the moral imperative of public education—equalizing opportunity—while “How” dictates the methods by which change is realized. “What” represents the actual programs, policies and measurable outcomes that “Why” and “How” affect. 

“We have to fight for public education because, for so many, local public schools are all they have,” he said. “‘What’ is always changing. Sometimes it’s providing better skills, sometimes mental health services, sometimes it’s providing college and career pathways. ‘What’ is always changing and if we’re going to meet the needs of students, we must innovate in how we work. We must level up in Connecticut in providing options.”

He noted that Connecticut has “pockets of educational excellence,” but that the landscape is not even. “Not all students have the same opportunities,” he said. “Rural children are often ignored. They struggle with different needs but were overshadowed by the larger cities.”

Exacerbating the situation is the school choice system that allows families to select magnet or charter schools for their students. Both kinds of schools are public and can accept students from across different districts. They are tuition free with the local school district paying for a student’s attendance.

“It’s taking money from public education and giving it to independent schools,” he said. “Independent schools can decide what students they take. It costs more to take children with challenges, so they send them back to schools where we have normalized teachers having second jobs just to make ends meet. We send them back to schools where in 24 states teachers are eligible for public assistance.”

Because the children remaining in public education often have challenges, school districts struggle with the considerable costs of special education and the lack of funding for it. When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) program was mandated in 1975, the federal government pledged to subsidize 40 percent of the cost to states and local school districts to assist with the excess costs of educating students with disabilities. It has never met that goal and is currently funding only 13 percent of the costs, Cardona said. 

In Connecticut, a school district must pay 4.5 times the cost of regular education for its special education students before it gets support from the state. The goal is for Connecticut to pay 100 percent of the cost of special education students above that level, but, in fact, local school districts often get less much than that—roughly 67 to 75 percent of eligible funds. And a tiered system prioritizes higher reimbursement percentages for towns with lower per-capita property wealth.

The cost of special education often bites deep into local school budgets, sometimes reducing the number of opportunities offered to regular education students.

“It’s a big problem and inherently we’re putting a band aid on bigger issues,” Cardano said. “There’s no easy answer, but a committee is happening right now that’s trying to change that.”

Cardona said that public education is under attack, but that part of the solution can be found in breaking down silos by engaging parents as a child’s “first and best teachers,” protecting the professional agency of educators, and partnering across sectors.

“In Connecticut we have a lot of good groups that work hard, but not always together,” he said. “We have little fiefdoms that are not talking to each other. We have community agencies, state agencies, elected officials that all want the best for the kids. We have industries that have apprenticeships, but the kids don’t know about them. We have EdTech that is supposed to connect the dots. We need to build inter-dependence.”

He advocated for “micro-credentialism”—good paying jobs that students can obtain through apprenticeships without the burden of college debt.

“There is a question whether we need higher education,” he said. “College is too expensive to be a career exploration process. When I went to Washington, there was a student debt crisis. There were a million college debt defaults. We had too many kids deciding to leave and not yet having a degree. But when I visited Groton, I walked into a classroom where 18-year-olds were learning to weld [to meet local industrial needs]. They had a substitute teacher because the kids were making $85,000 a year as 18-year-old apprentices. When they got into [their employers’] program, in two or three years they could learn to code and then they would be making $100,000 without college degrees.”

He said society must evolve a system that meets today’s jobs. “If we don’t meet the needs of businesses here, they will go elsewhere.”

This year he became consultant to Governor Ned LaMont’s Connecticut Career Pathway Commission, a new advisory board tasked with helping students and workers in the state find jobs in an economy that is being shaped by artificial intelligence, automation and global competition. 

“The work of the commission is to bring business, educators and students together,” he said. “My job with Pathways is to create the connective tissue. How do we connect the dots. How does higher education work with the K-12 system? How does K-12 work with labor? What is possible if it is done right? Innovation is in the ‘how.’”

Cardona, the scion of an immigrant family from Meriden, credited a teacher at his technical school for changing the direction of his life. Linda Ransom noticed artwork created by the teenager, who was studying to be a car mechanic. Saying that he appeared to be addressing social justice in his artwork, she suggested it be hung as a mural in the school. She later “tapped me on the shoulder and said I could be a teacher.”

“It makes a difference when you have someone in your life that believes in you,” he said. “My grandparents came from Puerto Rico in 1960s and lived in a fourth-floor apartment. My mother married at 16 when my father was 18. Back then, when they married and started having kids, you could say we were economically disadvantaged. You could make a case that you wouldn’t have bet on them, or for me to advise the U.S. president. But the school saw assets in me I didn’t even see. They chiseled to find the diamond in the stone. I had a good family and teachers who wanted to bring out best in me.”

Later, he would bring Ransom to the White House.

Still, he advocated for “systems, not superheroes.” “You can’t count on superintendent superheroes,” he said. “You can’t succeed if you depend on one person because people move on. It’s easy to lead when things are going well. It’s tough right now, but it’s the best time to lead because these kids are worth it. Be authentic—a good leader is not the person with all the answers. My message to leaders is, it takes courage to face your fears. But, if not us, who? If not now, when?”

Among the “scary” problems facing educators are the inherent opportunities—and dangers—of AI, gun violence in schools, the lack of talented young people currently choosing teaching careers, and the attack on the intellectual freedom of institutes of learning.

“It’s getting harder and harder to get into the profession and we’ve got to do better,” he said, adding that he counts on the “next generation to bring us together.” 

“We want students to graduate with opportunities,” he concluded. “I argue you start in elementary school. Little kids come into school endlessly curious, and we systematically take that away from them. We need to provide more work-based experiences. And colleges should be places where people exchange ideas, and have those ideas challenged in a respectful way. I hope we have the resolve to invest in education.”