Biden’s education chief says he avoided ‘culture wars’ despite goading from GOP governors

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WASHINGTON (AP) — While Republican states were working to limit school history lessons and ban transgender athletes, President Joe Biden’s education chief says he was focused on what matters: putting more social workers in schools, expanding summer school and building a pipeline of new teachers.

In an interview during his last days in office, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he sought distance from the battles waged by Republican governors who he says were out to make a name for themselves.

“I’m not going to get distracted by culture wars,” Cardona said. “It’s nonsense, and I think the people that spew it, they make a fool of themselves. I don’t need to help them.”

Cardona said he wants to be remembered for “substance, not sensationalism.” He helped schools reopen after the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. He oversaw a historic infusion of federal aid to America’s schools. Under his watch, more than 5 million Americans got student loan cancellation.

Yet his time in office will also be remembered for the politics that overtook the education landscape. Conservatives and some experts now say COVID school reopenings were too slow, pointing to ongoing academic shortfalls and concerning trends in youth mental health. Even after the pandemic, education became a battleground, as conservatives rallied to rid what some see as “wokeness” being promoted by educators in the classroom. Republican states passed laws limiting what schools can teach about race and sexuality, and many adopted laws and rules banning transgender athletes in school sports.

To some conservatives, Cardona was the one pushing a political agenda for schools. He sparred with conservative governors over mask mandates. He took to social media to blast attacks on diversity efforts at schools and those “ whitewashing history.” And when he issued a rule expanding Title IX, a sex-discrimination statute, to protect LGBTQ+ students, it was quickly blocked by conservative-led states around the country.

To Cardona, his initiatives aimed to protect the rights of underrepresented students. But he ran up against the limits of his authority. A federal judge scrapped the Title IX rule, and Republican states ignored his pleas to promote diversity in education. Voters, too, appeared to be out of step with Biden’s agenda. More than half of voters overall said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide.

“We saw in this country what I think is a step backwards in terms of student rights,” Cardona said. “The reality is, the federal government has a limited role in state policy.”

Cardona, 49, came into office after a rapid rise in the world of education. The son of Puerto Ricans, he spent years as a fourth-grade teacher, a principal and a district administrator before becoming Connecticut’s education chief. Biden had promised to appoint a secretary with teaching experience as a foil to Trump’s first education secretary, pro-school-choice philanthropist Betsy DeVos.

Early in his tenure, Cardona tried to use the bully pulpit to bring Republican governors in line. In letters to the governors of Florida and Texas, Cardona sparred over mask mandates and COVID testing. He says he changed course after finding that’s what they wanted — a national platform to win attention before the 2024 presidential election.

He said it wasn’t a good use of his time “going tit-for-tat with a governor who’s hell-bent on being the most anti-Biden so that he could make it on the presidential ballot.”

A statement from DeSantis’ office dismissed Cardona’s criticism, saying DeSantis’ pro-parent agenda contributed to his 20-point election win in 2022.

“We want education. We do not want indoctrination,” DeSantis said in a statement. “Biden and his folks believe you send them to school, butt out, and the school’s job is to indoctrinate what they think your kids should learn or what your kids should believe.”

The political fights extended to the courts, where Republican states successfully killed some of Biden’s signature education plans, including widespread student loan cancellation, a more generous student loan repayment plan, and his Title IX expansion.

Other plans withered after failing to gain support in Congress, including a push for free community college.

Yet Cardona says there were more victories than losses. Under Biden, the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students saw its biggest increase in a decade. More than 1 million public workers got student loans canceled after the Education Department retooled a troubled program. New legislation allowed schools to hire 16,000 mental health professionals.

“What we did is going to have a tremendous impact in our schools,” he said. “When you have more school social workers, psychologists, more reading teachers, more after-school programs, more summer programs than in the history of our country, there’s 50 million kids out there that are going to benefit from that.”

Cardona sought to play down what critics say was one of the lowest points of his tenure — a bungled overhaul of the federal financial aid form known as FAFSA. Congress ordered the Education Department to simplify the notoriously complex form, but a series of glitches led to delays in college financial aid decisions for months.

Critics called it a crisis and predicted that the frustration would deter some students from going to college at all. Cardona disputed the idea, citing new data from the National Student Clearinghouse finding that enrollment of college freshmen increased this fall.

Cardona called the FAFSA update a trying time that “really tested us.”

“And in my opinion,” he said, “we passed the test.”

In a farewell speech earlier Tuesday, Cardona urged his departing colleagues not to despair, even as they wonder if the next administration will undo policies and slash budgets. Cardona said he’s leaving with hope “because I never, ever bet against our nation’s teachers and students.”

They are the ones “who will write the next chapter, who will decide the fate of public education,” he said. “There’s no one education secretary or president that does that, and no one leader can break our resolve.”

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