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Secretary of Ethnic Studies?
President Biden’s choice to lead the Education Department has a thin record—except in one trailblazing area.
Politics and law
Education
President Biden’s nomination of Miguel Cardona to be Secretary of Education was greeted with a sigh of relief from some education reformers—more for who he isn’t than for who he is. He isn’t a teachers’ union leader. He’s not a tenured radical. He isn’t a vocal charter school opponent.
Cardona doesn’t, in fact, have much of a paper trail. After working as an elementary school teacher and principal, he became an assistant superintendent for Connecticut’s Meriden School District (which serves about 8,000 students) in 2015. He was appointed Connecticut’s education commissioner in August 2019, where he served for a little over a year before being tapped for the presidential Cabinet.