Schooling Secretary Miguel Cardona will journey the japanese U.S. by bus subsequent week to advertise his priorities for this college yr, which embody boosting the instructing occupation, rising psychological well being help for college students and serving to children regain misplaced tutorial floor.
The five-day bus tour, a part of an annual custom tracing again no less than a number of schooling secretaries, is supposed to construct on Cardona’s highway journey final fall, which lined the midwestern U.S. and targeted on a profitable return to in-person studying. Subsequent week’s tour, a spokesperson stated, will emphasize the stakes of this college yr now that every one college students are again in school rooms – at colleges brimming with once-in-a-lifetime, fleeting COVID aid {dollars} however in lots of circumstances struggling to retain or recruit sufficient workers who should work with college students digging out of a pandemic gap.
“We should increase the bar for our college students now and use the sources now we have to fulfill that bar,” Cardona wrote in a latest op-ed for USA TODAY. “We should acknowledge this second for the urgency it carries: Our college students – and the progress of our nation – rely upon it.”
The bus tour additionally may serve to sway swing voters and encourage Democrats to forged their ballots. Polls counsel Republicans are gaining the general public’s belief on schooling points, that are a prime precedence for voters this yr, producing extra curiosity than abortion and local weather change. A lot of Republicans’ consideration has been on ideological debates, akin to college students’ entry to sure books and discussions of LGBTQ+ points within the classroom.
An itinerary for the highway journey, shared solely with USA TODAY, reveals that the majority of Cardona’s stops are in battleground states or communities with a few of this yr’s best elections. Each first girl Jill Biden, a professor and longtime schooling advocate, and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff will be a part of some occasions alongside the way in which.
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After a cease in Tennessee, Cardona will spend a lot of the primary day, Sept. 12, at greater schooling websites in Greensboro, North Carolina, at occasions targeted on constructing the trainer pipeline and pathways into the occupation.
The second day, with stops all through Virginia, will spotlight methods of utilizing American Rescue Plan cash to help college students with disabilities and people with psychological well being wants.
On the third day, Sept. 14, Cardona will make a pitstop in West Virginia for an occasion on psychological well being in greater schooling, after which he’ll head to Pennsylvania for a collection of occasions that stretch by way of the night of Sept. 15. Amongst them: an engagement hosted with academics unions on Public Service Mortgage Forgiveness, which many educators are eligible for however have struggled to safe.
Each North Carolina and Pennsylvania are residence to extremely aggressive U.S. Senate races, every with a retiring incumbent Republican whose seat is liable to flipping this yr. And two races in Virginia – in districts close to two of the websites Cardona will go to subsequent week – are anticipated to assist decide whether or not Republicans will take management of the U.S. Home. Virginia’s gubernatorial race final yr additionally targeted closely on schooling.
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Again-to-school bus excursions, embarked upon by various Cardona’s predecessors each Republican and Democrat, usually have had political undertones. Though schooling secretaries haven’t any constitutionally granted authority over colleges, they’ve used back-to-school highway journeys to successfully marketing campaign for his or her occasion’s platform priorities.
If nothing else, they’ve leveraged these excursions to remind the general public of their respective administration’s schooling accomplishments.
Diane Ravitch, an schooling historian and former assistant secretary of schooling, stated in an e-mail that the bus excursions have “no coverage significance.” They’re in all probability “meant to get good press,” she stated.
Again in 2007, George W. Bush’s then-Schooling Secretary Margaret Spellings did her “No Little one Left Behind” bus tour. The polarizing federal schooling regulation was slated for reauthorization on the time, and Spellings spent three days on a bus in Ohio and Indiana to advocate for preserving the coverage’s core principals, which included heavy reliance on standardized testing.
To kickoff her 2019 back-to-school tour, then-Secretary Betsy DeVos – one of many Trump administration’s least fashionable members and a critic of conventional public schooling – visited a non-public college. DeVos “did not do a lot in the way in which of remodeling coverage,” stated Jack Schneider, an schooling historian and professor at the College of Massachusetts Lowell. However she did normalize once-radical concepts akin to taxpayer-funded vouchers for personal colleges, Schneider famous.
This yr’s bus tour, based on Schneider, offers a possibility for Democrats to “inform a distinct story” about public colleges than the one “each events have been telling for the previous 4 a long time,” from high-stakes testing to privatization. This new story, he stated, may very well be about public colleges as anchors of the neighborhood and the necessity to “protect and maintain them at a time once they’re more and more underneath assault.”
“When Secretary Cardona embarks on his bus tour, he’ll be utilizing the symbolic energy of the workplace, moderately than pulling any specific coverage levers,” Schneider stated. There is not quite a bit he can do: Points akin to trainer recruitment and retention are principally as much as states and faculty districts.
“However the secretary can use the bully pulpit to attempt to direct consideration and set a nationwide coverage agenda.”
Contact Alia Wong at (202) 507-2256 or awong@usatoday.com. Comply with her on Twitter at @aliaemily.
