The Stakes Feel Higher Than Ever As The Education Secretary Welcomes Students Back

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U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, pictured here in March, begins a back-to-school tour of the Midwest on Monday.

Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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The data offer cause for both alarm and comfort. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, as of Sept. 9, nearly 5.3 million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began, but nearly 500,000 of those cases have come in just the past two weeks, as kids returned to classrooms, sometimes with unmasked classmates. If there is good news in these numbers, it’s that, according to the AAP, severe illness and hospitalization remain uncommon, and deaths are rarer still — just «0.00%-0.03[%] of all child COVID-19 cases.»

So Cardona’s job is two-fold: to use his bully pulpit to push schools and, in some cases, state leaders to adopt the kinds of strong safety measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and to reassure anxious parents, caregivers and educators that, with those measures in place, kids can — and should — return to school.

«The return to school this year is more special than ever,» Cardona said, «after many of our nation’s students have been disconnected from their peers, educators, classrooms, school communities and learning routines for over a year.»

Each stop of the five-state, Midwestern tour will have its own theme. A Wednesday event in Kendallville, Ind., will focus on adult education and literacy while, in Lansing, Mich., Cardona will highlight the administration’s efforts to improve access to early childhood education.

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At every stop, Cardona will almost certainly talk up the enormous infusion of federal funding schools have received since the pandemic began, including in the American Rescue Plan, which carried a roughly $122 billion lifeline to help schools pay for everything from improved ventilation and extra staffing to summer school and tutoring for children to recover some of the learning time they may have lost during the pandemic.

Cardona’s pitch will likely balance this kind of informed optimism with the occasional burst of political pugilism. Fights over masking and vaccinating students have roiled many districts, and Biden’s education secretary has repeatedly thrown punches in the name of public health.

When several states banned schools from requiring that students wear masks, the secretary announced his department would investigate them for potentially violating the civil rights of students with disabilities. When Florida withheld the salaries of some school officials who defied the state’s mask mandate ban, Cardona unveiled a grant to cover the costs.

The tour wraps up on Friday with a school visit in Canton, Mich., outside Detroit.