PHOENIX — By many estimates, Arizona continues to rank toward the bottom for education in several areas including teacher pay, funding and per-pupil spending.
These are issues the nation’s top leader of schools, U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, recognizes as he sat down with ABC15 for a one-on-one interview.
You can watch the full interview with U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona below
On Friday, Cardona was in the Valley to discuss improvements for student mental health and changes to FAFSA, the application for federal student aid for higher education.
In the last few months, ABC15 reported on the issues that came up with the new FAFSA rollout, which include an issue where students whose parents do not have a social security number cannot apply. Most of the issues reported have now been resolved.
“We expect this process to open the door to college to so many students, including students who might be first-generation college students. We recognize the challenges this rollout played and the challenges with some of the contracting we have had created frustrations for all of us,” Cardona said on Friday. “We’re committed to helping those students and helping those families in ensuring they have access to college.”
With Arizona’s continually low rankings in different areas from organizations and reports, ABC15 asked what the federal government is doing to help improve test scores, funding and teacher pay.
In respect to improving educational outcomes, Cardona says the administration is pushing for expanded summer programming, after-school programming and providing more intervention for students.
As for funding and teacher pay, Cardona says the federal government pays a small percentage of education funding to states in general – at 9%. The rest comes from state and local.
“We’re working with states, legislative leaders on this,” he said of teacher pay specifically, adding that quite a few states have increased salaries in the past few years.
Cardona mentions the ‘ABCs of teaching’ to help keep qualified educators in classrooms: Agency for teachers, Better working conditions and Competitive salaries.
“We need a profession where we don’t have to rely on teachers to work Uber or bartend on the weekends,” he said, then highlighting the programs the Biden-Harris Administration has worked on including grants to help grow teachers through a program as well as teacher apprenticeships.
To make the profession more desirable, Cardona told ABC15 they’ve been working on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness for educators who have been in the industry and paying for their student loans for 10 years.
“I’ve spoken to teachers that have had over $100,000 of debt forgiven. So that’s something President Biden is doing. We’re fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program,” he said.
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In the work of trying to help improve test scores after the COVID-19 pandemic or funding, Cardona says Arizona’s governor has been “fantastic.”
“But, I continue to hear challenges from the Department of Education here and even with multilingual programs or bilingual programs,” Cardona continued. “To me, it’s going in the wrong direction. There has to be willingness.”
While Cardona doesn’t mention Arizona’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, it appears he’s aware of Horne’s feelings about dual language being improperly taught in classrooms and the lawsuit against that.
“It’s inconceivable to me at any part of this country that we don’t value bilingualism as a strength for a student. If anything, it can lead to better economic opportunities for students, for the community,” he said.
Horne previously told ABC15 that he supports students learning new languages, but wants English language learners to be proficient in English first, which he maintains that’s the rule of Prop 203 that he tried suing over.
Cardona also spoke about the controversial universal Empowerment Scholarship Accounts program, where critics continue to push for reform. Other states are also trying to move toward the school choice program that critics call “vouchers.”
“We have to make a decision: do we want to defund public education or defend it? We have states that are adamant that they’d rather put money into vouchers and take money away from local public schools at the detriment of students,” Cardona said.
On Friday, Cardona discussed mental health for students with higher education leaders in Arizona; that topic is a part of the concern over safety and security in schools.
“We shouldn’t always only think about it when we hear about a devastating school shooting. The mental health of our youth is in crisis. Security issues are the number one issues for families, for schools,” Cardona said. “This is an example where the President worked to lead a bipartisan Safer Communities Act through Congress.”
