In a story we didn’t get to last week, CBS Mornings brought on Biden-Harris Education Secretary Miguel Cardona during the August 29 show and co-host Tony Dokoupil admirably grilled him on what he probably thought was going to be an easy interview about a supposed bus tour to promote public education and defend it (i.e. and prop up public sector unions) from those bastards on the right wanting to empower parents.
Instead, it turned into a back-and-forth on the cost of the Biden White House’s astronomically expensive student loan forgiveness plans, the pitfalls of this year’s student aid application process, and even whether America needs a federal Education Department.
While the interview ended with a softball about what he wanted to accomplish on said bus tour, Dokoupil dropped this humdinger that every conservative would want asked: “And it raises the question, you know, for 40 years now, there’s been a conversation about what the proper role is of the federal government in local and state schools. Why do we need a Department of Education these days?”
Cardona obviously defended his cabinet agency as necessary because they ensure “students...have access to teachers, have access to special education services” and claimed shuttering it would rob “students with autism or children with disabilities” of “the support that they need” and “rural communities” of “support” to succeed.
Rewinding to the beginning, Dokoupil started off with what Cardona may have thought as the start of something easy: “Time and again, the Biden administration has tried to lower or eliminate student loan payments for borrowers. You get knocked back again and again. At what point do you give up?”
Things pivoted with Dokoupil dropping this bit of knowledge: “The plans are costly. By your own numbers, it would cost more than what the DoE provides to public schools in a given year, right? So, why is it worth it?”
After Cardona said it’s “worth it because...we need to be competitive internationally” and it’s “fixing the root cause of the issue of college affordability”, Dokoupil hammered the obvious about easy money giving the higher education system an excuse to raise prices: “[P]art of my worry is that the colleges and universities themselves are just charging too high of a price, and they’re still going to get their money when you forgive it, and taxpayers are footing the bill.”
“Actually not. Because we have accountability measures that we put in place that have never been put in place,” Cardona replied in part, adding Republicans should work with him to ensure “public education...benefits the whole country.”
Dokoupil switched gears to this year’s disastrous Federal Application for Aid (FAFSA) process, which had massive delays and affected how families decided where to send their children to college this fall.
Following two attempts to have him explain why the wheels suddenly came off this year, Dokoupil pointed out his mother “filled it out with pen and paper at the kitchen table” many years ago, so the answer might be “the federal government...can’t handle technical things like this.”
Given this is partially how he justifies his department’s existence, Cardona was steadfast that it’ll be fixed and improved going forward since it hadn’t “been touched” “for 40 years.”
Before the question about why we need a Department of Education, Dokoupil brought up grade schools:
My mom was a public school teacher. I went to public school. My son, Teddy, is about to start public school. Public schools aren’t doing that well, however. Enrollment is down by a million kids or more. Segregation is persistent all across the country, and test scores are not good, middling or worse. What’s going on?
Of course, Cardona hit back and said Dokoupil’s “framing of the question indicates the opposite of what I’m seeing everywhere in the country.”
Dokoupil first hit back at how what Cardona claimed as “framing” were “the facts on the ground.”
To see the relevant transcript from August 29, click here.
