Biden's education secretary visits Florida, praises after-school programs

Share this article

Biden’s Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, made a recent trip to Miami, Florida to talk about mentoring, after-school programs, and learning loss.

Cardona went to a local high school with Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, and then to an elementary school that bears Wilson’s name. At the elementary school, Cardona had a roundtable discussion with “principals, after-school programming leaders, and Miami-Dade County School Board members.” The topic of the roundtable was how Miami-Dade County tried to stem learning loss by pushing for learning recovery, by way of mental health support and after-school programs.

CBS News reported the news about Cardona’s visit, but did not elaborate why there was learning loss in the first place.

There was no mention of school shutdowns under the direction of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the federal medical bureaucracy. Neither was there any admission of how teachers’ unions contributed to significant learning loss among students by clamoring for keeping schools closed.

Also, it was an interesting time to visit Florida for a Biden administration official because Florida underwent a political “red wave” in recent elections. Despite the Biden administration’s rhetoric maligning the Republican-run state, Cardona’s visit may have been an olive leaf to Florida Democrats after the national Democratic Party likely wrote off Florida as a viable battleground state in the 2024 presidential election.