Click listed here for a duplicate of this letter in Spanish
To our Nation’s Moms and dads and Students:
I publish very first, as your new Secretary of Training, to accept the extraordinarily challenging year you’ve endured. Concerning the health disaster, financial hardship, staunch countrywide division, and the wrestle to make development in mastering although aside from lecturers and friends, the influence of the pandemic is still extremely true and will be felt for years to arrive.
And yet, you’ve kept heading. As a guardian of two who knowledgeable these exact issues and uncertainties, and an educator who has been moved by the resilience of the learners and households I’ve satisfied, allow me say: you have earned recognition and you have my deepest many thanks.
Brighter times are in advance. We are building development. Extra colleges across the country are reopening for in-individual mastering, and they are performing so with the help of clear, science-centered steering from experts in the field. The Office has launched aspect a person of a COVID-19 Handbook to help colleges apply steering from the Centers for Ailment Regulate and Avoidance, and we’re working on the 2nd quantity. Jointly, these guides will offer far more proof-centered techniques for colleges to limit disruptions brought on by school closures, in particular for our most vulnerable learners and communities and address the influence of COVID-19 on instructional chance across communities.
The most pressing challenges we encounter are not new. Considering the fact that I began teaching far more than twenty years back, chance gaps continue to be. There are still unacceptable disparities in large school graduation premiums and increased education is still out of achieve for also several learners, which includes learners of coloration, these from very low-revenue households, and these, as I was, who would be the very first in their households to show up at.
These inequities are not just holding our children back again from reaching their complete possible – they are holding our country back again, also. We all profit when our children have large-high-quality alternatives to develop their expertise and make their awareness – and then, share their items and skills with the environment.
Our very first priority is to return learners to the classroom for in-individual mastering, but we know there is far more get the job done to be finished when we have accomplished that intention. We’re also working towards making far better profession pathways, building higher education far more cost-effective, guaranteeing all learners have accessibility to large high-quality colleges with a balance of high-quality coursework that involve the arts and sciences, supporting instructor high-quality and strengthening instructor range, assure lecturers receive the aid and regard they want and have earned, increasing accessibility to large-high-quality preschool, and supporting large-high-quality profession and technological education.
President Biden’s strategies are daring, but they match the urgency that the challenges prior to us demand from customers. And as Secretary, I will often keep learners and their results at the coronary heart of the Department’s get the job done.
We know that, provided the right aid, assets and alternatives, our possible is boundless. Even with our anxieties as mothers and fathers, this year we have witnessed new proofs of our children’s ingenuity, optimism, and means to overcome the toughest of circumstances.
If we all commit to approaching the remainder of this school year – and the years to arrive – with this exact frame of mind of probability, perseverance, and innovation, we can and will make very good on our guarantee to America’s learners. As an educator and as a guardian, I commit to safeguarding and advancing the goals of your children, as I commit to the goals of my have son and daughter.
Our nation’s learners have earned – and they will get – our extremely finest initiatives, our most collaborative pondering, and our deepest belief in their qualities. Jointly, we can make a foreseeable future of guarantee and chance that can make no exceptions.
Sincerely,
Secretary Miguel Cardona