United States Department of Education

Miguel Cardona, Joe Biden’s secretary of education, recently joined the faculty of Yale’s School of Management.

Cardona, who once taught at an elementary school in Meriden, was previously Connecitcut’s commissioner of education. Since Cardona served in the Biden administration, President Donald Trump has significantly reduced the Department of Education. Earlier this year, he signed an executive order demanding the closure of the education department in favor of sending its responsibilities to the states.

“We’re at a time where the current administration is taking aim at anything related to equity. And the appointment and the call of Secretary Cardona to come teach at SOM shows that there is a commitment on the part of educators at Yale to still value equity,”  Nathan Dudley ’82, a lecturer on public school education policy, said.

Cardona will co-teach the elective course “Education Policy” — which will cover such as accountability, college access and economic returns to education — with professor Seth Zimmerman during the 2025-26 academic year. 

Dudley highlighted Cardona’s stances on improving “college affordability” and creating “career pathways” as ones he hopes students learn from in the course.  

Beyond teaching, Cardona will also participate in programs run by The Broad Center — a School of Management program focused on K-12 public school students — to engage with leaders of school systems.

“What I think will be special about the course is that we will take on education policy issues in the context of specific decision points. Dr. Cardona’s experience as leader at the local and state level here in Connecticut and then at the federal level as Secretary of Education will give us a window into what the people making key choices were thinking,” Zimmerman wrote to the News.

Cardona and Zimmerman will explore how institutions like Yale fit into the higher education landscape and challenge their students to reflect on how policy decisions are made in circumstances of uncertainty and limited information.

“This is an incredibly challenging time politically nationwide, especially for the field of education, which I love so dearly as a strong believer in the federal government’s role in empowering and supporting schools, especially public and low-income schools, so it is not surprising that Yale made this call” Roy Kohavi ’26, a student in the intensive education studies certificate, wrote.

Dudley added that Cardona’s commitment to supporting teachers is especially valuable now, when teachers and teachers unions have been under attack by the current administration.

“I’m interested to see how Dr. Cardona’s experience in high-level governance will impact his teaching, particularly in how to maintain focused commitment to students when there are so many stakeholders vying for an education leader’s attention. Because that’s really who education leadership is about: students,” Noemi Liu ’26 wrote.

Liu added that “though Cardona was a prominent politician and has much insight to share on navigating federal leadership,” she is “the most excited about his experience as a practitioner and local leader.”

There is a large “policy-practice divide in education,” according to Liu, where the guidelines implemented by policymakers are often not translated effectively into practice within classrooms.

This reality makes a professional such as Cardona, who has worked at every level of public education, invaluable, she said. 

Cardona, a Connecticut native, became the state’s youngest principal at age 27 and later its commissioner of education.