President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration next week will mean sweeping changes in the way the federal government approaches issues from foreign policy to education, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has pushed back on what he expects from his successor .

In an interview with NBC News this week, Cardona, who served in President Joe Biden's Cabinet for four years, said he was proud of his efforts to protect the changes implemented under his leadership while also worried about Trump's How a second Trump administration will deal with education issues, including Trump’s stated goal of completely eliminating the Department of Education.

Cardona said eliminating the department would widen gaps among students and disproportionately harm the most vulnerable.

"At its core, the federal Department of Education is a civil rights agency that ensures students in protected classes, especially their rights, and that students receive the supports that public education should provide," Cardona said. "This will differentiate between the haves and the have-nots. creates a larger gap.”

Trump has repeatedly accused Democrats of politicizing schools and promised to cut funding for some schools. "Starting on day one, I will sign a new executive order cutting federal funding to any school that promotes critical race theory, transgender madness, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content to our children," he said. ”

Cardona said Trump's plan would "deteriorate the fabric of our country."

Trump transition team spokesman Brian Hughes disputed Cardona's claims and said the "best movements" to have the "most positive impact" on the nation's education system are happening at the local and state level.

"Only a libertarian bureaucratic mentality would think that government is going to be the solution to our education system," Hughes said. "So I think when the president and Linda McMahon are confirmed, you're going to see a department that recognizes More power and economic freedom needs to be put into the core mission of educating our children at the local and state level, and if you do that, if you actually bring reform ideas and options back to local communities, it will have the exact opposite effect. difference. It will actually bring more equity and equal educational opportunities to communities, especially underserved communities.”

The sector’s existential problems are not the only looming education battle. Asked how he would seek to protect some of the Biden administration's jobs in the department after he leaves office, Cardona said he was proud of the streamlined Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

“In the first Trump administration, we had 7,000 people who received debt relief — those were teachers, nurses, firefighters, police officers — and now we have over 1 million,” Cardona said. “So, The way we're changing should continue to grow -- unless, you know, the next administration tries to destroy bipartisan relief measures."

But some of Cardona’s critics see the passage of a separate student loan deferment program under Biden as an opportunity for immediate change under Trump.

Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said he welcomes the administration's changes and wants to see "student loans return to a proper agreement between borrowers and taxpayers."

He also said he wants to see the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, undergo a botched process redesign that disrupted decision-making timelines for current and prospective college students and schools across the country. Form (FAFSA) changes.

Hess also criticized Cardona's leadership and said he "politicized the department in small and unnecessary ways." Cardona has denied the accusation, but Republicans actually made it against Democrats at the ballot box.

"It's like a turnaround for a business. You have to, like, fix all the bad things before you start doing what you want to do," Hess said, adding that while he doesn't think the Department of Education will be eliminated of support, but he'll be fine with it disappearing.

“The federal government can do education, higher education, K-12 education, whether there is a department or not,” Hess said. "In terms of what's being done in Washington, in terms of schools or universities, it doesn't really matter whether there's a website that says you're visiting the U.S. Department of Education right now. What really matters is what kind of rules we're writing, what kind of rules exist The debate is less helpful when the focus is on 'abolition of the department' rather than those more concrete and important things."

Trump nominated Linda McMahon as his choice to lead the Department of Education. McMahon is a former World Wrestling Entertainment executive who served as director of the Small Business Administration in Trump's first administration.

"I don't know if McMahon has the ability to do it. I don't know her. We'll see to some extent through her confirmation process," Hess said. “But her background in business and small business management certainly indicated to me that she might have the right skills.”

Hess added that he would like to see legislative changes in Congress to strengthen school choice initiatives, as well as executive orders from Trump on issues such as combating anti-Semitism and discrimination on college campuses. Still, he acknowledged that some of Cardona's biggest actions are irreversible, including his funding of state initiatives and millions of dollars in student loan forgiveness.

Meanwhile, Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN, a nonprofit that supports charter schools and school choice policies like vouchers, said he would like to see some steps taken by the Department of Education under Trump , such as making it easier to get federal funding to start charter schools and support career and technical education programs and college and career apprenticeship programs. He added that despite the partisanship in the education debate, he hoped the country could come together.

"Education is political and therefore partisan to some extent. But a family's love for their child and their desire for their child to be the best version of themselves is apolitical," Bradford De said. “I would also like to see the department spend more time highlighting what states are doing together, regardless of who is in charge, to show that such collaboration is still possible.”