Ravitch in HuffPo: "The Smear Campaign Against Mayor Bill de Blasio"

Context from Smarmie Doofus: We just had an election here. De Blasio was explicit: he wanted to limit and in some cases reduce the proliferation of Charter Schools in NYC ( which to put it mildly, is in many ways problematic for the vast majority of NYC PS students.) His GOP opponent, Joe Lhota, who regarded them as an unmitigated 'good', favored an across-the-board increase of Charters throughout the city.

Election result: De Blasio: 73.3%; Lhota: 23.3%

It would appear that that the "people have spoken."

Here's Dr. Ravitch:



>>>>Perhaps you have seen the headlines and the television interviews about how New York City's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, is closing charter schools, evicting poor minority children, destroying their dreams for the future, and their chance to escape failing public schools.

Almost all the complaints come from Eva Moskowitz, who runs New York City's largest charter chain. Her grievances have been amply vented on Fox News, MSNBC's Morning Joe and Chris Mathews, in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

Time for a fact check.

When de Blasio ran for mayor, he said he would slow the growth of charters and would charge them rent, based on their ability to pay. In the closing months of the Bloomberg administration, the city's Department of Education approved 45 new co-locations. A co-location is a new school inserted into an existing public school, meaning that different schools must share the cafeteria, library, playground, and give up its art room, music room, and every other space that is not an active classroom. Public school parents hate co-locations, because it means overcrowding, jostling for space, and reduction of facilities.

The new mayor, having inherited 45 co-locations, decided to approve 36 of them. This disappointed many public school parents. The mayor turned down only nine co-locations.

The de Blasio administration rejected the nine based on these criteria:

It would not approve putting an elementary school into a high school.
It would not open any school with less than 250 students because the school would be too small to meet the needs of students.
It would not approve any co-locations that required heavy construction.
It would not approve any co-location that dislocated students with disabilities. The neediest kids would not be shoved aside to make room for other students.
The nine schools that were turned down did not meet these criteria.

Of 17 charter schools tha >>>>> the rest at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/charter-schools-bill-de-blasio_b_4934764.html