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Brooklyn College professor of education David Bloomfield says Mayor de Blasio’s decisions on co-locating charter schools were neither too accomodating nor too harsh, but politically and emotionally just right.
Yesterday’s complex co-location decision should not be seen as a political hit by City Hall.
Twenty-two of 28 New York City public schools were approved for co-location as were 14 of 17 charter school plans.
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Five of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters were approved while three were rejected. Such a record, on its face, seems likely to have been based on a considered evaluation by new Education Department staffers.
Remember, the original plans were intentionally rushed through at the eleventh hour of the Bloomberg administration. People will raise eyebrows that all three of the rejected charter proposals are sponsored by the Success organization. But each had obvious weaknesses: two are elementary schools that would have been housed with large high schools; the other would have resulted in classrooms split between two buildings.
Except for the political culture that now pervades all city policy discussion, Thursday’s decisions could well have been made on their merits.
I am not so naive to believe that politics played no role — but I’d suggest nonpolitical Education Department analysts conducted an objective review, which was then examined through a political lens.
Perhaps the outcome produced a Goldilocks solution: not too harsh, not too accommodating, but politically and educationally just right.
Bloomfield is a professor of education at Brooklyn College.
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