Ferrer Boasts of a Public Education He Lacked

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The New York Sun

The Democratic mayoral candidate, Fernando Ferrer, claimed on his campaign Web site that he was “educated in public schools for most of my education,” when in fact he went to Catholic school for 12 years before attending a private university.


Mr. Ferrer yesterday blamed an editing error for the mistake and corrected it after it was highlighted by the campaign of Mayor Bloomberg. Mr. Bloomberg attended public school in Medford, Mass.


One of Mr. Bloomberg’s senior campaign advisers, William Cunningham, said voters shouldn’t trust Mr. Ferrer on education policy if he misleads them on his own schooling.


“Freddy was wrong on accountability, wrong on social promotion, and wrong on standards at CUNY. Now he’s wrong about his own resume,” Mr. Cunningham said in a statement. “I happen to be a proud graduate of an excellent private parochial school and I can’t imagine why anyone would hide such a fact. Freddy should take these tall tales about his education off his blog, and the faster the better.”


In a mayoral debate last month, Mr. Ferrer declared that his daughter graduated from public school when she actually graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School. She did attend some public school.


In a September 6 Web log entry, under the heading “Posted by Fernando Ferrer,” the Democratic mayoral candidate wrote: “I was born in the South Bronx and educated in public schools for most of my education. If it weren’t for my inspirational teachers and a strong after-school program, I don’t know where I’d be today.”


While the young Mr. Ferrer might have learned from inspirational teachers, he never sat through an English exam, a chemistry lab, or an algebra class in a public school classroom. He spent his childhood in parochial schools.


Mr. Ferrer attended first and second grades at St. Lucy’s Academy in Harlem. From third grade through eighth grade, he attended St. Anselm’s School in the Bronx. Mr. Ferrer graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in 1967, and then graduated from New York University, a private university. He did earn a master’s degree from Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, in 2004.


Mr. Ferrer said during a campaign appearance yesterday that his original blog entry did not falsely assert where he was educated. But he did not respond to a reporter who asked him whether he could produce the original copy.


At the campaign event outside an Upper West Side public high school, Mr. Ferrer appeared with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean. “The simple fact is that I’ll submit an idea or a draft, and it will be edited,” Mr. Ferrer said. “But the simple fact is also it’s my campaign and it’s my responsibility, so that’s been corrected.”


When reporters continued questioning Mr. Ferrer about the blog entry, Dr. Dean downplayed the importance of blogs, despite the fact that his own campaign Web site, which prominently featured a blog, boosted him to a new level of national prestige last year.


“What is this obsession with blogs? Does anyone care about education in this city?” Dr. Dean asked. “Freddy cares about education. … I really think the people of New York are going to be more interested in what a Mayor Ferrer is going to do for the school system than they are about whatever Mayor Bloomberg’s nonsense about blogs is.”


Less than an hour after the Bloomberg campaign pointed out the error on the Ferrer blog, the item had changed online. The item, still under the heading “posted by Fernando Ferrer,” had a new, earlier date. The passage about Mr. Ferrer’s education was now read: “I was born and raised in the South Bronx. If it weren’t for my inspirational teachers and a strong after-school program, I don’t know where I’d be today.”


Yesterday’s news follows a week filled with education attacks flying back and forth between Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Ferrer.


Mr. Ferrer has repeatedly blamed Mr. Bloomberg for the city’s low graduation rate, something the mayor and the schools chancellor acknowledge is a problem and say they are working to fix.


On Monday, Herman Badillo, a former congressman who was chairman of the board of City University of New York, said Mr. Ferrer has never helped city schools and would make the public school system worse if he were elected mayor.


Yesterday, Mr. Ferrer and Dr. Dean tried to focus their message on what they portrayed as the mayor’s shortcomings in running the schools. Mr. Ferrer’s campaign manager, Nick Baldick, suggested that the Bloomberg campaign’s criticism of the false account on the Ferrer Web site was motivated by jealousy.


“We can understand, on a day when Freddy and DNC Chairman Howard Dean will be calling attention to the drop-out crisis presided over by Republican Mike Bloomberg, standing in front of a school with a 40.8% on time graduation rate, that the Bloomberg campaign would be desperate for anything to distract the public with – but we are confident that Freddy’s commitment to public education is well-known,” he said.


In the evening, a Ferrer campaign spokeswoman, Christy Setzer, sent out a list of instances in which the Bloomberg campaign Web site supposedly “pads” the mayor’s resume. None of the examples are about the mayor’s personal history. Rather, they are statistics on crime, jobs, and affordable housing that the Ferrer campaign questions and the Bloomberg campaign defends.


An authority on education issues from the Manhattan Institute, Sol Stern, said the discussion of education in this year’s race has been characterized by “spin on both sides,” entirely apart from Mr. Ferrer’s description of his own education.


He said the idea that any mayor could fix the drop-out situation in less than four years is “a lot of nonsense,” since the children in high school when a mayor takes over have spent their entire lives in schools run by other administrations. He said it would take at least a decade to change graduation rates substantively.


Also, Mr. Stern called one of Mr. Ferrer’s only education promises – providing a free laptop computer to every public high school student – “absurd.”


“Giving every kid in the system a laptop computer is not going to make the kids graduate,” Mr. Stern said. “That’s one of the most absurd proposals I’ve heard in many years of listening to politicians talk about education.”


The New York Sun

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