Ferrer Promises a Laptop Computer For Every Public High School Student

In a policy speech yesterday that was touted by his campaign as a “bold education plan,” the Democratic mayoral front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, promised to provide a free laptop computer to every public high school student in the city.The former Bronx borough president’s proposal on computers for student use came as he detailed how he would spend the additional billions of dollars in financing that state courts have ordered for the city’s school system, as a result of a lawsuit filed a decade ago by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. Governor Pataki has appealed the decision of Justice Leland DeGrasse, of state Supreme Court in Manhattan, that the city’s school system should receive $23 billion more in the next several years.Mr. Ferrer, reading from prepared remarks inside a television studio at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center in Manhattan, also excoriated Mayor Bloomberg for precipitating an education “crisis” in the city. In particular, the Democrat cited low graduation rates and promised that, if elected mayor, he would make sure the city had an additional 50,000 high school graduates over the next four years, and would raise graduation rates to the national average within eight years.Indeed, Mr. Ferrer pledged to make what he characterized a dropout crisis “job one” of his hoped for mayoralty.To do so, Mr. Ferrer said he would, among other measures, make capital improvements to the school system; reduce class sizes; create a “centralized tracking system to monitor student progress and attendance,” and “recruit and retain excellent teachers by paying them fairly and treating them respectfully.”He would use the Campaign for Fiscal Equity funds to spend $1.87 billion to reduce class sizes, $3 billion for professional development of teachers and principals, and $4.5 billion on increasing educators’ salaries.The students’ laptops, Mr. Ferrer estimated, would cost $750 million over five years.According to Mr. Ferrer, providing the computers – which, he specified, would be supplied with “filtering software” to ensure appropriate use – would help reduce the dropout rate by inspiring students to complete their homework and “build skills.”Both Mr. Bloomberg and another Democratic candidate for mayor, Gifford Miller, the City Council speaker, have already spelled out how they would spend the billions to improve city schools. Mr. Bloomberg released a series of “proposed CFE initiatives” in April 2004, and Mr. Miller explained earlier this year how he would improve city schools with the court-ordered windfall.In general, the proposals bear considerable resemblance to one another, while they differ somewhat in emphases. The mayor’s proposal for spending the additional $5.3 billion Justice DeGrasse ordered for the 2009 fiscal year would allocate, for example, $514 million for special education and so-called English Language Learner students.Under Mr. Ferrer’s plan, over the first five years, an extra $750 million would be spent on special-education and English-language-acquisition programs.Mr. Ferrer, in his speech yesterday, faulted the mayor for not having a plan to obtain that money, however. The Bloomberg administration told the court it does not want to contribute any of the $23 billion.Mr. Ferrer, in a policy speech in April, volunteered to pay $3.5 billion of the $23 billion to draw down $19 billion from Albany.The candidate’s critics have said Mr. Ferrer was weakening the city’s negotiating position with Albany by offering to pay $3.5 billion up front.Yesterday, Mr. Ferrer shot back. “My critics can say that I’m letting Albany off the hook,” the candidate said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m calling their bluff.”The Bloomberg campaign pounced on yesterday’s Ferrer speech, particularly the criticism of dropout rates under the mayor, as being built on false premises.The Bloomberg camp noted that, according to city Department of Education statistics and owing to measures implemented by Mr. Bloomberg after he won control of the city’s school system, dropout rates declined 4% in the last year and graduation rates inched up by 0.9%.“New Yorkers look at results, not rhetoric,” a spokesman for the Bloomberg campaign, Stuart Loeser, said in a statement. “Freddy was in city government for years and got nothing done to help fix our schools.”A scholar at the Manhattan Institute who specializes in education, Sol Stern, was similarly unimpressed by Mr. Ferrer’s initiative, labeling the candidate’s proposals vague and untenable.“It’s nice to have goals,” Mr. Stern said. “But he doesn’t have any magic wand to see that this happens. Like the previous chancellors didn’t want to increase graduation rates?”To Mr. Stern, Mr. Ferrer’s ill-defined plan to achieve higher graduation rates seemed like evidence of a stagnant campaign.“The Democrats can’t get any traction on really analyzing what’s right and what’s wrong with the Bloomberg reforms,” he said, “so they’re just floundering and lashing out.”For example, of Mr. Ferrer’s proposal for distributing computers to students, Mr. Stern said: “Even if the laptops didn’t disappear, which in most schools they would, what would be the advantage? Most kids can’t read. How is a laptop going to go into dealing with that problem?”Another aspect of Mr. Ferrer’s plan, the promises of more money for instructors, pleased the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. She praised the Democrat’s suggestions as “a good plan.”Of the funds from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, she said: “For us, we think the best way to spend the money is to make sure every single child has a qualified teacher.”

Ferrer Promises a Laptop Computer For Every Public High School Student

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