Arguing that Fernando Ferrer would “absolutely” take the city’s schools in the wrong direction were he elected, Mayor Bloomberg’s top Hispanic supporter, Herman Badillo, yesterday joined the Bloomberg campaign’s effort to discredit the Democratic mayoral nominee’s education agenda.

Mr. Badillo, the first Latino elected president of the Bronx and the first Puerto Rican member of Congress, supported Mr. Ferrer when he ran for City Council and the Bronx presidency. Yesterday, however, Mr. Badillo said the Democratic nominee has never taken any opportunity to improve schools in the past – and probably wouldn’t if he were elected.

“He has not had any issue, he has not had any philosophy, and that’s very important, because, you see, education is the key to abolishing poverty in this city and in this country,” Mr. Badillo said.

Adding that Mr. Ferrer “never agreed to the idea of higher standards,” Mr. Badillo said that while he has fought for higher standards in city schools for more than three decades, Mr. Ferrer has fought against them.

The Bloomberg campaign, which says education is the mayor’s top priority, distributed a list of what it called Mr. Ferrer’s major education blunders.

In 2001, Mr. Ferrer, who says education and affordable housing are his top concerns, opposed the abolition of the Board of Education, saying, “I challenge anyone to show how abolishing the Board of Education will raise a child’s reading or math scores by a single point. It just won’t.”

Since Mr. Bloomberg took over the school system in 2002, test scores have jumped in all grade levels. As president of the Bronx, when Mr. Ferrer controlled a seat on the Board of Education, he did nothing to decrease dropout rates – an issue he’s used to bash Mr. Bloomberg – and he opposed efforts to end the social promotion of failing students.

The Bloomberg campaign pointed out that dropout rates jumped when Mr. Ferrer controlled the Bronx, with just 40.3% of students graduating when Mr. Ferrer left office in 2000. Since Mr. Bloomberg centralized the school system, that figure has increased almost 12 percentage points, to 51.9%.

The Bloomberg administration also blasted Mr. Ferrer for opposing the end of open admissions at the City University of New York. In 1999, Mr. Ferrer predicted the move would reduce the number of minority students at the city colleges. In fact, the number of Hispanic students is up 17%.

The Ferrer campaign shot back that Mr. Ferrer fought to end corruption on the school boards, supported charter schools, and helped provide streetlights around Bronx schools. As mayor, Mr. Ferrer will boost high school graduation rates, reduce class sizes, and expand after-school programs, the challenger’s campaign said. A Ferrer spokeswoman, Christy Setzer, said the mayor has had an “obsessive focus” on test scores and has “ignored everything else.”

The campaign also distributed a statement from a Ferrer supporter, the current Bronx president, Adolfo Carrion Jr., expressing strong disagreement with attempts by the mayor to use Mr. Badillo to “distort Fernando Ferrer’s record.”

“Freddy Ferrer has stood tall and proud for our kids and our schools,” he said. “He knows the reality of what happens when kids don’t graduate and he has a real plan to build a school system that focuses on graduating all our kids with the skills they need.”

Asked at a press conference why the Bloomberg campaign was even responding to Mr. Ferrer’s education attacks given the mayor’s dominance in the polls, Mr. Bloomberg said he was just defending himself.

“What I’ve got to do is tell people what I’ve done, and if somebody is running against me and my opponent is using numbers that are just totally fictitious – made up – point out that this is what I’ve done and when he had an opportunity to do something he didn’t do it,” he said.

“Those are the facts and I’m not trying to do anything other than to tell everybody this is a race, it’s going to be a close race, but we have changed the school system. He had the opportunity when he was borough president and City Council member to do so and did not.”