So in the big picture, who’s a bigger threat to the charter public school movement? New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has pledged to reduce public subsidies for charters that he thinks give them an unfair advantage over traditional public schools? Or Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is determined to make charter critics’ argument for them by obliterating any distinction between charters and unaccountable private school vouchers?
It’s hard to say who is being served by Bobby crashing into Gotham politics with a New York Post op-ed blasting de Blasio and staunch charter supporter Barack Obama as equally opposed to “school choice,” the term by which he and other Republicans invariably try to obliterate the very concept of public schools. Though Jindal purports to be defending New York charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz, who is in a high-profile battle with de Blasio, I suspect this is some outside help she’d just as soon forego. For Bobby, of course, this is just another example of him looking for national conservative attention as a respite from his unpopular administration in Louisiana, with which he appears to be bored.
