(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Randi was in full “make stuff up” mode today, making the video above all the more welcome. After a few paragraphs of feverish conspiracy mongering regarding charter schools being a “coordinated national effort to decimate public schools” (er, Randi, charters are public schools…) Randi stated “To make matters worse, many charters cherry-pick their students, leaving cash-strapped public schools with higher populations of students with special or high needs, further tipping the scales.”
Evidence? She don’t need no stinking evidence!
In addition to the points made by the video about magnet schools and charter school admission lotteries, it is worth noting that district schools routinely “cherry pick” by family income through attendance boundaries encompassing high-priced real estate.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Bronx Science and Stuyvesant High operate on AFT staff and tax dollars, last I looked.
Not only those, but the NYC DOE / UFT also operate a large portfolio of “gifted and talented” K-5 and K-8 schools, where entry is guarded by an IQ-lite test given to four-year-olds, and, even more interestingly in my opinion, a handful of “progressive” unzoned schools (Deb Meier’s original Central Park East and its offshoots) where admissions is determined in the exact same manner as it is in NY charter schools.
Suffice it to say, poor children of color are massively underrepresented in the unionized choice schools. The system demands that they stay in their “neighborhood schools,” with no exceptions, and fight to “fix” them.