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O’S ED. CZAR ZINGS IT TO CHEAPO CHARTER POLS

President Obama’s education chief slammed New York state lawmakers yesterday for shortchanging charter-school kids in the state’s budget.

In a meeting with The Post editorial board, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was surprised that Albany had added $405 million in state aid to public-school districts while hitting charter schools with what amounted to a $50 million cut.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Duncan said, after shaking his head for a minute. “These are our kids, these are our schools. If we’re serious about it, then let’s treat them all the same.”

Lawmakers are freezing charter-school funding for the coming fiscal year, which critics say guts nearly $1,000 per city charter student.

Duncan suggested the funding inequity was creating unnecessary divisions between traditional public schools and privately managed charters — even though they serve the same public-school kids.

“I have two children,” he said. “I’m not going to treat my son differently than I’m going to treat my daughter.”

As he’s done in recent days, Duncan continued touting the benefits of mayoral control of urban school districts — saying he’d like to see it expanded to cities like Los Angeles and Detroit.

When he made the same pitch earlier in the day at the National Action Network’s meeting in Midtown, it was met with an audible chorus of boos — making it the only portion of his speech that wasn’t well-received.

“It doesn’t mean you don’t have other voices,” he said. “Mayoral control doesn’t mean you don’t listen to other folks.”

One of the voices Duncan said he benefited from as schools superintendent in Chicago was that of an independent research group that analyzed school policies and programs using school-district data.

He said such an independent organization — something that’s been in the works in New York City for nearly two years — provided pivotal “checks and balances” on mayoral control.

“I made a lot of policy changes based upon the feedback they were giving me,” he said.

Following Duncan at the National Action Network meeting, Mayor Bloomberg also called for Albany to renew the mayoral-control law that’s set to sunset in June.

He even lambasted the former Board of Education’s dispersed power structure while standing within spitting distance of former Board of Ed president Bill Thompson — the current city comptroller and a leading Bloomberg rival in this year’s race for mayor.

He also called it “the ultimate case study in mismanagement,” and a system defined by “paralysis and dysfunction.”

The comments came a day after Thompson issued a scathing report that slammed the city Department of Education’s ballooning contracts.

Additional reporting by Carl Campanile

yoav.gonen@nypost.com