Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

This one shot is our only shot

Democrats are correct when they complain that the governor’s transportation funding plan amounts to a one-shot solution. But at least it’s a solution.

Democrats have shown little interest in finding a long-term funding arrangement for the transportation fund, which has been broke for several years and funded through a series of other one-shot gimmicks.The fact is, no one in state government has the political backbone to put the one thing on the table that would generate recurring revenue — an increase in the state’s gas tax, which is among the lowest in the nation.

Without it, we are destined to chase one-time funding solutions that will not be able to keep up with our needs and our roads will continue their deterioration.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Unbiased statistics needed to ensure honest debate on charter schools

There appears to be some doubt about the numbers that the Christie administration has been using to “prove” its contention that charter schools are the panacea to the problems facing poor school districts.

Robert Braun, in The Star-Ledger, took the state to task for its selective approach to statistics a month ago. More recently, Gordon MacInnes does the same thing. In an opinion piece on NJ Spotlight, the former education commissioner, raises questions about the structure of studies cited by Gov. Chris Christie and acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf to support charter schools. In fact, he writes, the “evidence for this contention is thin.”

To bolster its case, the NJ Department of Education (DOE) released in January tables of test results showing that about three-quarters of charters had higher proficiency rates on state tests than their district peers.

Not so fast.

Columnists, respected academics and public school advocates lost no time in pointing out that meaningful performance comparisons must involve students with similar characteristics — like free lunch eligibility, special education or English learner status.

Failing that, the comparisons cannot be used to decide which schools do the better job.

The department returned on March 11 with much more expansive documentation that — surprise — supported the same conclusion concerning the superiority of charters. Accompanying the multiple charts, tables and bar graphs were statements confirming and strengthening the Christie administration’s policy preferences.

Poverty status is at the core of the DOE’s contention.

Essentially, the department anchors its argument that charters are pretty much like district schools when it comes to poor kids by dismissing the distinction between “free” and “reduced” lunch eligibility.

And that, MacInnes says,  makes little sense. There are significant differences in scores between free and reduced lunch students, as well as between girls and boys in charter and public schools and those of English learners and all of these variables need to be controlled for in order that studies be taken seriously.

MacInnes — who served under Christie Whitman and serves as an assemblyman from conservative Morris County — is not taking sides in the charter debate. Rather, he is asking for an honest accounting, especially given that a handful of national studies offer evidence that directly contradicts what the Christie administration would have us believe.

Before the Christie Administration bets just about everything on charter schools, it should conduct a fair and more complete assessment of the performance of similar students. When Stanford undertook a large-scale evaluation in 17 states, it did just that. It found that only 17 percent of charter school students outperformed their district peers, but 37 percent underperformed them. The rest did about the same.

Eighty-three percent doing worse or about the same does not sound like the answer to New Jersey’s educational woes.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Court: Give schools what they deserve

A special master appointed by the state Supreme Court has found that education cuts pushed through by Gov. Chris Christie — and ultimately approved by the Democratic Legislature — violate the state’s constitution.

The cuts, which ignored Jon Corzine’s funding-reform law, had a disproportionate effect on low-income students, according to the master.

The ruling sets up a showdown between the governor and the court — the court, according to experts quoted by The Star-Ledger, is unlikely to ignore the findings of its own appointed master — that we have not seen since the court shut down the schools until the Legislature relented and passed the state’s first income tax.

The court decision puts the basic question in front of the public: What is the role of money in education? The answer, I think, is yes.

Given that there are plenty of studies that show that the best predictor of educational success is socio-economic status, meaning that communities that lack resources have the greatest trouble in providing quality schools. The only way we can offset the financial advantages that rich school districts have is by giving extra money to the poor ones — which rarely is enough to offset the vast array of other problems that hamper educational attainment.

You cannot expect a student who faces the danger of gunfire and gangs, hunger, lack of heat, broken families, etc., to perform at the same level as a kid from the suburbs, even a poor kid from the suburbs. The advantages that a kid gets in Cranbury, South Brunswick, Maplewood and Morris County are visceral and cannot be offset by charter schools, teacher accountability, high-stakes testing and all of the other gimmicks we have turned to as a way to avoid spending the necessary money to make up for the gap.

We should be striving for equity of opportunity, which we have basically abandoned.

For now, we are going to fight over where the money is going to come from to meet the court’s requirement that we actually pay for what we said we were going to pay for.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

An elegy for Wayne

A close friend died early this morning. This is for him and for those of us who loved him:

ELEGY: FOR WAYNE KRUGER, 1962-2011

Bombs fell in Baghdad that night, and all eyes were on the small screen
above the bar in a tavern that was demolished by mistake years later,
and what should have been a giddy chance to say goodbye and good luck
as you ventured west to the Rockies and a new start
became a solemn ceremony laced with uncertainty.
That war lasted just weeks, but never really ended, flaring
back up a dozen years later and still smoldering as the bombs
began to fall on Tripoli, hours before Bill called to tell us you were gone,
around the time that you left us. These things happen in threes is what they say, as if the dead
demand company in their travels, so when Annie heard about her Aunt Rae,
who died at ninety-seven a day before you were to go, it seemed to confirm
what we’ve known since Bill called with the news of your tumors:
It was when and not if, not maybe, and even the smallest bits of good news
provided in e-mail by your wife to the world were no match for the inevitable.
It all happened too quickly – a cliché, I know, but it did and I don’t give a damn
about the cliché right now because it all went down too quickly for any of us to comprehend.
And yes, too far away too to understand or say goodbye,
though distance is just physical and a piece of me feels
as if you’re still around the corner, as if we could meet at the Hub
and drink pitchers before driving to New Brunswick to throw
rice at the movie screen as Brad and Janet get married and drive off
into the sordid world of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.
One night, we stopped for drinks in the bar next door, the Stagecoach,,
Where the band played twisted, fevered jazz, the four of us the only white kids in the place
aside from a vibes player leading the musical assault.
We drank and left and laughed then shouted “asshole” at Brad on the screen
as sweet transvestites danced on the Arts Cinema stage.
On another night, you climbed the hill to the rail tracks
above the parking lot behind the theater –
I don’t remember who climbed with you but I do remember
the train whistle and someone yelling your name and the terror
that gripped my gut until you emerged from the darkness with a drunken laugh.
We were young, of course, and stupid and never thought of the consequences,
and I guess we were lucky to have gotten through all of that and, yes, to make a life,
which is all that we can ask of ourselves, to make a life and live it and be happy.
And I think of the tracer fire on the television that night
and the bomber planes over Libya tonight and question whether
anything has changed, whether it can, and know that so much has,
that you have left us, like Tommy and Glenn did before, too soon way too soon,
and that none of these words can do justice to your memory,
or the place you held in all of our hearts and souls.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.