schools – Hank Kalet

Everything is on the block

Maybe I should just accept it, but there is something unsavory about turning school property into an opportunity to make a buck.

South Brunswick approved a plan last night to allow advertising on its property, hoping it will lead to a boost in revenues that will allow the district to increase spending on education. The advertising initiative is allowed under a relatively new state law and is part of a historical trend in which public facilities are put of for sponsorship.

While the district has no plans to create, say, a Patch.com Field House or the AOL Elementary School, you have to wonder just how long it will be before we have that discussion.

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.

The selling of schools

So this is what we’ve come to — putting our school properties up for sale because we refuse to commit resources to education.

The South Brunswick School District — like far too many others in the state — is looking into selling advertising space on school property to generate revenue, an effort that has been made necessary because of state budget cuts and a general unwillingness to consider real school funding reform.

I can’t blame the district for moving in this direction, even if I find the notion of commercialized school space deplorable. If the state is not going to follow through on its obligation to make sure that all schools have the needed funding, then local districts really have no choice.

The problem is part of the larger failure in the United States to commit real money to schools. Rather than fix the problems we have in our educational system, we employ gimmicks like the advertising gambit and gut the public education system with charters and vouchers and a slew of rote tests that measure nothing.

Our public schools are our most important resource, the one unifying civic institution in a fragmenting nation. But we have little concern for that. Instead, we are prepared to gut them and turn them into just another area where commerce can be done.

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.

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.

Quote of the day: Robert Braun cuts to the chase

There are a lot of serious flaws — unfixable flaws — with the “scholarship” bill that has been making its way through the state Legislature in recent days.

First, we should be working to improve public education by making public schools better, by finding more money for schools in urban districts and changing the funding mechanism to make it fairer. Creating a system in which the state gives tax credits to rich folks to create scholarships designed to siphon kids from the public schools into private — including religious — schools does not improve educational opportunity. It only exacerbates the gap between urban and suburban schools (the top kids get to escape failing schools) and endorses the privatization of public schooling.

Just as important, the bill would take public money — tax money — and hand it off to religious schools, an endorsement of religion that is a direct violation of the First Amendment prohibition against the state wading into religion.

This brings me to the quotation referenced in this post’s title, from one of the few top-notch political columnists in the state, Robert Braun of The Star-Ledger:

It is just plain wrong to use taxes to promote a religious message.

Simple. To the point. Too bad the people in Trenton do not seem to be listening.

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.

Broken schools? Depends on where you live

I have been thinking hard on the charter plan being pushed by Gov. Chris Christie, a retread of the tired schools choice debate that has been going on nationally and pushed by free-market zealots for years.

Gov. Christie used a (flawed) Star-Ledger special report issued earlier this week to back up his contention that school choice works:

The report obtained by The Star-Ledger compared 2010 standardized test scores for charter schools against district schools. The scores were from grades 3 through 8, and 11th grade. That data is contained in a report expected to be released today by the state Department of Education.

The newspaper analysis shows 76 percent of charter school eighth grades outpaced performance in their districts in language arts, for example, as did 68 percent of fourth-grade classes in language arts, and 58 percent of fourth-grade classes in math. At the high school level, 69 percent of schools outperformed district classes in the language arts portion of the high school proficiency exam, and 54 percent outdid district classes in math.

There are about 73 charter schools operating in New Jersey now, most in urban areas, serving varying grade levels.

Bob Braun, the Ledger’s fine columnist, reminds us that we must look at the charter numbers with a jaundiced eye. The report — later issued by Christie — did little more than prove “that the charter schools best able to exclude the neediest students got both the highest test scores,” which is something charter critics have long argued. If the best students can migrate away from urban schools, it has a residual effect on the schools left behind.

From a statistical standpoint consider this:

We have a school district with 35 kids. The median test school is 70 (the student with the 18th highest score; 17 higher and 17 lower) and the average is 70 (meaning that, when you add all scores together and you divide by the number of students you get 70). If you remove the top six students — say they average 90 — then you move the median figure downward — the median would be the 15th highest (14 higher and 14 lower). No change in results, but the median drops. Same with the average — take the top six scores out and you are left with 29 students with a 66 average without anything else changing.

Braun calls school choice another broken promise to the state’s neediest children:

School choice—that’s the latest ticket to “equal educational opportunity,” according to the governor. Finally, a solution that won’t require children to be with other children who don’t look like them. A solution that won’t require a lot more money or state effort.

But it’s not helping, either. It’s just further isolating the neediest children. Charters enroll far fewer very poor children with educational problems than do the traditional schools.

And, while a few charters might be helping a small number of inner-city children, their test scores, like those of traditional schools, still lag behind the rest of the state.

Addressing the failings of poor schools will take far more of a commitment of resources than we seem willing to provide and it will mean addressing the long-standing racial, ethnic and class segregation that has plagued this allegedly liberal state. But then, no one seems to be all that concerned with fixing things for he poorest of the poor.

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.