NEO•GRIOT
Time 2021-11-20 10:27:58Web Name: NEO•GRIOT
WebSite: http://kalamu.posthaven.com
ID:240755
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NEO,GRIOT,Description:
keywords: description:Kalamu ya Salaam's information blogphoto by Alex Lear
I Want To Talk About You
(for my sister Czerny)
this poem was supposed to be
for/abt you but as i was thinking
i felt another need
know in order to truth talk
abt you i had to truth talk
abt how our hours
on this earth spot
some call a civilized nation
has been bitter centuries long
long, long after the chains fell
our unhealed scars are serious sores
still too tender to touch
abt how few
of us really comprehend the enormity
of our history of captivity
not only the horror of what was done to us
but what the residue of that historic undoing
continues to do to us today
our genitals were
put on public display
if you were white
you could see cleotis' thing
silent in a sealed see-through coffin
howard kept the sinister cylinder at his shop
behind the unpainted cypress wood counter
out of plain sight but was always proud
to hoist the mason jar
with the shiriveled, pickled penis
into the surprise of sunlit delight
and the carefree hoots of the gathered
good old boys, although we never knew
who actually did the cutting
we all knew where the evidence was kept
they say in france they got
the vagina of our sister entombed
(for medical research of course)
venus, the "hottentot venus"
they sarcastically called her,
and when she was alive they paraded her
naked on a pay per view basis
and people paid to see how big her butt
was, and later after she died, how big
her vagina was, and the worse
part was that crowds of humans
actually went and oohed and ahhed
and paid money to see something
the creator gave to all of us
could my name be cleotis
could your name be venus
why should anyone want
to trophy our genitals?
i turn over naked
in my nude sleep sometimes,
hold myself hard with my hand
and imagine the pain
and wonder how does a man
live without himself?
what i really want to talk abt
is how we lived despite
the mutilations
i am so impressed by the beauty
of a people who can survive
the public display of our privates,
who could rise the next morning
face the pain and still believe
in living a good life
you are one of those old ones
the women who tear-washed
and bare-handedly buried the broken bodies
cauterized wounds and stitched together
some kind of tough, tough love
that mended men
and raised the manchild even after
the man was gone
this poem is
for you and all the race
women like you who continue
to feed us reason to live
when suicide seems unavoidably sensible
me and all my manhood
bears daily witness
i would be nothing were it not
for the redemptive love
of certain of my sisters, my mothers
my aunts, grandmothers and
women friends securely umbilicaling
sustenance into my soul
all the remaining years of my life
i will never cease
wanting to talk abt you
needing to talk abt you
to talk abt you
talk abt you
—kalamu ya salaam
5 BRIDGES CROSSING
TROUBLE WATERS
via soulculture.co.uk
Yasiin Bey (FKA Mos Def) x Mannie Fresh – “Black Jesus” | New MusicApril 1, 2013
Last week at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix Arizona Yasiin Bey, formerly Mos Def, performing two new records to a packed house titled “Black Jesus” and “Young Love” produced by former Cash Money in-house beatsmith Mannie Fresh, products of the time the two spent together creating late last year.
Well moments ago we got the recorded version of “Black Jesus” which will feature on the duo’s forthcoming collaborative project OMFGODBKNOLA and you can give it a spin below.
Peep the performances from the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix Arizona below.
“Black Jesus”
“Young Love”
via writersafrika.orgAre You a Poet? Be a Fair Clout Judge (Africa-wide)
The Fair Clout project is out to publish a periodic series of high-edged, artistic poetry from writers around the world in a poetry series collection titled ‘Fair Clout’. The ‘Fair Clout’ series is currently awaiting its second series title, the ‘Folk Sketches’.
Submission of entry to qualify for selection to publish in the ‘Fair Clout’ series is currently on. Be a Fair Clout judge. Bring your intuition and intellect to help us pick the winning writer for the ‘Fair Clout’ project.
WHO IS ELIGIBLE TO BE A FAIR CLOUT JUDGE?
The ‘Judge’ role is taken by volunteers with sound understanding and interpretation of poetry or general literary work, must possess quality interpersonal and communication skills, be above 18, and own a social network account- preferably ‘Twitter’.
HOW DO YOU ENTER FOR THE ROLE?
If you meet the criteria for the ‘Judge’ role, and will wish to volunteer for this, send an email containing your personal bio, address, phone number and twitter handle with the subject: ‘Fair Clout Judge Volunteer’ to the ‘Fair Clout’ publisher at: ceopensage@gmail.com, or pensage_69@yahoo.com.
Read about the ‘Fair Clout’ submissions.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries/ submissions: ceopensage@gmail.com, or pensage_69@yahoo.com
Website: https://www.facebook.com/FairClout.ACaseOfLines
via watermanfund.orgEnter the 2013 Alpine Essay Contest
Guy and Laura Waterman spent a lifetime reflecting and writing on the Northeast's mountains. The Waterman Fund seeks to further their legacy through essays that celebrate this wilderness spirit.
This year's contest theme is: Technology in the woods! Do you venture into the woods with a smart phone or iPad or personal music player? Do you Twitter about bear encounters or call home in the evening? What do you think about “that guy” sitting in the corner of the shelter texting about the number of miles he hiked today? Or are you that guy? How does technology affect personal safety and responsibility? Is keeping the woods separate from our ever-connected world an artificial construct or a necessity? The Waterman Fund is seeking personal essays about the technological changes you've seen arriving in the backcountry and how these changes have affected your experience and the wild itself.
The Waterman Fund seeks the submission of essays about life in the mountains of the northeastern U.S. for its annual Waterman Fund Alpine Essay Contest held in partnership with Appalachia Journal.Wildness! Are you finding it where you least expect? Did you go in search and it wasn't there? The Waterman Fund is seeking personal essays about stewardship of wild places, whether through a scientific lens or an encounter with wildness.
What do we mean by "the spirit of wildness?" Why is it so important to our lives? Or, is it? Guy and Laura Waterman spent a lifetime reflecting and writing on the Northeast's mountains. The Waterman Fund seeks to further their legacy through essays that celebrate this spirit.
The winning piece will be published in Appalachia Journal. The winning essayist will be awarded $1500. Honorable mention will receive $500.
All are encouraged to submit essays for the 2013 contest. Essays must be original works at least 2000 words long. Writers who have not published a book on such topic or who have not been published in a national magazine on such topic are eligible for participation. Essays are due April 15, 2013. Winners will be announced by July.
Please include a brief cover letter with your contact information and a few lines about why you feel that your essay is right for this contest. We request (though don't require) that all manuscripts are double-spaced and in a 12 point font. We won't consider fiction, poetry, or songs; we're looking solely for nonfiction essays, whether with a personal, scientific, or memoir bent.
We appreciate online submissions. If you prefer to submit by mail, include a SAS postcard or your email address; we try to let you know as soon as we've received your work.
To submit an entry, email a Word document (or compatible format) and accompanying cover letter to: essays@watermanfund.org" essays@watermanfund.org or mail to:
The Waterman Fund, Attn: Annie Bellerose P.O. Box 1064 East Corinth, VT 05040
via writersafrika.orgCall for Papers for Scholarly Publication - Zora Neale Hurston: Art, Religion, and the History of the African DiasporaDeadline: 1 May 2013
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was an anthropologist, a novelist, a folklorist, a playwright, and a history maker in her own right. Hurston was a product of the Harlem Renaissance and is often described as one of the greatest literary artists of the twentieth century. Praised by many for her studies of African derived religions in the American South, Haiti, and Jamaica, she is most famous for her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and her literary works inspired such writers as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ishmael Reed, Gloria Naylor, and Jewell Parker Rhodes, among others. (Source: The Official Zora Neale Hurston Website. For more information, please visit http://www.zoranealehurston.com/.)
This scholarly publication is timed to coincide with the year-long 75th anniversary celebration for Their Eyes Were Watching God in 2012 and 2013, and it is related to the September 2012 “Watching God and Reading Hurston Conference.” This open-access journal will be published electronically via Digital Commons at Cleveland State University. (For more information on the Hurston Conference, the RASHAD Initiative, and CSU’s Digital Commons / Engaged Scholarship activities, please visit http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/hurston/.)
Possible topics include, but are not limited to “Literature and Religion,” “Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals,” “African and Neo-African Religion,” “Religion and Spirituality in Hurston’s Life and Art,” and what one writer describes as “The Complex Fate of the God-Driven Black Diaspora Discourse.” Established and emerging academic scholars, independent scholars, advanced graduate students, and visual and performing artists are encouraged to submit proposals.
Typewritten, double-spaced manuscripts, no more than 30 pages in length (including endnotes), should be prepared using A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (University of Chicago Press, 2007 or later). Manuscripts submitted for publication will be peer-reviewed. Please note the following deadlines:
Submission of Completed Manuscripts: May 1, 2013Notifications Mailed: July 1, 2013Publication Date: December 1, 2013CONTACT INFORMATION:For queries/ submissions: African.Diaspora@csuohio.edu
Website: http://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/hurston/
via knowledgeequalsblackpower.tumblr.com
gunsandposes:
¡VIVA LA CAUSA! — Today marks the birthday of Cesar Chavez, the labor leader and civil rights activist. As the co-founder and leader of the National Farm Workers Association, later known as the United Farm Workers, Chavez sent this typed note of thanks to union supporter Virna M. Canson. It reads a bit like a form letter, but it’s still an interesting glimpse at early 1970s politics.
(The photo and letter are both from the Calisphere: 1, 2)
(via silas216)
Exxon cleans up Arkansas oil spill; Keystone plan assailed
(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil on Sunday continued cleanup of a pipeline spill that spewed thousands of barrels of heavy Canadian crude in Arkansas as opponents of oil sands development latched on to the incident to attack plans to build the Keystone XL line.
Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said on Sunday that crews had yet to excavate the area around the pipeline breach, a needed step before the company can estimate how long repairs will take and when the line might restart.
"I can't speculate on when it will happen," Jeffers said. "Excavation is necessary as part of an investigation to determine the cause of the incident."
Exxon's Pegasus pipeline, which can carry more than 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude from Patoka, Illinois to Nederland, Texas, was shut after the leak was discovered late Friday afternoon in a subdivision near the town of Mayflower. The leak forced the evacuation of 22 homes.
Exxon also had no specific estimate of how much crude oil had spilled, but the company said 12,000 barrels of oil and water had been recovered - up from 4,500 barrels on Saturday. The company did not say how much of the total was oil and how much was water.
Allen Dodson, Faulkner County judge who is the top executive for the county where the spill occurred, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that the smell of crude was less potent on Sunday as cleanup efforts continued, saying it was weaker than the smell of fresh asphalt laid on a road.
"The freestanding oil on the street has been removed. It's still damp with oil, it's tacky, like it is before we do an asphalt overlay," he said.
Exxon said it staged the response to handle 10,000 barrels of oil "to ensure adequate resources are in place."
Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) also were on site to investigate the spill.
Fifteen vacuum trucks remained on the scene for cleanup, and 33 storage tanks were deployed to temporarily store the oil.
The pipeline was carrying Canadian Wabasca Heavy crude at the time of the leak. An oil spill of more than 1,000 barrels into a Wisconsin field from an Enbridge Inc pipeline last summer kept that line shuttered for around 11 days.
The 848-mile pipeline used to transport crude oil from Texas to Illinois. In 2006 Exxon reversed it to move crude from Illinois to Texas in response to growing Canadian oil production and the ability of U.S. Gulf Coast refineries to process heavy crude.
The Arkansas spill drew fast reaction from opponents of the 800,000 bpd Keystone XL pipeline, which also would carry heavy crude from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf Coast refining hub.
Environmentalists have expressed concerns about the impact of developing the oil sands and say the crude is more corrosive to pipelines than conventional oil. On Wednesday, a train carrying Canadian crude derailed in Minnesota, spilling 15,000 gallons of oil.
"Whether it's the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, or ... (the) mess in Arkansas, Americans are realizing that transporting large amounts of this corrosive and polluting fuel is a bad deal for American taxpayers and for our environment," said Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Supporters of Keystone XL and oil sands development say the vast Canadian reserves can help drive down fuel costs in the United States. A report from the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, put together by oil and gas consultancy Penspen, argued diluted bitumen is no more corrosive than other heavy crude.
A year ago Exxon won a court appeal to charge market rates on the Pegasus line, or rates that are not capped and that can change along with market conditions without prior approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. said the Pegasus pipeline is now the "primary avenue" to move Canadian crude oil to the Gulf Coast. The ruling also said Exxon moves about 66,000 barrels per day on the line.
Last week PHMSA proposed that Exxon pay a $1.7 million fine over pipeline safety violations stemming from a July 2011 oil spill from its Silvertip pipeline in the Yellowstone River. The line, which carries 40,000 barrels per day in Montana, leaked about 1,500 barrels of crude after heavy flooding in the area.
Exxon has 30 days from the March 25 order to contest those violations.
According to PHMSA, the U.S. has 2.3 million miles of pipelines.
CLEANUP
Exxon said that by 3 a.m. Saturday there was no additional oil spilling from the pipeline and that trucks had been brought in to assist with the cleanup. Images from local media showed crude oil snaking along a suburban street and spewed across lawns.
Twenty-two homes in the affected subdivision remained evacuated on Sunday, though Mayflower police were providing escorts for residents to temporarily return to retrieve personal items.
Jeffers said a couple of homes "appear to have small amounts of oil on their foundations," but he had no information on damage estimates or claims. Exxon had established a claims hotline for affected residents and said about 50 claims had been made so far.
Dodson said oil that made it to the street went into storm drains that eventually lead to a cove connected to nearby Lake Conway, known as a fishing lake stocked with bass, catfish, bream and crappie.
He said local responders that included firemen, city employees, county road crews, police quickly built dikes of dirt and rock to block culverts along that path that stopped crude from fouling the lake.
"We were just in the nick of time," he said.
Exxon later deployed 3,600 feet of boom near the lake as a precaution.
Dodson said crude also got into several homeowners' yards, which will take longer to clean up.
"We've just gotten used to having pipelines go through cities and counties, and you hope something like this doesn't happen. My heart goes out to all of the people personally impacted," Dodson said.
(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Bernard Orr, and Chris Reese)via reuters.com
via preaprez.wordpress.comThe culture that created the Atlanta cheating scandal.By Fred KlonskyMarch 29, 2013
Today’s big education story is the indictment of former Atlanta school superintendent Dr. Beverly L. Hall. Dr. Hall was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury. Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison.
Back in February of 2012 I addressed the cheating issue in a piece written for Occasional Papers 27, a publication of Bank Street College of Education.
In the article I address the reform culture that has created the conditions for scandals like the one in Atlanta.
Also included in the collection are essays by William Ayers, Gail Boldt, Greg Dimitriadis, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, Ann Haas Dyson, Celia Genishi, Marc Lamont Hill, Kevin K. Kumashiro, Deborah Meier, Erica R. Meiners, Pedro Noguera, Diane Ravitch, Raynard Sanders, Gil Schmerler, Peter Taubman
“If We Look to Buy the Cheapest Paper, Why Not the Cheapest Teachers?”
by Fred Klonsky
Around 1972 I was working at the UniRoyal Tire and Rubber factory in the City of Commerce, an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. The front of the factory faced the Santa Ana freeway. For some odd reason it was designed to look like an ancient Egyptian temple.
Behind the Disney-like façade of pharaohs and slaves was a grime-filled, malodorous factory turning out thousands of automobile tires a day.
In 1972 the making of a tire went something like this: Two women, usually African-American, worked on a belt behind the tire making machine. They cut pieces of rubber ply and put them on the belt. Two men, usually white, were in front. One of the men pulled the rubber barrel off a rack and slid it on to a metal arm. One of the guys hit a button and the ply rolled onto the rubber barrel. They hit a second button that swung the barrel into a position to attach the rubber that later became the tread. Button three quickly spun all the tire components until you hit the brake pedal. The barrel broke loose and you slid it off onto another rack.
A tire came off the machine and a counter would flip a number. In 1972 there was not much that was digital.
I was a member of the United Rubber Workers union. Our contract allowed tire making to be piecework. I was paid a minimal base salary. To make any real money I had to make a rate. The rate was adjusted each week. If you made rate for five days, they raised the rate.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that controlling – as opposed to making – the rate was most important. I wanted to hit my target most days. But I needed to fall short on others. If I didn’t, they would constantly raise the rate. I soon came to understand the simple economics of this process.
I also realized that if I smacked the counter with the palm of my hand just at the moment that my partner was pulling a tire off the machine, the counter would flip twice.
Four decades later I am about to retire from 27 years of teaching. I began my teaching career at the same time as A Nation at Risk came out. I retire just as it seems that The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind, is about to be trashed and replaced by some form of a more extensive Race to the Top.
As I exit the classroom, life in schools resembles my days at UniRoyal Tire and Rubber.
I teach in a school in a suburb of Chicago. Park Ridge is an upscale town. It usually has voted Republican and it is white. But that is changing. The town elected its first Democratic State Senator several years ago and voted for Obama by a thin margin.
Compared to when I started teaching in 1984, our K-8 school district is now consumed by assessments. Weeks and weeks of instructional time have been replaced by a world of testing initials: Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) and the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy (Dibels).
In spite of this, and despite the fact that the time spent on these assessments angers and demoralizes almost every one of my colleagues, our school does very well on all of these assessments. Ninety-seven percent meet and exceed state standards on the state mandated ISAT. This year 100% of our 4th graders did the same on the reading portion of the ISAT.
In a school district that is primarily white and privileged, it’s not surprising that our students do well on these tests. But it also doesn’t matter.
In schools this is called continuous improvement. It’s not much different than UniRoyal’s piece rate system. Do well and they simply raise the rate. The only thing they want to improve are the scores. It is the extension of Lake Woebegonism, where all children are above average. In this brave new world, all children must meet and exceed 100%. In districts like Atlanta and Philadelphia, continuous improvement has meant taking the palm of your hand and smacking the counter. Cheating scandals are breaking out like a contagious disease.
As the comedian Chris Rock likes to say, “I don’t approve. But I understand.” Just like a tire builder at UniRoyal, it is a matter of both teachers and school administrators coming to understand the simple economics of the process. Those who demand that schools be run more like a business are now getting what they asked for. There are those in the profit sector who have become expert at knowing how to game the system. Why be surprised when those in the public sector, like principals, order their staff to do the same?
This year a small Tea Party-ish group has begun attending our board meetings. They number two, sometimes three. Some have children in the district’s schools. Some do not. They are openly hostile to the teachers and our union. They are either amazingly misinformed, or they are purposefully lying based on the theory that a lie told often enough gets believed as the truth.
At the heart of their attack is the issue of student performance and teacher accountability. Only a few years back we would spend our time discussing issues of teaching and learning. Now we spend the bulk of our team planning time discussing assessments and interventions.
Still, the lies continue about student performance results. They continue to lie about teacher salary and benefits and the language that is in our bargaining agreement about the alleged inability to dismiss poor teachers.
I have been told that Tea Party groups are doing the same thing throughout Illinois. They have organized small groups to attend community board meetings. Some are paid, with the money coming from those like the Koch brothers, multi-billionaire right-wing funders. There are plenty of deep pockets operating here.
Going right after our collective bargaining agreement, they ask, “If we look to buy the cheapest paper, why not the cheapest teachers?”
And our board, pressed by growing financial concerns, must be asking themselves if that isn’t a good point. How much should you have to spend to find someone to prep for and administer a test?
__________________________
Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta
Is Indicted in Testing Scandal
Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times
After a 2½-year investigation, Beverly L. Hall, a former district superintendent who won fame and fortune for her performance, was charged with racketeering, theft and other crimes in the doctoring of students' test answers.
By MICHAEL WINERIP Published: March 29, 2013 652 CommentsDOCUMENT: Indictments in Atlanta Public Schools Cheating ScandalDuring his 35 years as a Georgia state investigator, Richard Hyde has persuaded all sorts of criminals — corrupt judges, drug dealers, money launderers, racketeers — to turn state’s evidence, but until Jackie Parks, he had never tried to flip an elementary school teacher.Readers shared their thoughts on this article.Read All Comments (652) »
In the fall of 2010, Ms. Parks, a third-grade teacher at Venetian Hills Elementary School in southwest Atlanta, agreed to become Witness No. 1 for Mr. Hyde, in what would develop into the most widespread public school cheating scandal in memory.
Ms. Parks admitted to Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, and for weeks she secretly recorded the conversations of her fellow teachers for Mr. Hyde.
In the two and a half years since, the state’s investigation reached from Ms. Parks’s third-grade classroom all the way to the district superintendent at the time, Beverly L. Hall, who was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted Friday by a Fulton County grand jury.
Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison.
During the decade she led the district of 52,000 children, many of them poor and African-American, Atlanta students often outperformed wealthier suburban districts on state tests.
Those test scores brought her fame — in 2009, the American Association of School Administrators named her superintendent of the year and Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, hosted her at the White House.
And fortune — she earned more than $500,000 in performance bonuses while superintendent.
On Friday, prosecutors essentially said it really was too good to be true. Dr. Hall and the 34 teachers, principals and administrators “conspired to either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers in an effort to bolster C.R.C.T. scores for the benefit of financial rewards associated with high test scores,” the indictment said, referring to the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.
Reached late Friday, Richard Deane, Dr. Hall’s lawyer, said they were digesting the indictment and making arrangements for bond. “We’re pretty busy,” he said.
As she has since the beginning, Mr. Deane said, Dr. Hall has denied the charges and any involvement in cheating or any other wrongdoing and expected to be vindicated. “We note that as far as has been disclosed, despite the thousands of interviews that were reportedly done by the governor’s investigators and others, not a single person reported that Dr. Hall participated in or directed them to cheat on the C.R.C.T.,” he said later in a statement.
In a 2011 interview with The New York Times, Dr. Hall said that people under her had allowed cheating but that she never had. “I can’t accept that there is a culture of cheating,” she said.
Paul L. Howard Jr., the district attorney, said that under Dr. Hall’s leadership, there was “a single-minded purpose, and that is to cheat.”
“She is a full participant in that conspiracy,” he said. “Without her, this conspiracy could not have taken place, particularly in the degree it took place.”
Longstanding Rumors
For years there had been reports of widespread cheating in Atlanta, but Dr. Hall was feared by teachers and principals, and few dared to speak out. “Principals and teachers were frequently told by Beverly Hall and her subordinates that excuses for not meeting targets would not be tolerated,” the indictment said.
Reporters for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and state education officials repeatedly found strong indications of cheating — extraordinary increases in test scores from one year to the next, along with a high number of erasures on answering sheets from wrong to right.
But they were not able to find anyone who would confess to it.
That is until August 2010, when Gov. Sonny Perdue named two special prosecutors — Michael Bowers, a Republican former attorney general, and Robert E. Wilson, a Democratic former district attorney — along with Mr. Hyde to conduct a criminal investigation.
For weeks that fall, Mr. Hyde had been stonewalled and lied to by teachers at Venetian Hills including Ms. Parks, who at one point, stood in her classroom doorway and blocked him from entering.
But day after day he returned to question people, and eventually his presence weighed so heavily on Ms. Parks that she said she felt a terrible need to confess her sins. “I wanted to repent,” she recalled in an interview. “I wanted to clear my conscience.”
Ms. Parks told Mr. Hyde that the cheating had been going on at least since 2004 and was overseen by the principal, who wore gloves so as not to leave her fingerprints on the answer sheets.
Children who scored 1 on the state test out of a possible 4 became 2s, she said; 2s became 3s.
“The cheating had been going on so long,” Ms. Parks said. “We considered it part of our jobs.”
She said teachers were under constant pressure from principals who feared they would be fired if they did not meet the testing targets set by the superintendent.
Dr. Hall was known to rule by fear. She gave principals three years to meet their testing goals. Few did; in her decade as superintendent, she replaced 90 percent of the principals.
Teachers and principals whose students had high test scores received tenure and thousands of dollars in performance bonuses. Otherwise, as one teacher explained, it was “low score out the door.”
Ms. Parks, a 17-year veteran, said a reason she had kept silent so long was that as a single mother, she could not afford to lose her job.
When asked during an interview if she was surprised that out of Atlanta’s 100 schools, Mr. Hyde turned up at hers first, Ms. Parks said no. “I had a dream about it a few weeks before,” she said. “I saw people walking down the hall with yellow notepads. From time to time, God reveals things to me in dreams.”
“I think God led Mr. Hyde to Venetian Hills,” she said.
Whatever delivered Mr. Hyde (he said he picked the school because he knew the area from patrolling it as a young police officer), 10 months after his arrival, on June 30, 2011, state investigators issued an 800-page report implicating 178 teachers and principals — including 82 who confessed to cheating.
By now, almost all are gone. Like Ms. Parks, they have resigned or were fired or lost their teaching licenses at administrative hearings.
Higher Scores, Less Aid
Some losses are harder to measure, like the impact on the children in schools where cheating was prevalent. At Parks Middle School, which investigators say was the site of the city’s worst cheating, test scores soared right after the arrival of a new principal, Christopher Waller — who was one of the 35 named in Friday’s indictment.
His first year at Parks, 2005, 86 percent of eighth graders scored proficient in math compared with 24 percent the year before; 78 percent passed the state reading test versus 35 percent the previous year.
The falsified test scores were so high that Parks Middle was no longer classified as a school in need of improvement and, as a result, lost $750,000 in state and federal aid, according to investigators. That money could have been used to give struggling children extra academic support. Stacey Johnson, a Parks teacher, told investigators that she had students in her class who had scored proficient on state tests in previous years but were actually reading on the first-grade level. Cheating masked the deficiencies and skewed the diagnosis.
When Erroll Davis Jr. succeeded Dr. Hall in July 2011, one of his first acts as superintendent was to create remedial classes in hopes of helping thousands of these students catch up.
It is not just an Atlanta problem. Cheating has grown at school districts around the country as standardized testing has become a primary means of evaluating teachers, principals and schools. In El Paso, a superintendent went to prison recently after removing low-performing children from classes to improve the district’s test scores. In Ohio, state officials are investigating whether several urban districts intentionally listed low-performing students as having withdrawn even though they were still in school.
But no state has come close to Georgia in appropriating the resources needed to root it out.
And that is because of former Governor Perdue.
“The more we were stonewalled, the more we wanted to know why,” he said in an interview.
In August 2010, after yet another blue-ribbon commission of Atlanta officials found no serious cheating, Mr. Perdue appointed the two special prosecutors and gave them subpoena powers and a budget substantial enough to hire more than 50 state investigators who were overseen by Mr. Hyde.
Mr. Bowers, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hyde had spent most of their careers putting criminals in prison, and almost as important, they could write. They produced an investigative report with a narrative that read more like a crime thriller than a sleepy legal document and placed Dr. Hall center stage in a drama of mind-boggling dysfunction.
She had praised Mr. Waller of Parks Middle as one of the finest principals in the city, while Mr. Wilson, the special prosecutor, called him “the worst of the worst.”
According to the report, Mr. Waller held “changing parties” where he stood guarding the door as teachers gathered to erase wrong answers and make them right. “I need the numbers,” he would urge the teachers. “Do what you do.”
(When questioned by investigators, Mr. Waller cited his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.)
Dr. Hall arrived in Atlanta in 1999, the final step in a long upward climb. She had advanced through the ranks of the New York City schools, from teacher to principal to deputy superintendent, and then in 1995, became the superintendent in Newark.
In Atlanta, she built a reputation as a person who got results, understood the needs of poor children and had a strong relationship with the business elite.
Her focus on test scores made her a favorite of the national education reform movement, nearly as prominent as the schools chancellors Joel I. Klein of New York City and Michelle Rhee of Washington. Like them, she was a fearsome presence who would accept no excuses when it came to educating poor children. She held yearly rallies at the Georgia Dome, rewarding principals and teachers from schools with high test scores by seating them up front, close to her, while low scorers were shunted aside to the bleachers.
But she was also known as someone who held herself aloof from parents, teachers and principals. The district spent $100,000 a year for a security detail to drive her around the city. At public meetings, questions had to be submitted beforehand for screening.
In contrast, her successor, Mr. Davis, drives himself and his home phone number is listed.
As long ago as 2001, Journal-Constitution reporters were writing articles questioning test scores under Dr. Hall, but when they requested interviews they were rebuffed. Heather Vogell, an investigative reporter, said officials took months responding to her public information requests — if they did at all. “I’d call, leave a message, call again, no one would pick up,” she said.
Community Pressure
What made Dr. Hall just about untouchable was her strong ties to local business leaders. Atlanta prides itself in being a progressive Southern city when it comes to education, entrepreneurship and race — and Dr. Hall’s rising test scores were good news on all those fronts. She is an African-American woman who had turned around a mainly poor African-American school district, which would make Atlanta an even more desirable destination for businesses.
And so when Mr. Perdue challenged the test results that underpinned everything — even though he was a conservative Republican businessman — he met strong resistance from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
“There was extensive subtle pressure,” Mr. Perdue said. “They’d say, ‘Do you really think there is anything there? We have to make sure we don’t hurt the city.’ Good friends broke with me over this.”
“I was dumbfounded that the business community would not want the truth,” he said. “These would be the next generation of employees, and companies would be looking at them and wondering why they had graduated and could not do simple skills. Business was insisting on accountability, but they didn’t want real accountability.”
Once the special prosecutors’ report was made public, it did not matter what the business community wanted; the findings were so sensational, there was no turning back.
Ms. Parks of Venetian Hills was one of many who wore a concealed wire for Mr. Hyde.
As he listened to the hours of secretly recorded conversations of cheating teachers and principals, he was surprised. “I heard them in unguarded moments,” Mr. Hyde said. “You listen, they’re good people. Their tone was of men and women who cared about kids.”
“Every time I play those tapes, I get furious about the way Beverly Hall treated these people,” he said.
Another important source for him at Venetian Hills was Milagros Moner, the testing coordinator. “A really fine person,” Mr. Hyde said. “Another single mom under terrible pressure.”
Ms. Moner told Mr. Hyde that she carried the tests in a tote bag to the principal, Clarietta Davis, who put on gloves before touching them.
After school, on Oct. 18, 2010, the two women sat in the principal’s car in the parking lot of a McDonald’s. Inside Ms. Moner’s purse was a tape recorder Mr. Hyde had given her. Thirty yards away, he sat in his pickup truck videotaping as they talked about how the investigation and media coverage had taken over their lives.
Ms. Moner: I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, my kids want to talk to me, I ignore them. ... I don’t have the mental energy. ...
Ms. Davis: You wouldn’t believe how people just look at you. People you know.
Ms. Moner: You feel isolated.
Ms. Davis: There’s no one to talk to. ... See how red my eyes are? And I’m not a drinking woman.
Ms. Moner: It has taken over my life. I don’t even want to go to work. I pray day and night, I pray at work.
Ms. Davis: You just have to pray for everybody.
Later, when investigators tried to question Ms. Davis about her reasons for wearing the gloves, she invoked the Fifth Amendment. On Friday, she was one of the 35 indicted.
Kim Severson and Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 29, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the surname of the president of Caveon Test Security, a forensic data analysis firm. He is John Fremer, not John Caveon.
via: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/us/former-school-chief-in-atlanta-indicted-...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++When Zora Neale Hurston Was Falsely Accused of Child Molestation…
I read Alice Walker’s essay “Looking for Zora” when I was in college. I had never heard of Hurston and it would be several years before I actually read any of her work. I’ll admit that I am not a fan of her most famous novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” I much prefer her short stories (one of my favorites is “Sweat”).
Since my introduction to Hurston in college, I’ve read her memoir “Dust Tracks on a Road” as well as other books about her life and work. I have found her to be complicated like most of us are. She appears fearless and also insecure. She fought for herself at a time when other women were circumscribed from opportunities. Her racial politics are not mine and she never defined herself as feminist. It turned out that Walker presented (by necessity?) a very truncated version of Hurston’s life, work, and especially her politics.
When I read Robert Hemenway’s “Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography” (1977), I learned for the first time about the sex scandal that eventually led Hurston to leave Harlem for good. The incident is only mentioned in passing.
It’s been on my long list of future projects to learn more about this incident as a way to better understand how black women interacted with the criminal legal system in the early through mid-20th century. Virginia Lynn Moylan’s biography of Hurston’s final decade provides useful information and context about the false molestation charges leveled against her.
In September 1948, Zora Neale Hurston was arrested and jailed after being accused by the son of her former landlady (Mamie Allen) of molesting him and two of his friends. The charges were fabricated as Billy Allen, Hurston’s chief accuser, suggested that the abuse happened while Hurston was in Honduras and upstate New York. Hurston apparently offered to take a lie detector test to prove her innocence but the police did not pursue this.
Hurston only spent a few hours in jail and then was bailed out by her friend and editor Burroughs Mitchell. Zora wanted to prove her innocence and requested a preliminary hearing which took place on September 21, 1948. Moylan (2011) explains what happened:
“During the hearing, District Attorney Frank Hogan presented no evidence other than the lurid testimony of the three boys. Billy claimed that he and his friends had met Hurston and the other adults (whom she had never met) every Saturday afternoon at 4:30 for almost two years in the basement of a West 124th Street building and were paid 50 cents to allow one of the adults to have oral sex with them while the others watched. Only one of the other adults, a black male janitor, was formally charged. The third defendant, a Hispanic mother of four who owned a nearby candy store, was not arrested (p.40).”
Billy Allen, Hurston’s chief accuser, was apparently known in the community as suffering from mental problems. In fact, according to Moylan (2011), “Hurston had advised his mother to take him to Bellvue Hospital for psychological evaluation and treatment, which she did for a time (p.41).” Mayme Allen told the district attorney that she didn’t like Hurston and even resented her. Neighbors told Hurston that Mrs. Allen may have been the instigator of the false accusations as a way to have her son committed. Even after it was revealed in the preliminary hearing that the three young men who had accused Hurston of molestation were actually having sex with each other on Saturdays in the basement, the presiding judge Francis X. Giaccone ruled that the case would proceed to criminal court. Hurston was charged with one count of assault in the second degree, three counts of sodomy, and one count of “placing a child in such a situation as likely to impair morals.”
Because the case took place in juvenile court, the proceedings had been sealed and confidential. Hurston was fairly confident that she would be found not guilty of the charges against her. Then in October, an employee of the court leaked the story of the molestation charges to two black newspapers. Both the New York Age and the Afro-American ran stories about the case. The Afro-American stories were particularly lurid, salacious, and not factual.
Hurston was crushed. She felt betrayed by her own community. She was suicidal. She wrote to her friend Carl Van Vechten: “No acquittal will persuade some people that I am innocent…All that I have believed in has failed me. I have resolved to die.” With support from some of her good friends, Hurston’s spirits rallied and in March 1949, the New York City district attorney announced that his office had decided that Hurston was innocent of the charges. It turns out, however, that as early as November 1948, Billy Allen had already admitted to investigators that he had made up the story after his mother had discovered him having sex with his friends. The District Attorney’s office sat on this confession for months before proceeding to drop the case against Hurston and the other defendant.
The false accusation destroyed Hurston’s reputation and left a major imprint on her psyche. Hurston held a grudge against many including W.E.B. Dubois and Richard Wright who were some of the toughest critics of her work. In a letter to the editor of Opportunity Magazine, Charles Johnson, Hurston railed against both men implicating them in her misfortune:
“Because I openly expressed my scorn of them, they got up what they took to be an unbeatably wonderful scheme to kill me off forever. Only these monumental ‘intellectuals,’ in their ecstasy, did not take the time to find out where I was when they stated the dates for things.”
There is no evidence beyond Hurston’s own words that Dubois or Wright had anything to do with the morals charges against her. But it is indisputably true that neither came to her defense when misfortune struck. This episode in Hurston’s life left lasting scars… A decade later she died in obscurity in Florida.
Note: The following recording of Hurston singing was recently discovered. Listen to her sing “Uncle Bud,” a prison blues song in 1940. One gets a sense of her personality through hearing her voice:
If you would like to contact me, e-mail jjinjustice1@gmail.comvia usprisonculture.com
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