Adair Park Community Empowerment Assoc.

Current News cont.

More Current News

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 8/8/03 ]

YOUNG, BLACK AND ON TRACK

Why African-American boys often fail in school


By ERNEST HOLSENDOLPH
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

Ernest Holsendolph is an editorial writer for The Atlanta JournalConstitution.



T. LEVETTE BAGWELL / Staff
Related:
• How mentoring can help African-American boys succeed
• Two effort to help black students


GRADUATION RATES
Of students who entered Georgia colleges in 1996, here is the percentage of white and black students who graduated by 2002.
Georgia public colleges
White students 53.8%
Black students 33%
White males 49%
Black males 23.8%
White females 57.6%
Black females 39.2%
University of Georgia
White students 76%
Black students 67%
Black males 55%
Black females 71.6%
Georgia Tech
White students 73%
Black students 61.8%
Black males 59%
Black females 66.7%
Source: State Board of Regents




African-American boys: lose the skullcaps, pull up the droopy pants and get to work. Parents, teachers, employers and girlfriends agree. If you're looking for your future, you'll find it in school.

While the rest of the country toils in universities and technical institutes to acquire the skills for professions, and the knowledge to understand the world, black boys -- to an alarming degree -- are lagging in class, dropping out or stumbling across the high school finish line with too few skills to make it through college.

Wherever you turn, these boys are notable by their absence.

More than 70 percent of historically black Clark Atlanta University's students are black women. Some 65 percent of students training to be doctors at Morehouse School of Medicine are female. The point is inescapable -- young black males are too often missing in action when it comes to academic achievement and preparation for college.

As it happens, there is a general trend among boys, white and minority, to trail female students in college enrollment and in graduation rates. However, black boys in particular are having acute problems academically -- so acute that many drop out of high school at the first opportunity.

The malaise among black boys extends across economic lines. In an important study published this year of the Shaker Heights, Ohio, school system, where virtually all youngsters come from middle- to upper-class households, African-American student achievement trailed that of whites, and black boys as a group trailed all other groups. The analysis by John Ogbu was published in the spring, and titled Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement.

The Georgia Board of Regents found in a recent study that nothing short of a comprehensive improvement seems likely to get more black boys through school and into higher education. The "Final Report of the University System of Georgia's African-American Male Initiative," was published May 21.

Teachers and parents

What's needed, the regents say, are teachers better equipped to deal with balky black boys, as well as persistent parental support and better-organized outside mentoring help. Most of all, school systems need to consider dropping the vocational education pathway, a convenient way to divert students who don't fit. Instead, the regents say, put everybody on the college track and make it clear the schools expect all to achieve.

A pattern among African-American youngsters is that they emerge from elementary school in reasonably good shape, if they learn to read in timely fashion. However, when they try to cross the fast-moving, rock-strewn river called middle school, many black boys get swept into fads, laziness and indifference, falling behind, never to catch up.

Searching for answers, I checked in with some of the most careful boy-watchers around, black girls. Invariably, my query -- "What's the matter with the guys?" -- was greeted with smiles and a rather short list of answers:

They seem to have no focus. They don't seem to be able to make long-term plans and stick with them. They get caught up too much in fads, in whatever seems to be happening right now. Following the crowd means more to them than to girls. If something looks appealing to them, they can easily be led off their path and into something else. In one way or another, the girls said, the brothers lack focus or priorities.

The young men themselves, talking about what is important, betray a materialistic streak often reflected in music, particularly rap, videos and in some movies aimed at youth.

Youngsters, even in college, sometimes talk, yearningly, about dropping out, getting a job, buying a "truck," a sport utility vehicle loaded with booming sound gear; rolling on "dubs," outsized 20-inch wheels or "Sprewells" -- double rims that can cost $7,000 and more a set. It is a life so compelling to some that they find it hard to postpone such goals to study beyond high school.

A success story

Other boys, also fixed on short-term results, daydream of athletic careers and overnight success as entertainers, careers available to only a minuscule number.

James Poole, a YMCA staffer or consultant most of his adult life, has made mentoring boys an avocation for 40 years. An excellent coach, Poole initially got boys' attention through basketball, and then through personal mentoring. Now based in Columbia, Md., he advises community groups.

Several years ago, nearly 100 of the African-American men he mentored gave a testimonial dinner for him in Cleveland; they included ministers, executives, scholars with doctorates and media people. Morse Diggs, the Atlanta TV broadcaster, is one of them.

In later years Poole counseled girls as well as boys, so he was ready to draw contrasts.

"For guys more than girls, instant gratification seems to be important," said Poole. "And for some, drug-taking becomes the gratification, and for some, notoriety or a damaged reputation is better than a nonexistence."

By contrast, he said, "It is much more common among modern black women to think long-term gratification rather than instant success. . . . they know how to plan their work and then work their plan."

And nothing, not even sweet-talking boys, gets them far off their track, Poole said.

Black women, like white women, have bought more heavily than black males into the notion that the glass ceiling can be penetrated, that opportunities are out there if you are prepared to grab them.

Detours in school

Compounding the aimlessness that marks too many black boys is the fact that school systems seem to cast them aside easily. And there are lots of detours, especially with the coming of more testing to reach the next grade.

A Cobb County executive pointed out to me one of the ways youngsters get sidetracked, especially if parents are not closely involved with students' success. She asked whether her daughter, having gone through fifth grade with all As and Bs in math, could take pre-algebra in the sixth grade.

"Not unless she passes a test for pre-algebra," was the answer.

She asked, "Suppose she comes close but fails to hit the mark?"

The answer was that she would have to take general math but could retest in a year.

"Logic told me," said my friend, "if you cannot measure up to pre-algebra in the fifth grade, a year of general math certainly won't make you more qualified, and that is an example of how kids can fall off the college track at a very early age."

Her point was that if kids have to negotiate the education system without close parent involvement all the way, they can easily get sidetracked and discouraged.

Nearly everyone, including the regents in their 85-page report, sees better teaching as a key to better performance. They urge programs to retain good teachers. Louis Castenell, dean of education at the University of Georgia and an expert in the problems of urban teachers, says any teachers can be trained to improve their relationship and communication with black male students.

"Young black males can just look at a teacher, especially the white female teachers, and sense fear and distrust," Castenell said. "That leads to a situation where teachers distance themselves from youngsters who make them uneasy, and select only the best-behaved and most compliant students as favorites -- and regarding the others as deviant."

Only training can help teachers improve those relationships, he says.

"I sit here ready to help but my phone does not ring often," said Castenell, a member of the regents' task force on the African-American male study.



EMAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR SUBSCRIBE TO AJC












Search ajc.com
Enter keyword:

Search our Stacks
archive of staff stories
back to 1985.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advertise with us

home | nation & world | metro | sports | business | living | opinion | travel
By using ajc.com you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement. Please read it.
Questions about your privacy? See our updated Privacy Statement.
Interested in reprint permission? See our Permissions Policy.
© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 8/10/03 ]

OUR VIEW

Next test: Help out chastened schools


Georgia superintendents and principals joke that the federal No Child Left Behind Act ought to be renamed now that the state has released its list of struggling schools.

A more apt name, they suggest, is "No Administrator Left with a Behind."

If anybody is feeling kicked around this week, it's state Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox. First, she delayed release of the dreaded list, which determines which schools must offer transfers or free tutoring because of their failure to show "Adequate Yearly Progress" in student performance. Then, Cox faced a barrage of complaints that schools incorrectly showed up on the "Needs Improvement" list. And, to cap off the week, the feds announced that the state Department of Education misread the law and omitted 270 schools also required to offer transfers.

No one should be surprised. A new federal law with many moving parts and state reforms steeped in partisan politics are bound to produce chaos. But the real question for parents is can they also produce results?

Neither No Child Left Behind nor Georgia's reforms will raise the educational bar by essentially telling children to jump higher. There has to be greater emphasis on strengthening the foundation from which children start, through universal and quality preschool, better-trained teachers and smaller classes. Schools will not reach those goals with dispiriting labeling. And children will not reach their potential by testing that is punitive rather than diagnostic.

Cox pleads for patience, which schools may be less likely to give after last week's confusion over which of them were on the list. But Cox is still rebuilding the state Department of Education from Linda Schrenko's eight-year reign of indifference. And the agency is woefully understaffed to deal with the ponderous data collection required under the law.

The federal government also foisted the 670 pages of No Child Left Behind on states with too much haste and too little clarity. Despite regular missives explaining the law, even the federal folks have trouble keeping track of all the provisions. (The only reason that the U.S. Department of Education realized that Georgia inadvertently left 270 schools off the list of schools is because of a call from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter.)

However, the problems also reflect Georgia's own convoluted path to accountability. That path is only going to get more twisted as Georgia grapples with how best to gauge student progress.

Although No Child Left Behind mandates yearly testing, it charges states with coming up with their own measures of student progress. Georgia now uses the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test in elementary and middle schools. The Georgia children entering third grade on Monday are about to become the sacrificial lambs of reform by political fiat. Under a new state retention policy, these children must pass the reading portion of the CRCT to advance to fourth grade.

Because of problems with the test last year, second-graders across the state never had a chance to take the CRCT. Now, these pupils will have their academic future hinge on their very first experience filling in the bubbles.

Parents ought to raise No. 2 pencils in outrage and insist that the General Assembly delay its mandatory retention policy for this year's third grade until the kids have at least one practice at the standardized testing game.

"The interest of kids aren't being served because they never had a chance to take a standardized test, and their parents have never had a chance to see tests results and know if their child is in trouble or not," says testing expert Gary Henry of Georgia State University.

No Child Left Behind judges schools not only on their overall test scores, but also on how well they succeed with traditionally underachieving groups, such as low-income kids, minority kids, migrant children and special education students. The law makes it impossible for schools to hide behind averages, which is one of its strengths.

But the law also provides an escape hatch. Schools must break out and publish test results for 14 different subgroups, as long as there are at least 40 children in the group. The threshold ought to be dropped to 10 students. If there's a school with only 25 Native American children, their parents still deserve to see how well the school collectively educates their children.

To ensure the results are representative, schools must have 95 percent of these students present for testing or risk the "Needs Improvement" label. It's another attempt to prevent schools from hiding their weakest students by taking all of them on a field trip on testing day.

However, the 95-percent participation rate tripped up many small Georgia schools, where the absence of one special ed student on testing day landed them on the list. There's a solution: Provide optional test dates, especially for medically fragile children. It's cumbersome since a second test form has to be designed to prevent the children who already took the test from telling their classmates who missed it about the questions. But it's the only way to bring about fair results.

Daniel Langan, a U.S. Education Department spokesman, said Friday that Georgia could give makeup tests within the three-week testing window set by the state for schools to administer the CRCT.

No Child Left Behind deserves credit for giving complacent school systems a swift kick to the shins. But the law also has to give those hobbled systems a helping hand.



EMAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR SUBSCRIBE TO AJC


[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 5/9/03 ]


Newsart



Related:

• Key provisions of the Patriot II proposal
• Anthony Lewis at Emory: The press needs some backbone.
• The government considers giving itself the right to revoke citizenship.
• Taking away citizenship: Effective deterrent or act of violence?

ON THE WEB:


Text of "Patriot II" proposal
ACLU section-by-section analysis of the proposal
Justice Department






Patriot 2:
The eyes have it

Unusual coalition of left and right says civil liberties under attack

By EUNICE MOSCOSOand NORA ACHRATI
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writers

Washington

Attorney General John Ashcroft says it doesn't really exist.

But still, civil rights advocates, immigration attorneys, Internet privacy groups, conservative think tanks and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are speaking out against it.

The item in question: "Patriot Act II." At least that's what opponents call it. Ashcroft, however, contends that it is merely a set of ideas bouncing around the Department of Justice and not a formal legislative proposal.

The ideas were outlined in a Justice Department document, "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," which was leaked this year to a political watchdog group.

The proposal would allow the government to obtain telephone records, bank statements and credit reports with little or no court supervision in terrorism cases and increase its power to conduct secret arrests and collect DNA samples from suspects.

It would also end many court-approved limits on police surveillance of people's religious and political activities and grant the attorney general the power to strip the citizenship of any American who joins or provides support to a designated terrorist group.

KEY PROVISIONS OF PATRIOT II


A leaked Justice Department document, dubbed the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," includes proposals that would:

• Allow the government to obtain telephone records, bank records and credit records with little or no court supervision in domestic cases involving "terrorist activities." It would also add jail-time penalties for people who disclose information about government subpoenas.

• Allow the attorney general to authorize wiretaps and "physical searches" without court approval for up to 15 days after a terrorist attack or a congressional declaration of war.

• Authorize the attorney general or the secretary of defense to "collect, analyze and maintain" DNA samples and other identification information from suspected terrorists.

• End many court-approved limits on local police surveillance of religious and political activity.

• Allow the attorney general to strip citizenship from any American who "becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has designated as a 'terrorist organization." Says joining or providing support to a terrorist group implies an intent to give up American citizenship.




It would go well beyond its predecessor, the USA Patriot Act, a Bush administration plan passed by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. The legislation broadly increased the government's power, including broader discretion to detain foreign suspects and monitor computer activity and phone conversations in criminal investigations.

The Justice Department contends that the powers granted in the first Patriot Act have been vital to law enforcement and key to preventing terrorist strikes. FBI Director Robert Mueller said recently that 100 terrorist attacks have been thwarted worldwide since Sept. 11.

The Patriot Act has helped to improve communication between law enforcement and intelligence agencies -- a key goal of the government after Sept. 11, said Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock.

In addition, she said, the new powers have helped authorities seize millions of dollars that would have gone to terrorist groups and enabled the FBI to monitor computer and cellphone communication by terrorist groups.

"It is a misnomer when people think there is more spying or more surveillance of people," she said. On the contrary, what has occurred is "more effective surveillance on identified threats."

But the Patriot Act has been highly controversial, and the idea of expanding it has thrown traditional enemies into an unusual alliance.

Right and left

The coalition, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, includes religious groups such as the American Baptist Churches, conservative groups such as the American Conservative Union and the Gun Owners of America, and groups on the left such as People for the American Way. Activist groups representing Arab, Asian and Latin Americans have joined, and so has the NAACP.

Tim Edgar, ACLU's chief lobbyist on the issue, acknowledged he's managing an unlikely coalition. "And yet," he said, "we've found that our alliance has been one of the strongest in this post-Sept. 11 world.

"People have been so floored by some of these [proposals] that they don't want to stay on the sidelines anymore," Edgar said.

Former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a conservative consultant, is with the opposition.

"We ought to be concentrating on using existing authorities to build up our intelligence and law enforcement capabilities rather than compiling databases on American citizens," Barr said.

Charles Lewis, executive director for the Center for Public Integrity, the group that first obtained the Justice Department draft, said such concerns are widespread.

Within a couple of hours after posting the draft, the center's Web page had been linked to about 100 other sites.

"It struck some kind of nerve," he said.

Some experts defended the administration.

"We shouldn't make too much of this leaked version of the so-called Patriot II," said Michael Scardaville, a homeland security analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

"The public debate on this has been grossly mischaracterized in many ways," he said. "Hopefully, additional oversight and openness from the DOJ can contribute to eliminating many of these mischaracterizations."

'Orwellian malarkey'

But Lewis said the Justice Department's contention that the draft was not a real legislative proposal is "Orwellian malarkey."

Barr agreed.

"It looked like a proposal. It smelled like a proposal and it quacked like a proposal. Therefore, I think it is a proposal and a very serious one," he said. "Anybody that is lulled into a sense that this is not going to be a real battle is deluding themselves."

Comstock said that no decisions have been made on whether to submit the proposal -- as a whole or in parts -- to Congress.

But opponents say the unplanned early release of the draft has stifled any attempt to ram it through quickly.

"That thing would be dead in 10 minutes now," Lewis said.

Instead, pieces of the legislation and other efforts to increase government power will likely be introduced separately or quietly tacked on to other bills, opponents said.

One of those is already moving through Congress.

The so-called "lone wolf" bill would increase the government's power to obtain secret warrants to go after single terrorists without proving that they belong to a designated terrorist organization. Edgar called the measure a "less ambitious version" of a Patriot II provision.

Opponents of the Patriot Act also cite what they see as an increasing trend toward government secrecy.

Material witness warrants in terrorism investigations are secret, and many immigration hearings have also been closed. In addition, several al-Qaida captives are being held in secret locations.

But some information has been released.

Last year, the government won approval for 1,228 secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, which was more than the 934 warrants approved in 2001. The Patriot Act broadened the FBI's ability to obtain these warrants from a secretive federal court, which had previously been reserved for cases focused on foreign intelligence.




EMAIL THIS PRINT THIS MOST POPULAR SUBSCRIBE TO AJC












Search ajc.com
Enter keyword:

Search our Stacks
archive of staff stories
back to 1985.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advertise with us

home | nation & world | metro | sports | business | living | opinion | travel
By using ajc.com you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement. Please read it.
Questions about your privacy? See our updated Privacy Statement.
Interested in reprint permission? See our Permissions Policy.
© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution












Search ajc.com
Enter keyword:

Search our Stacks
archive of staff stories
back to 1985.







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advertise with us

home | nation & world | metro | sports | business | living | opinion | travel
By using ajc.com you accept the terms of our Visitor Agreement. Please read it.
Questions about your privacy? See our updated Privacy Statement.
Interested in reprint permission? See our Permissions Policy.
© 2003 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

April News and Current Events 2004

Curtain opens on playhouse tonight
Vision for youth theater blends performance arts with growing-up skills
Charles Yoo - Staff
Thursday, April 15, 2004

It was a storage room for merchants, but Karen Shirley and Pamela Gartrell saw it as a birthplace for their dream.

The Community Playhouse in Oakland City is the idea of the two women, whose educational background and passion for performance art led to the opening of the theatrical group in the back room of an antiques mall.

The two women have quit their jobs as public school teachers and invested their savings in the venture.

For several weeks, they have been busy preparing for the grand opening of the Community Playhouse tonight. Children will dance and recite. Senior citizens will perform.

"It was do or die. Do it now or never do it," said Shirley, 38, of Snellville.

Shirley, who has four children --- Ron, 11; Rich, 10; Ross, 3; and Rory, 2 --- said although she is busy, her dream beckoned.

The theater troupe is targeted to black youths growing up in urban settings. The women have plenty of experience working with such teenagers and know their issues well.

They met while teaching at an alternative school off Bankhead Highway in northwest Atlanta a couple of years ago. Shirley taught social studies and also led group discussions with troubled girls about appropriate behavior. Gartrell taught language arts and led similar workshops using role-playing and other theatrical techniques.

The women saw their creativity touching students in ways they hadn't expected. A 15-year-old girl known for a "rough persona" broke down one time, saying she had to act tough because of her unwanted image.

With determination, Gartrell, 48, who lives in Union City, and her business partner began pursuing their dream of opening a theater. In February, they found a storage room and an office at Oakland City Marketplace on Lee Street (Ga. 29 in southwest Atlanta). The rent is $850 a month.

Then the women began publicizing their theater, including standing outside the Marketplace dressed in costumes and handing out fliers. Gartrell was a gypsy woman, and Shirley was Pocahontas.

They began asking for donations and going on public radio stations, sharing their plans; attending spoken-word mic nights; and visiting musical theater classes.

They plan to launch a summer day camp on drama and performance art for children, including meals and a final performance at the end of the summer. They also are planning a three-day trip to New York City for the summer campers including visits to Broadway and other cultural institutions.

The women say the theater is much more than simply entertainment. "Without structure and order, there's only chaos and confusion," Shirley said. "We instill that in children. We promote discipline."

Shirley holds a bachelor's degree from North Carolina Central University. Her background includes positions as a teaching artist for the Alliance Theatre, an acting instructor for Soapstone Center for the Arts and Georgia Campaign Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program, and artistic director for Keeping It Real Among Women, a program designed to educate women about health issues.

Gartrell has a bachelor's degree from New York University. After high school, she moved to Los Angeles to seek an acting career. She dabbled in acting and dancing and choreography in TV and films. She moved to New York City in 1980 and worked as a public school teacher.

All those experiences have fed into the theater.

One day last week, the women were practicing with a handful of children on a dance routine for the grand opening. A mother of two girls drove up from Fairburn to check out the theater because she had heard about the women on the radio.

"It's definitely interesting," said Tayyeba Hassan. "In the schools, they practically cut out PE classes, and children don't get enough exposure to the arts."





MARTA riders decry planned cutbacks
Cash-strapped agency would trim bus service
Julie B. Hairston - Staff
Thursday, April 15, 2004

While activists urged the public not to blame MARTA for bus service reductions now being considered, many others who came to the Fulton County Government Center on Wednesday expressed their rage and frustration at the transit authority.

Many of the 37 speakers at Wednesday's hearing complained to MARTA officials about late buses, poor service and administrative waste.

They warned that the proposed cuts would cost service workers their jobs and prevent the region's most vulnerable residents from receiving health care and other critical services. Patricia Patterson, a senior citizen who lives on Springdale Road, urged MARTA to reconsider the effect of the proposed cuts on working people.

"You are not thinking clearly, because if you were, you would realize that the people who supported you from the beginning are still with you and you are turning your back on them," Patterson said.

But transit advocates argued that the service reductions are being forced by a state that refuses to contribute to MARTA's operations.

Rebecca Serna, vice president of Citizens for Progressive Transit, called MARTA ''a martyr to its funding structure. It is the largest transit system in the United States that does not receive sustained state operating funds."

On Wednesday morning, her group and others distributed postcards at the Lindbergh MARTA station to be mailed to Gov. Sonny Perdue, urging more support for MARTA at the state level.

MARTA General Manager Nathaniel Ford said he was not surprised by the complaints and frustrations and was gratified that many also understand the transit agency's financial constraints. ''While we also heard some complaints about quality of service, we also heard some about how MARTA is funded," he said.

Only 17 of the transit agency's 124 bus routes would remain unchanged under the proposal. Only four routes would be eliminated; others would be merged or have shortened hours.

Officials predict more painful cuts next year if MARTA still can't break even.

The final vote on the changes is set for June, with changes to take effect June 26.

The money to run MARTA trains and buses comes from the $1.75 per-ride fare and a 1 percent sales tax in Fulton and DeKalb counties and the city of Atlanta.

But recession and declines in ridership blamed on rising fares have left the agency struggling to close a potential $54 million deficit next year if no changes are made.

MARTA expects to pull $30 million out of its dwindling reserves to run its trains and buses this year. The $11 million that the bus service reductions are projected to save will be crucial to closing ongoing budget gaps.

The informational session and public hearings continue today and Friday, with two sessions scheduled both days. Most informational sessions are from 2 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., and public hearings start at 7:

> Today: Atlanta City Hall, 55 Trinity Ave., and Roswell City Hall, 38 Hill St.

> Friday: South Fulton Government Center, 5600 Stonewall Tell Road, College Park, and Manuel Maloof Auditorium, 1300 Commerce Drive, Decatur. The Decatur informational session begins at 3 p.m.

> ON THE WEB: To see the proposed route changes, go to: www.itsmarta.com/getthere/impchange.htm#bus