When I began this planting, I started to notice love more present in my life. The beings in my garden were loving me, even the bees. Some times they would breeze past my ear, drag their legs across the back of my hand as I worked, or make their presence known in other ways. The ants did not overwhelm my garden, taking only what they could carry and focusing on one fruit at a time. I never needed to worry that they would ravage my garden. There was enough to go around, after all. My family would wander out into the morning or evening to see what I was up to, what fruit I was gathering, what herb I was dancing around. My cat would keep me company and watch curiously as I sat in the dirt pulling up the young sprouts of "weeds". Love really showed up in the actions of my friends and neighbors who kept my garden watered while I was away, and who took home some of the fruit so their purpose could be fulfilled....i.e. eaten!
What I learned from this season of growing is that it takes love to grow a garden. Gardens are not always simply tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. There are gardens everywhere we turn. The most impressive gardens to our eyes are usually well-tended, having a variety of colors, types of flowers and fruits, and no weeds in sight. But gardens are not always so perfect, and need not be. The point is to touch the Earth, plant a seed, grow a plant, give birth to life that sustains you.
During my planting and harvesting, I found myself being planted and harvested. A gardener, of sorts, found a fruiting flower blooming in me, and started to tend me as if I were a part of his garden. He watered me, pulled up the weeds that had begun to grow around and within me, and provided plenty of extra light for me to grow in. Not recognizing at first that this one who came to me was a master at the art of cultivation, I was caught by surprise by the love I felt as my soil was gently turned and fertilized. As Mother Earth, Gaia, must feel when her loved ones sit at her feet, touch her heart, and plant seeds of life within her, I, too, feel precious and considered and important and loved. As this gardner returns to his garden to tend to my petals he brings sunlight and love. My blossoms reach up, like the blossoms of any flower seeking nourishment, to touch his heart, feel his loving hands, and kiss his sweet face for bringing me to life once again, for reminding me that I am a flower bearing fruit. Ah Grace. I am joyous to be in his garden and for him to be the one who tends to me.
Each of us tends a garden where living beings await our care. I speak in metaphors about the acts of love one person brings to another. I speak of a love that can only come about when we pay attention to the love we send out with sincerity. This love returns, this love circles around and seeks its origins and always bring new love with it. In planting my garden, I awakened the heart of the Earth within me. That awakening sent energetic messages to all the minute beings that took my messages, like bees take pollen, out into the ethers finding a caretaker for me, for my heart. Love is in the action of loving. There is magick growing around me, in me, through me. There is evidence that Love, in all its beauty, is best adorned in the acts performed in the little moments. A shared glance. Recognizing spirit. Accepting the giving of wisdom. Allowing a touch. Knowing you need. Giving what you have. Love is a verb. My garden and my gardener are that verb for me. Peace.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Worlds in Collision
There has been a gap between posts here, and for good reason. I had nothing to say as I watched the drama unfold before our eyes. Between the cliffhanger of a presidential election (I jest), the natural wonders of our weather here on Earth, the human response to fear around oil supply and distribution, and the falling of the sky on Wall Street, I simply could not sit down long enough to write. But, I have been having many conversations with people everywhere. It seems, according to popular opinion, that our world has finally changed. Changed? How? You might ask. The obvious changes are hard to miss. The thieves have been in the temple all along. In fact, we gave them the key even though we knew they were thieves. They have left the building and taken the silverware, too. Left quite a mess to be cleaned up, as well. And you know what? They've even offered to come back and clean up their mess, and, it appears, sheeple are ready and willing to let them do it. Doesn't this time and day just simply amaze you? We are actually witnessing the fall of western civilization. How could this be so? Well, when a civilization rests its laurels upon cotton and digitized illusions, it's not impossible for that cotton to burn or for those illusions to disappear once an awakening begins to occur. Awakening? Well, not of an enlightened type do we see in this awakening, more of an abrupt end to sleep. This is not, in my opinion, the stuff of prophecy, this is more like people taking entitlements to other's property simply because those who own the property did not pay attention to the signs in front of their faces that there was a need for them to do something different than to trust those not trustworthy. Now, we stand holding empty bags where once there was, at least, a hope that we had something of value inside the bags. Not any more!
Check this out:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/10/bush_to_host_emergency_finance_meeting
Well, it's not like we weren't warned. There have been many voices speaking to the inevitability of the fall. We live in a circular universe. Cycles repeat themselves. People repeat themselves, and the mistakes people make seem to recur, over and over and over. Folks, look through your history books, not the ones written for you, but the ones you've written and the people you trust have written. Listen to the speeches of those so-called "dissidents" who speak out against the lies of those we have allowed to be in power. We have the right to revolution. It is written in our code, it lays in wait to be activated through our DNA, and our children are expecting us to do something other than consume their lives away. For the people, it cannot be "business as usual". Now is the time for us to take this mess seriously. We need a new way of life. What are we going to do?
Check this out: www.zeitgeistmovie.com.
Check this out:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/10/bush_to_host_emergency_finance_meeting
Well, it's not like we weren't warned. There have been many voices speaking to the inevitability of the fall. We live in a circular universe. Cycles repeat themselves. People repeat themselves, and the mistakes people make seem to recur, over and over and over. Folks, look through your history books, not the ones written for you, but the ones you've written and the people you trust have written. Listen to the speeches of those so-called "dissidents" who speak out against the lies of those we have allowed to be in power. We have the right to revolution. It is written in our code, it lays in wait to be activated through our DNA, and our children are expecting us to do something other than consume their lives away. For the people, it cannot be "business as usual". Now is the time for us to take this mess seriously. We need a new way of life. What are we going to do?
Check this out: www.zeitgeistmovie.com.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Return
It is becoming more obvious that the world of man and the world of nature are in a major clash moment. The events in the weather the past weeks have shown that we are on a collision course with disaster. To escape it all, I walked outdoors to my new and budding garden to pick the fruits of my labor. To my delight, peppers and tomatoes, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, catnip, lemon balm, and st. john's wort were all waving their little hands at me, ready to be picked and clipped. I felt such a warm surge of love coming from them, and the morning air was fresh and true. I could hear songs coming from every corner of my world, and the sounds of famine, drought, and warfare disappeared, not because I had forgotten them, but because in returning to the garden I had found the peace and cure to all our ails.
The days are hotter now, the wind still blows, the rain still falls, the water still flows, the birds still build nests, the squirrels still bury nuts, the bees still buzz, and through it all, the one being out of step, out of tune, continues to cut trees, build roads, slather on the tar and concrete to heat up his world all the more, people still drive the suv's and f-150's in spite of the signs, in spite of the costs to us all. Take a moment, you lovers of the earth, in the morning, breathe the new air, hear ancient songs sung by the winged beings, the rustling of the 4-leggeds, and you will know you are one with it all as you, too, harvest your gifts from Her.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Order of the Planet
If you listen to information swirling round about your head, if you pay attention to the signs of man and of the Divine, if you see that most people are not paying attention and are being swayed in one direction, you will ultimately have to come to the conclusion that there is a pattern of behavior that is just out of our reach, to some degree imperceivable, but felt deeply by your soul. You know something is not right with the world. You can feel it, but most people are not aware of themselves enough to even begin to be aware of what is outside of themselves.
We're in deep, according to history, and the patterns of possessing power that have taken shape over the past 13 centuries. That's right, 13 centuries. Count from about 700 a.d. 13 is a magic number but most of humanity is afraid of it. More on that later. It would be difficult at this stage to indoctrinate the common people into the history of the royals on the planet, not just europe, their governing body, their halls of knowledge, justice, finance, and worship. Most of us are completely oblivious to the fact that the dramas unfolding before us began so many centuries ago, and represent an unbroken chain of murder, deceit, fraud, lies, subterfuge, and espionage, not to speak of intermarriage, arranged marriages, and the marriage of fortunes to fortunes.
What began some 1300 years ago has its roots in the powerful civilizations on the continent of Alkebulan some 13 centuries before that with the changes in power that ultimately left it open to domination by the Romans, who, high on violent savagery as they swept across Asia, Europe, and into Alkebulan, destroyed and maimed the hope of the planet to ever live to its highest potential. The seed planted, these savages and their future children were to bring into the world a form of domination that would require the basest types of behavior coupled with varying forms of greed, selfishness, and favoritism based on skin color and bloodlines. Solomon said in his "Songs" that there is "nothing new under the sun." I believe this.
Many of us with the genetic basis to "know" intuitively that this is more than meets the eye are responsible for ourselves only. I said it. For many moons now I have spent my days and nights warning the people I speak to about the coming downfall brought on by our own agreement with these "evildoers". It is very obvious that we can no longer ignore what is apparent. So many people feel the loss of control over their personal finances, what most people base the quality of their lives upon, that it is just a matter of time before all hell breaks loose. What then? By then, the NWO will have been fully implemented. The fascist state will have a firm foundation for the next phase of power-controlled domination, and we may find ourselves hiding like the Jews from the Nazis.
There is a movie everyone should watch as soon as possible. It was shot during Hitler's rise to power, after he'd been given power and as he laid the foundation for the Nazi party's "final solution." Ask your local public library if it carries this movie. It's called "Triumph of the Will." Shocking really to watch this and be able to see the slow but progressive creation of every aspect of fascism take shape among the young, the women, the men, the girls, the boys, and all the while this skillful manipulator was preparing his country to do a thing so against humanity it would make the world shake. I kid you not. Along with that, you really should watch D.W. Griffin's "The Birth of a Nation" for the tenor it sets about the way society in this country is truly set up. Even though we call it "segregation", it really is simply the establishment of two societies. One for the "white" and one for the "colored". Call yourselves what you will, if you are not pink, red, rednecked, or a hillbilly, you are a "colored" and there is a society for you. But, it's a secret to most of us. Many of us actually believe that there is only one society in the u.s. Go back and read the post "9 Simple Rules."
So what of this order of the planet? It was here before we were born. It lives off our fears and our doubts and our need to believe in something or someone greater than ourselves, greater than the whole of man or mankind. It will live on so long as we breathe life into the dead, lifeless body attached to a head that has never been dealt a fatal blow. It assures its longevity by scaring us into submission and daring us to take up arms against it. We feed it with our tax dollars because we are too afraid to stop paying tribute to the beast. We train our children to fear and love it, too. We believe, even today, after it has sent many millions of us out into the void and others out into the fields to work as slaves once again, that it will be compassionate and come back to save us all. The signs show otherwise. We are on our own. No one is going to come and help us. What is so ironic is that we, the people, sat in silent awe as Bush I gave us our marching orders September 11, 1991, and told us that he (and "they") were installing a new world order. Somebody was about to take power from someone else. He said it was more than just about a small country (Iraq), it is about their future hegemony, a despot, a dictatorship that believes that you and all the rest of us are too unimportant to be trusted with governing ourselves. They, and only they, are the rightful heirs to ALL the Earth's resources. And to whom they decide a little bit shall go to, they shall get a little.
It was like a timebomb, a repeat of a show we watched 10 years before. September 11, 2001. Another apparent step toward the NWO. Did they know? Of course "they" did. Most of the people reading this post are thinking people. I know that you are already there. For the rest of the people who still believe what these beasts tell you to believe, I say: Take heed of the signs. They are all around us now. As the veil is lifted, the mask is lowered, the curtain is pulled back, you will discover that Oz is a place where the colors change according to the mood the masters wish to set for the people. Oz is a place where most folk are conforming and complacent hoping the Wiz has all the answers. Of course, the Wiz, the all powerful, is simply a man who will ultimately leave the people behind to return to his own humble roots, but the people will be left to discover what is actual for themselves. Those few who are truly radical will be the ones to pull the Wiz out of his curtain-concealed haven. It will take more than a few of us, the brave, the genius, the curious, the loving, and the light (Toto) to lead those who wish to depart the nightmare to slay the beast.
The order of the planet calls for us to wake the hell up. Turn off the tube. Keep what money you have left for a time when you'll need it to get across some other border. Talk to each other. Learn how to shoot a gun. Pack a bag just in case you do have to run. Learn how to grow food. Ask for help! Tell someone else. Tell the truth! We are all waiting for each other. Liberty is just around the corner, but we've got to step across the line drawn in the sand to reach it. Stop the rise of the new world order now! Peace.
Friday, May 30, 2008
What Lies Beneath...
This morning my sister called to tell me that she was sending me a new phone; one to share with her because she has thousands of minutes and she'd love to be able to connect with me anytime, anyplace. I have the same cell phone that I've had for 6 years. I don't mind that the ringtone is elementary or that the phone itself is not "flashy" with all the add-ons like speakerphone, etc. Something Alice Walker said in one of her pieces on our relationship to the planet struck my soul and, it being firmly planted, I have chosen not to participate in the incremental advances in cell phone structure and function. She said, and I am paraphrasing, that the materials that are used to build cell phones come from deep within the earth, and that there is a reason why these elements are buried deeply. She said that there must be a karmic debt paid by us for bringing these things up to the surface, and that we will also be held accountable for the destruction of the people native to these lands, who slave for us to have these comforts, and for the destruction of the land itself. I do believe this to be true. Much like the destruction of the rainforests, lying deep below the surface are microbes that are meant to stay under the surface, but man's activities bring them to the surface. We wonder from where the new and emerging virulence comes, and few of us think far enough down to understand that some things were meant to stay buried. Take oil, for example. Yes, we have converted it to our own use, but above the ground we are all suffering the effects of that use. Today, the emissions in the atmosphere that humans and all other air-breathing creatures need to survive are choking the very life out of us. People who never had problems with asthma are now sufferers of it. Children can't enjoy the blue sky we did in our youth (if you were born prior to 1968 you might remember a different color of blue). The sky is filled with junk, the space above our heads is filled with space junk, including satellites and the remains of certain men's toys that have not benefitted but a few. This planet belongs to us all. No one people has the right to claim it as their own. All of us have the responsibility to demand that the destruction of our planet cease. But what of our appetites for pleasure, for instant gratification, for "keeping up", for being first, for having it all?! Truly, I tell you, unless you deal with your wants, unless you squash your desires, unless you be the one to say "no thanks", and encourage your neighbor to do the same, man and mankind will collectively drown in our own disbelief as humanity's day of reckoning IS close at hand. We may not be able to stop the train from crashing, but we can slow it down. Use what you already have. Accept that you already have enough. Learn how you can live with less, and more simply. Believe that one person can make a world of difference, and that a small group of people you join up with can make a bigger difference. You can do without, you can grow tomatoes, you do look great with a natural, you can take a walk and park that car, your children will love the change in you as your change will allow you to turn to them and play with them, perhaps, for the first time in their lives. When we simplify, slow down, take less, we gain time. Isn't that what all this is about anyway? Time? Our technological addictions are killing more than just animals, the Earth, and time itself. It's killing people, childhood, and dreams. Do you truly need another cell phone? If you knew what people a world away have to go through in order to supply you with that new phone, would it matter? Would you choose a different path? Would you be happy with 1? Don't use the argument that your demand for a new phone fuels the market economy which creates jobs for people who might not have one. Consider the job, consider the benefit, consider the detriment, consider who really is getting paid. Not these people. In fact, your cell phone spawns wars. Are we warmongers now? So, to my sister, thank you, darling. My old phone works fine. I love you.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Stargate 11-19-X
Happy 83rd Earth Day Brother El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz! This day is a special one indeed! The 2nd Full Moon in Scorpio! There is also an abundance of 11's influencing this day! The Moon and the Sun star are both at 29 degrees at the time of its Fullness! That's an 11. Brother Malcolm would have been 83, that's an 11. The Full Moon moment is at 10:11 EST, 1-11. AND, there is a Grand Cross in the Sky. This Grand Cross is between fixed signs, Leo, Scorpio, Taurus, and Aquarius. The planets involved are the Moon in Scorpio, the Sun in Taurus, Venus in Taurus, Neptune in Aquarius, and Saturn on the Leo/Virgo cusp (1 degree Virgo). Wonderful! First, let's consider the Full Moon in Scorpio at 29 degrees and in the 11th house from where I sit. There's that 11 again!
The Full Moon is of course the "high tide" for human emotions. It is the point at which we are the most sensitive as a species and the most receptive. Scorpio is a sign ruled by Pluto in its highest manifestation: transforming power, intense concentration on one particular thing, sexual healing, instigating for the purpose of renewal, heated interactions for the sake of searing together and tearing apart, and its polarity, Taurus, is ruled by the lower vibration of Venus: materiality, earth, fruitfulness, sowing seed, mating, standing still, being steadfast, being pregnant. The need for us to be creative, fruitful and multiply, is the essence of these two forces together. On the one hand, this is the time when all creatures in nature are birthing young, nursing them, and doing what is necessary to populate the Earth with the species that make up the planetary being. This productivity is not done with any "thought" because it is instinctive, intuitive, and natural. Of course, Scorpio and Taurus both epitomize instinct to survive, intuition and the natural being. No surprises. The best use of the energy of this Full Moon is to be as productive, pro-creative, and natural as one possibly can be in the habitat one has built around them. With the mate/s one has in their life, and to be as high-minded as one can given the influences of Venus and Pluto in shaping our relationships, for good or ill. Given the presence of Mars in Scorpio's profile, one should be aware of creating any discord now within relationships of any sort. Paying attention to the needs of others rather than our own needs sometimes is just the remedy we need to bring our relations closer to the place we want to see them go. Still, one must stay within the realm of reason.
The Grand Cross is in the fixed group of signs. Imagine a large T in the sky between these prominent planets: Moon, Sun, Venus, Neptune and Saturn! Whew! The fixed nature of the signs indicates that we must be aware of our tendency toward inflexibility and also the need for structure in life so that we can see exactly where we are, where we are going, and who we say we claim to be. It is certainly a sign that we will have much to endure, and that the energies can be confusing to the immature mind causing it to be unsure of what direction it should take.
The Moon and Sun are naturally in opposition to one another during a Full Moon, and combined with the Sun in this config is Venus bringing the need to be physical, to touch another and to touch the Earth. With Venus in opposition to the Moon, however, some may receive approached from those they really aren't in tune with. With Neptune in square to the Moon, we may have dreams that are clashing with our reality. We may want the "perfect" love or expect "perfection" in our loving, and we may need to step back to see our surroundings, our lovers, our selves, in a truer light. Of course, Saturn tends to help us break out of our illusions that Neptune helps us to build. Perhaps that is why the Omniverse put Saturn right where it is at this Full Moon moment. Saturn's opposition to the Moon warns us not to take our emotional frustrations out on those closest to us. It tells us we need to pay attention to how we are nurturing ourselves, and especially those most needful of our healthy emotional state....our mother, our children we mother, our creations, our own hearts. Saturn's opposition to Neptune will help you tether your own tendency to drift off in daydreams and illusions. We will all be more likely to keep our heads out of the sky, but we will be leaning toward learning more about mysticisms and world religions....
Saturn and Neptune are squared to the Sun and Venus during this moment of time. Saturn tends to take some of the spontaneity away from Venus' love for play and freedom because sometimes we need to work, but Venus' pairing with the Sun suggests we need to resist working too much and find the time to play, be free, touch the Earth, preferably with someone we love and want to be loved by. Neptune suggests in this config that we pay attention to what's real, not to get too heady over being loved and making the wrong choices about who we are loving, or denying ourselves the love we need out of some crazy notion of "perfection" that does not exist.
The Stargate I call 11-19-X is simply a suggestion that this planetary configuration, the influence of the number 11 and this being the day (perhaps the moment) of the birth of our Shining Black Prince, is also the opening of a Stargate for spirit to come and go, in and through those who are aware and awake enough to feel the vibrations of Love, Ideal, Truth, Knowledge, Virtue, and Fruitfulness. 11 is a Master Number of Unity. When the pattern repeats, the request is clear: unify to protect one another from treachery that comes from illusion and emotional disturbances. Harmony can come when we know what is discordant within us and between us and then to seek compromise between what is conflicting within before we seek to compromise with what is conflicting outside of ourselves. These two forces must ultimately unite for happiness. The two are not 1, and remain separate, though joined, each maintains its own unique worth. In order to understand, meditate upon the meaning of this: 1+1=11, not 2.
It will come to you in an instant. Peace.
The Full Moon is of course the "high tide" for human emotions. It is the point at which we are the most sensitive as a species and the most receptive. Scorpio is a sign ruled by Pluto in its highest manifestation: transforming power, intense concentration on one particular thing, sexual healing, instigating for the purpose of renewal, heated interactions for the sake of searing together and tearing apart, and its polarity, Taurus, is ruled by the lower vibration of Venus: materiality, earth, fruitfulness, sowing seed, mating, standing still, being steadfast, being pregnant. The need for us to be creative, fruitful and multiply, is the essence of these two forces together. On the one hand, this is the time when all creatures in nature are birthing young, nursing them, and doing what is necessary to populate the Earth with the species that make up the planetary being. This productivity is not done with any "thought" because it is instinctive, intuitive, and natural. Of course, Scorpio and Taurus both epitomize instinct to survive, intuition and the natural being. No surprises. The best use of the energy of this Full Moon is to be as productive, pro-creative, and natural as one possibly can be in the habitat one has built around them. With the mate/s one has in their life, and to be as high-minded as one can given the influences of Venus and Pluto in shaping our relationships, for good or ill. Given the presence of Mars in Scorpio's profile, one should be aware of creating any discord now within relationships of any sort. Paying attention to the needs of others rather than our own needs sometimes is just the remedy we need to bring our relations closer to the place we want to see them go. Still, one must stay within the realm of reason.
The Grand Cross is in the fixed group of signs. Imagine a large T in the sky between these prominent planets: Moon, Sun, Venus, Neptune and Saturn! Whew! The fixed nature of the signs indicates that we must be aware of our tendency toward inflexibility and also the need for structure in life so that we can see exactly where we are, where we are going, and who we say we claim to be. It is certainly a sign that we will have much to endure, and that the energies can be confusing to the immature mind causing it to be unsure of what direction it should take.
The Moon and Sun are naturally in opposition to one another during a Full Moon, and combined with the Sun in this config is Venus bringing the need to be physical, to touch another and to touch the Earth. With Venus in opposition to the Moon, however, some may receive approached from those they really aren't in tune with. With Neptune in square to the Moon, we may have dreams that are clashing with our reality. We may want the "perfect" love or expect "perfection" in our loving, and we may need to step back to see our surroundings, our lovers, our selves, in a truer light. Of course, Saturn tends to help us break out of our illusions that Neptune helps us to build. Perhaps that is why the Omniverse put Saturn right where it is at this Full Moon moment. Saturn's opposition to the Moon warns us not to take our emotional frustrations out on those closest to us. It tells us we need to pay attention to how we are nurturing ourselves, and especially those most needful of our healthy emotional state....our mother, our children we mother, our creations, our own hearts. Saturn's opposition to Neptune will help you tether your own tendency to drift off in daydreams and illusions. We will all be more likely to keep our heads out of the sky, but we will be leaning toward learning more about mysticisms and world religions....
Saturn and Neptune are squared to the Sun and Venus during this moment of time. Saturn tends to take some of the spontaneity away from Venus' love for play and freedom because sometimes we need to work, but Venus' pairing with the Sun suggests we need to resist working too much and find the time to play, be free, touch the Earth, preferably with someone we love and want to be loved by. Neptune suggests in this config that we pay attention to what's real, not to get too heady over being loved and making the wrong choices about who we are loving, or denying ourselves the love we need out of some crazy notion of "perfection" that does not exist.
The Stargate I call 11-19-X is simply a suggestion that this planetary configuration, the influence of the number 11 and this being the day (perhaps the moment) of the birth of our Shining Black Prince, is also the opening of a Stargate for spirit to come and go, in and through those who are aware and awake enough to feel the vibrations of Love, Ideal, Truth, Knowledge, Virtue, and Fruitfulness. 11 is a Master Number of Unity. When the pattern repeats, the request is clear: unify to protect one another from treachery that comes from illusion and emotional disturbances. Harmony can come when we know what is discordant within us and between us and then to seek compromise between what is conflicting within before we seek to compromise with what is conflicting outside of ourselves. These two forces must ultimately unite for happiness. The two are not 1, and remain separate, though joined, each maintains its own unique worth. In order to understand, meditate upon the meaning of this: 1+1=11, not 2.
It will come to you in an instant. Peace.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Walk for the Water
Friday, May 16, 2008
The Roots of the School to Prison Pipeline--It's All About Human Capital
The following article is a must read for parents with children and for adults who care anything at all about the state of education in the united states of America, children in Georgia, and especially, the metro Atlanta area. Not only is this story revealing the truth about how the adults in charge care so little about the futures of children needing the most help, it also reveals how political careers are built on the backs of our children, whether we realize it or not. It does not take much to put a community behind bars. We ought to have learned that in the past 23 years since the Reagan-era. We are the most incarcerated people in the world! And we stand around twisting our hands wondering why things are the way they are. Here's the formula: 1--Create fear of the children in the minds of the ones in charge (read Jawanza Kunjufu), 2--Label behavior as criminal when they do what children have always done (i.e., fight), 3--Take away parental control, or better yet, 4--Wait for the parents to ask the government to take their children and "fix" them, and 5--Place them in some sort of government sponsored "program" that pays lots of money to the program but gives the children absolutely nothing to enhance their lives. Once those parts are in place, the next step is almost inevitable for those that do not escape the iron fist of the law for one reason or another: imprisonment for a term of years and forced enslavement based upon the 13th constitutional amendment to the united states of America. Of course, our system creates criminals out of good children because we fail to participate early enough and fully enough. We buy into the myth that children are "bad" and "stupid" and "behavior problems". We place a different standard upon the heads of Black boys when it comes to them acting in accordance with their natural impulses. White boys are just "being boys". These have the benefit of obtaining "curbside justice" where they are "spoken to" and given a "slap on the wrist" and sent home, only to grow up and believe the world is their oyster and nobody they do not have to respect can tell them otherwise. Here, you have a situation where 97% of all the students are Black. What does this say about us as adults, as leaders in our households, as guides to our children? Do we truly believe that some entity outside of ourselves can fix what's gone horribly wrong? Shouldn't the system be institutionalized instead of the people? The children aren't crazy! The people aren't crazy! What we have created is!
Of course, the choice is yours! Always has been. You and I will always volunteer to give up on our own freedoms, and by way of agency as parents, we hand over our children's freedoms, too. The sister in this story, FINALLY, got it! The only answer to government control over her child, and its sheer incompetence to educate him correctly and with compassion, is to HOMESCHOOL! Yes, YOU can. Si, se puede! After you read this, apply some of the principles of CEP's failures to the public schools in your community. They may not apply to your child, but I guarantee you, for someone's child, they are present. There is a lot more that can be said about his story. Do not skim over the parts pertaining to Bush, Texas, Republicans, Corrections Corporation of America! This is who is shaping the future of education in America. Click on the link to the "No Child Left Behind Act" in the story. That's a play on words if ever there was one. Think about the phrase. Obviously, it does not mean that all children will be educated! To me, it means that, when it's all been said and done, there will be no children left! Where will they be? Your guess is as good as mine. The prison system, the battle field, the cotton field, the mental hospitals. a listing on the stock market under CCA/CEP! Based on the successes of "no child left behind" those seem the most possible. The board room, the top of industry, the creators of new and cleaner technologies, the parents of sane children, the teachers of the next generations? Perhaps they'll make those into "reality shows" for our entertainment in our old age. What dreams may come. READ. Peace. (All the embellishments to this article are mine). ____________________________________________
Forrest Hill Academy: The children left behind
When the Atlanta Public Schools hired politically connected Community Education Partners to operate an academy for kids in trouble, a miracle was promised. An ACLU lawsuit now alleges the school is a warehouse for hard-to-teach children.
Published 05.07.08
By Scott Freeman
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/forrest_hill_academy_the_children_left_behind/Content?oid=479295
Patti Welch was living in Douglasville when she went through a divorce last year. Atlanta was her chance to start over. Weary of her one-hour, 20-minute commute to the northside law office where she works as a paralegal, Welch found a duplex in the West End only 20 minutes from her job. But the move also was about her 15-year-old son, Patrick. He was a smart kid, a B student entering the 10th grade. But he'd gotten into fights. One took place just off school grounds and involved several kids, so officials labeled it "gang-related." That meant Patrick would be sent to Douglas County's alternative school.
Even though she was confident her son wasn't in a gang, Welch didn't bother to appeal the school district's decision. She thought an alternative school might help him. And she hoped the 10 days Patrick spent in jail after his last fight would serve as a wake-up call. Welch knew her son would be sent to an alternative school when they moved to Atlanta. But she thought it would be temporary. Instead, officials told her that because Patrick had a gang-related fight on his record, he'd never be allowed to enroll in a regular school in Atlanta.
She tried to make the best of it. When told he'd be sent to Forrest Hill Academy, she looked at her son and forced a smile. "Wow," she said hopefully. "They're putting you in an academy."
Six months later, Patrick became one of eight student plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program in New York City. The suit alleges that Forrest Hill – which is operated by a for-profit company called Community Education Partners – is little more than a pathway to prison for Atlanta's unwanted students. "It would be a stretch to even call this a school," says Reggie Shuford, an attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program in New York. "There is little to no academic instruction, and its students are treated like criminals. It is nothing more than a warehouse, largely for poor children of color."
The ACLU contends that Forrest Hill students, 97 percent of whom are African-American, spend most of their days filling out worksheets, for which they get no feedback. According to state figures, nine out of 10 students at the school are unable to pass the standardized state test for math proficiency. The figures also show that Forrest Hill is the most violent school in Atlanta. "It is a national disgrace that the Atlanta school system has handed over its constitutional responsibility to a private, for-profit corporation," says Emily Chiang, the case's lead lawyer.
Forrest Hill wasn't quite the academy that Patti Welch had hoped for.
The idea of putting problem children into an "alternative school" is a recent phenomenon in the world of education. Before a federal law that took effect in 1978, public schools had no legal requirement to provide education to special needs kids. If a child was violent, or continually disrupted the class, schools could kick him or her out. When the law took away that option, teachers and school systems faced the chore of trying to tame disruptive students. The trend of taking those kids out of regular classrooms and putting them into "alternative" schools began to take hold. That practice quickly led to allegations that some systems – under increasing pressure to churn out higher scores on standardized tests – were simply "warehousing" their undesirable students, out of sight and out of mind.
"Those schools weren't about education, but just getting through the day," says Eric Freeman, assistant professor of educational policy studies at Georgia State University. "Those were the 'expendable kids.' It's no longer acceptable to have schools where kids are warehoused, but we still have a long way to go."
When it was founded in 1996, Community Education Partners touted itself as a way to get expendable kids back into the mainstream. From the start, however, there were indications CEP's considerable political weight was as responsible for its rise as were its education programs.
CEP was formed in Nashville by four men with heavy Republican connections.CEO Randle Richardson, was chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party from 1992 to 1995 and oversaw a 1994 electoral sweep in which Bill Frist and Fred Thompson won Senate seats and Don Sundquist was elected governor. Another co-founder, John Danielson, would become chief of staff for Education Secretary Rod Paige under George W. Bush. One of the initial investors, Tom Beasley, had chaired the Tennessee GOP before Richardson did.
Beasley also founded the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs privatized prisons. Founded in 1984, CCA has grown to become the sixth-largest prison system in the country – trailing only the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and four states. But the company also has faced criticism for understaffing, high turnover and lax security. According to a 1999 state audit, neglect of medical care and security at CCA facilities in Georgia amounted to "borderline deliberate indifference."
The two companies – CCA and CEP – have turned out to share some parallels. Both had business plans that relied on obtaining contracts to operate government services. Both were started in Nashville by major Republican Party players. And both went to Texas to make their mark. Texas was a natural entry point for CEP. In 1995, George W. Bush had become governor, and his administration was brimming with ideas to reform schools. The bundle of changes would be touted during Bush's 2000 presidential run as the "Texas Miracle." In that environment, George Scott, president of a Texas nonprofit education reform group, helped CEP gain a foothold.
"I got pulled into it by the former superintendent for the Houston school department," Scott says. "It's a sinister manipulation of reality to say that public education is meeting its constitutional and moral obligation to these children; we throw at-risk kids into alternative centers and forget about them. Then along came a company that said it was going to do something different." Scott says he first used his political connections to help the company land a contract to take over the education services at a juvenile detention center. He was impressed by CEP's pitch that its methods could help problem children get up to speed academically so they go back to mainstream schools.
"You have kids in the ninth grade who can't do fractions," Scott says. "If a kid is in the ninth grade but is at the fifth-grade level, giving them an algebra book is useless. Under this program, we would start them at the level where they are at, and build from there. CEP promised two years of academic growth for every year a student was in their school."
In 1997, Scott says, he used his relationship with Paige, then Houston's school superintendent, to help CEP land its first public school contract. Under the future education secretary's stewardship, the Houston Independent School District was becoming a cradle of the so-called Texas Miracle. Paige had put a system in place that held individual principals accountable for dropout rates and test scores. Then, the district signed a $17.9 million contract to turn the education of as many as 2,500 children to CEP.
Initially, the corporation hired Carl Shaw – who was the former chairman of the Texas Education Agency's assessment committee – to develop an independent test to grade the progress of the CEP students. "I will never forget the day the school board approved the CEP contract," Scott says. "Randle Richardson and I were walking out of the building and I told him that not all the kids in this are going to make two [years of progress] in one. But that is going to be your strength. You'll say that you're being held accountable for the program."
Before CEP's contract with Houston took effect, however, the first test results from the juvenile detention facility came back. Scott recalls that they showed the students weren't making much progress – some had even regressed. CEP blamed the test, and fired Shaw.
Richardson disputes that account. He says Scott let his friendship with Shaw intrude on his judgment and that the scores showed 20 student inmates had regressed in math but that most had made great progress. His own expert looked at the test and determined it was flawed, an opinion seconded by the Texas Education Agency.
Whether it was over a principle or a friendship, the incident left Scott with strong feelings about CEP. He now says the one thing he's most ashamed of in his professional life is helping the company get into the Texas schools. The absence of Shaw's test, he says, left the company devoid of the very thing that had attracted him to the concept in the first place: accountability.
Instead, Scott says, CEP began to cull its political connections. A sitting Houston school board member was hired as a consultant. Sandy Kress, who later authored Bush's No Child Left Behind program, was hired as a lobbyist. And when the company opened the campus of its first alternative school, in Houston in 1997, former President George H.W. Bush was at the opening ceremony to offer his endorsement. "They put together a very powerful, politically juiced operation in Texas," Scott says.
CEP followed its Houston deal with a five-year, $10 million-a-year contract in Dallas. Then, it moved on to Florida and Philadelphia. And all along it followed a familiar pattern: It hired well-connected lobbyists to sell the program and courted elected officials with generous campaign contributions. CEP claimed it had found the key to educating a student population that was thought to be beyond help. The schools used a computer-based education program called PLATO that CEP said enables students to quickly catch up to their age level in reading and math skills.
The company was swept up in the middle of what became a nationwide education reform movement. Bush campaigned for the presidency heralding his "Texas Miracle" of low dropout rates and high test scores. When he was elected, he named Paige to his Cabinet and pushed through Congress the No Child Left Behind Act, which instituted high achievement goals for the nation's public schools. But even as it rode the wave of its association with Bush's education changes, CEP became a target of criticism. Some parents complained of prisonlike conditions inside CEP schools. Others claimed CEP was, in reality, doing little more than warehousing problem students.
There were official rebukes as well. An internal evaluation in Dallas found that "the model of education provided by [CEP] was untenable." "The reliance on noncertified teachers for the bulk of the student-teacher interaction was useful for the company to save money, but was not a design in the best interest of the students," the report went on to say. "Students who attended Community Education Partners did not do very well academically." CEP had even refused to provide its budget data to the school district, the report said, which made it impossible to know just how it was spending the money it received.
In 2002, the Dallas school system fired CEP. By then, however, the company was developing its relationship with a new customer: Atlanta.
It's unclear exactly how CEP came to acquire a $6.9 million contract to open an alternative school in Atlanta. Richardson says the school system contacted the company in 2001. Citing the pending ACLU lawsuit, Atlanta school officials won't even talk about CEP. At the time the contract was signed, Atlanta officials brushed aside concerns already brewing in Dallas. They cited a "task force" report that supposedly recommended the district privatize its alternative schools; when the AJC requested a copy of that report, however, school officials said they couldn't find one.
It didn't take long for concerns to crop up in Atlanta. In August 2002, CEP opened its alternative school in temporary quarters at the old Archer High School. Parents of some of the students attended the Rev. Darryl Winston's southeast Atlanta church. "We were hearing allegations of mistreatment and a prison environment," says Winston, president of the Greater American Ministerial Council. "We met with the staff, and they admitted that 90 percent of what we described had to do with the building. The Archer High School campus was extremely chaotic. They told us the building did not give us an accurate picture of what the program was about."
CEP even flew Winston and other community leaders to Houston to tour their schools there. "We were impressed by what we saw," he says. The company assured Winston the problem was that the Atlanta school had yet to find a permanent location. The company prefers a specific design for its schools. Kids are segregated into male and female classes, and the classes are isolated inside pods within the building. "In school, kids get in trouble in the hallway or the cafeteria or going to the restrooms," says Anthony Edwards, a CEP vice president. "So we control that. There are restrooms and water fountains in each of the common areas. It eliminates movement. Kids get in trouble when they're moving."
Three properties had already been identified, but each was scuttled by community opposition to an alternative school in the neighborhood. CEP asked for Winston's patience, and he was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, the company did what it could to strengthen its political ties in Atlanta.
When school board members faced re-election in 2005, CEP and its executives gave money in four races. According to Fulton County records, Randle Richardson made a $250 contribution to Mark Riley, who easily won re-election. He also contributed $500 to Brenda Muhammad, a former board member who ran successfully to regain a seat. CEP's chief financial officer, Phil Baggett, contributed another $250 to Muhammad. CEP was more generous in two other contests: Richardson and Baggett each made three separate contributions to incumbent Eric Wilson that totaled $2,000, and newcomer Yolanda Johnson received a total of $2,500.
Although Georgia law requires candidates to list the occupations and employers of their contributors on their disclosure forms, none of the school board candidates did that for the CEP executives. Muhammad says she had no idea Richardson and Baggett were CEP executives until CL told her. "If they were standing in front of me, I wouldn't know them," she says. "No campaign contribution will influence me from making my decisions based on the best interest of the children of Atlanta."
Riley also said he was unaware that Richardson led CEP. "That's a little embarrassing," he says. "I make a point of never accepting contributions from vendors. I've even returned checks before." Six months after the school board began its new term, it extended CEP's contract to 2009. When school opened in August, Patti Welch and her son got their first look at Forrest Hill. Welch went through a 90-minute orientation, where the rules of the school were laid out. Patrick wasn't to bring anything onto campus that was considered contraband. The list included watches, jewelry, purses, combs, brushes, keys and money in excess of $5. Paper and pens weren't allowed either; the school would provide everything that was needed, even tampons for female students.
Patrick would go through a metal detector each morning and be patted down by a security guard to ensure he didn't have weapons or drugs. Backpacks weren't allowed, and books couldn't be taken home. In fact, there was no homework for Forrest Hill students.
Patrick went through a weeklong orientation that included tests on the PLATO computer system to determine where he stood academically. On his first day, he sent his mother a text message: "This school is so bad."
He found the lessons boring. He complained that the teacher would simply put an assignment on the board; then the kids would be expected to do it on their own. Once the students were finished, they were given crossword puzzles to fill out. "Patrick found it totally uninteresting and totally unmotivating," Welch says. "He kept sending me text messages, and I didn't believe him. He started missing days, so I went up there."
What Welch saw alarmed her. The building was new and well-maintained, but the pods where students were segregated reminded her of a jail. "There's one steel door to the classroom, no windows. It looked like a mini-prison." Not long after that, she heard the ACLU wanted to interview parents with children at Forrest Hill Academy for a potential lawsuit. Welch decided to talk to the organization.
Two years ago, a special education lawyer in Atlanta called the ACLU and suggested they investigate the CEP school in Atlanta. "As soon as we began to scratch the surface, we were so outraged by what we found," says the ACLU's Chiang. "The standardized test scores are really shocking. No one was passing."
State statistics show the school has made few strides toward improving its students' academic standing. According to state Department of Education figures from the 2006-07 school year, 91 percent of CEP's students failed the state's assessment test in mathematics; 66 percent failed the reading portion.
In its latest contract with Atlanta, CEP agreed to a performance goal of making measurable progress in 31 categories for the 2005-06 school year, based primarily on results from the state's Criterion Referenced Competency tests. Of those categories, six couldn't be measured because there were too few students enrolled to get a proper study group, and CEP students showed improvement in 11 from the previous year. But in 13 categories, the students tested worse. In the final category – ninth grade physical science – there was no change: 100 percent of the students failed both years.
"They cannot deny their standardized test scores are abysmal," Chiang says.
Shirley Kilgore, a former Washington High School principal in Atlanta who now conults for CEP, counters that it's unfair to evaluate the program based on state tests. "Students in an alternative program are transient," she says. "We had a girl come in here last week. She's been here a matter of days, but her score belongs to us. Some of these students taking the tests have not been with us for any length of time."
Richardson, the company's CEO, points out that almost 90 percent of students sent to Forrest Hill are at least two grade levels behind in reading and mathematics: "You wouldn't pass it either, if you're reading at the fourth grade level and you're taking a ninth grade competency test."
The ACLU claims the heart of the problem is that Forrest Hill cuts corners when it comes to academics. The teachers don't teach, Chiang says, but instead hand out worksheets for the students to fill out.
She also notes that CEP has a practice of hiring inexperienced teachers. According to state figures, the average level of experience of the teaching staff at Forrest Hill is less than a year.
Kilgore, the CEP consultant, argues that few quality teachers want to work at an alternative school. "They are either committed to making a difference," she says, "or else a new teacher starting out." But at least one other alternative school attracts far more senior teachers: The average level of experience at Fulton County's McClarin Alternative School is 19 years.
The ACLU also alleges that students often are manhandled by the school's staff, that teachers have even thrown textbooks at the children in their rooms. CEP denies there is any student mistreatment.
"Inexperienced teachers are a recipe for problems," says GSU's Freeman. "These kinds of schools are special places and full of a challenging population of kids." Most of CEP's teachers aren't instructing in their fields of expertise either. According to state records, of the 76 total core classes taught at Forrest Hill, only 45 percent are taught by "highly qualified" teachers – those who have majored in the subject they teach. The statewide average is 96 percent. "We're very deeply concerned, especially in an alternative school setting where you need highly-qualified educators to work with the children," says Georgia Association of Educators President Jeff Hubbard, whose group has lobbied against privatizing schools. "We don't think students should be put in a situation where a company is trying to make a profit off their education."
CEP says it spends $9,300 per student compared with $12,406 per pupil for the rest of the students in Atlanta's public school system.The company contends the school saves money because it doesn't have to offer such activities as sports or music programs that are required in regular school programs.
But Freeman's skeptical. While the savings sound efficient, he stresses that, in education, you generally get what you pay for: "These kids need a lot; they're needy kids. You need to spend more money on them than typical schools. If they are spending less, I'd want to know why it costs less to educate a student with exceptional needs. Where are they saving money? What are they subtracting and is it good? Are they saving money by hiring less experienced teachers who have no training in dealing with these kids?"
Freeman is careful to say he hasn't studied Forrest Hill enough to make an ironclad assessment. But, he says, "I know people who teach in alternative schools. It's not an easy environment. It usually requires very special teachers who can work with those kids. It's a big challenge."
The Rev. Darryl Winston is angry that he sees many of the same issues raised in the ACLU lawsuit that led him to confront CEP officials four years ago. And his anger isn't just directed at the company.
"We need a statement from Superintendent Beverly Hall that she takes these allegations seriously and that the APS is looking into them," he says. "All we got was a statement from the press person that amounted to kind of 'dismissing' it. I've been told as recently as last week that the APS position is to wait and see what comes out in court." What especially frustrates him is that no one who isn't behind the walls at Forrest Hill can really know what's going on there. "CEP has denied every one of the charges, but there's no way to verify that," Winston says. "We need experts. I've called on the board of education to launch its own investigation and see if the charges are true. If they can't, they need a task force appointed by the governor to see what is going on at CEP."
As far back as Houston, CEP officials have had to deal with complaints that the company's performance needed to be evaluated by independent parties. "We want to be held accountable for attendance and behavior and academics," insists CEP's Anthony Edwards. "It's very important to us that we are a standards-based program."
CEP claims students who attended Forrest Hill in the 2006-07 school year were, on average, performing math and reading on the third-grade level when they arrived. The school claims that students who were at the school for at least 150 days made remarkable progress: an increase of 3.2 grade levels in reading and four years in math.
Under its Atlanta contract, however, CEP both administers and grades those tests. There's no independent verification of the results, but longtime educators say making those kinds of academic strides in one year is virtually impossible. For a certain percentage of students who are highly motivated, yes, it can be done; for an entire student population, unlikely. "Kids with emotional and behavioral problems don't do well in school," Freeman says. "And kids aren't just going to snap to and start learning."
Chiang says lack of progress on standardized tests make it clear the PLATO test scores are skewed. Students have told the ACLU that they take the PLATO tests unsupervised and can ask each other for the answers they don't know. "CEP claims a pronounced spike in the test scores, but we believe it is because of PLATO," she says. "In reality, there's no teaching going on." Edwards downplays PLATO's results. "We are not judged by these," he says. "It's just a mechanism, a diagnostic tool. The student is given a grade level of functionality."
But the contract with the Atlanta school system says that Forrest Hill's success or failure will be measured by a combination of results from PLATO tests and state standardized tests. In addition, if a student who attends CEP for at least 120 days doesn't show growth in reading and mathematics of at least one year on the PLATO system, the contract mandates that CEP must educate that student at no additional cost to the school district until he or she has reached that level.
Patti Welch says her son continues to struggle at Forrest Hill, and has missed extended stretches of school because he doesn't want to be there. But she says his disciplinary problems now seem to be behind him. She plans to take him out of the alternative school at the end of the year; she wants to home-school him.
But ACLU lawyers say the federal lawsuit – which names the school system, board members and CEP as defendants – is about more than just eight kids in one school. It cuts to the heart of a public school's responsibilities to kids who are in the margins, and it raises questions about the risks of privatizing public education. "We see it as a broader national problem, the trend of privatization of government functions and warehousing kids in a school-to-prison pipeline," Chiang says.
For the students at Forrest Hill, it's also about not being forgotten by the officials who sent them there. "The problem is that Atlanta didn't build in an adequate system for oversight and evaluation," Freeman says. "You want it written into the contract to have a good program evaluation. It's got to be done by people who know how to do it, people not connected to the school department or CEP so there's no conflict of interest."
Freeman says there should be an annual independent review of Forrest Hill. Evaluators would go into the school, see the teaching methods, and interview students and teachers and the administrators.
"I hope the CEP school is investigated by people who know what they're doing," he says. "There are good questions to ask, and they deserve good answers. The school can't answer those question, they can only provide the information. Somebody else has to be the evaluator."
Of course, the choice is yours! Always has been. You and I will always volunteer to give up on our own freedoms, and by way of agency as parents, we hand over our children's freedoms, too. The sister in this story, FINALLY, got it! The only answer to government control over her child, and its sheer incompetence to educate him correctly and with compassion, is to HOMESCHOOL! Yes, YOU can. Si, se puede! After you read this, apply some of the principles of CEP's failures to the public schools in your community. They may not apply to your child, but I guarantee you, for someone's child, they are present. There is a lot more that can be said about his story. Do not skim over the parts pertaining to Bush, Texas, Republicans, Corrections Corporation of America! This is who is shaping the future of education in America. Click on the link to the "No Child Left Behind Act" in the story. That's a play on words if ever there was one. Think about the phrase. Obviously, it does not mean that all children will be educated! To me, it means that, when it's all been said and done, there will be no children left! Where will they be? Your guess is as good as mine. The prison system, the battle field, the cotton field, the mental hospitals. a listing on the stock market under CCA/CEP! Based on the successes of "no child left behind" those seem the most possible. The board room, the top of industry, the creators of new and cleaner technologies, the parents of sane children, the teachers of the next generations? Perhaps they'll make those into "reality shows" for our entertainment in our old age. What dreams may come. READ. Peace. (All the embellishments to this article are mine). ____________________________________________
Forrest Hill Academy: The children left behind
When the Atlanta Public Schools hired politically connected Community Education Partners to operate an academy for kids in trouble, a miracle was promised. An ACLU lawsuit now alleges the school is a warehouse for hard-to-teach children.
Published 05.07.08
By Scott Freeman
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/forrest_hill_academy_the_children_left_behind/Content?oid=479295
Patti Welch was living in Douglasville when she went through a divorce last year. Atlanta was her chance to start over. Weary of her one-hour, 20-minute commute to the northside law office where she works as a paralegal, Welch found a duplex in the West End only 20 minutes from her job. But the move also was about her 15-year-old son, Patrick. He was a smart kid, a B student entering the 10th grade. But he'd gotten into fights. One took place just off school grounds and involved several kids, so officials labeled it "gang-related." That meant Patrick would be sent to Douglas County's alternative school.
Even though she was confident her son wasn't in a gang, Welch didn't bother to appeal the school district's decision. She thought an alternative school might help him. And she hoped the 10 days Patrick spent in jail after his last fight would serve as a wake-up call. Welch knew her son would be sent to an alternative school when they moved to Atlanta. But she thought it would be temporary. Instead, officials told her that because Patrick had a gang-related fight on his record, he'd never be allowed to enroll in a regular school in Atlanta.
She tried to make the best of it. When told he'd be sent to Forrest Hill Academy, she looked at her son and forced a smile. "Wow," she said hopefully. "They're putting you in an academy."
Six months later, Patrick became one of eight student plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union's Racial Justice Program in New York City. The suit alleges that Forrest Hill – which is operated by a for-profit company called Community Education Partners – is little more than a pathway to prison for Atlanta's unwanted students. "It would be a stretch to even call this a school," says Reggie Shuford, an attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program in New York. "There is little to no academic instruction, and its students are treated like criminals. It is nothing more than a warehouse, largely for poor children of color."
The ACLU contends that Forrest Hill students, 97 percent of whom are African-American, spend most of their days filling out worksheets, for which they get no feedback. According to state figures, nine out of 10 students at the school are unable to pass the standardized state test for math proficiency. The figures also show that Forrest Hill is the most violent school in Atlanta. "It is a national disgrace that the Atlanta school system has handed over its constitutional responsibility to a private, for-profit corporation," says Emily Chiang, the case's lead lawyer.
Forrest Hill wasn't quite the academy that Patti Welch had hoped for.
The idea of putting problem children into an "alternative school" is a recent phenomenon in the world of education. Before a federal law that took effect in 1978, public schools had no legal requirement to provide education to special needs kids. If a child was violent, or continually disrupted the class, schools could kick him or her out. When the law took away that option, teachers and school systems faced the chore of trying to tame disruptive students. The trend of taking those kids out of regular classrooms and putting them into "alternative" schools began to take hold. That practice quickly led to allegations that some systems – under increasing pressure to churn out higher scores on standardized tests – were simply "warehousing" their undesirable students, out of sight and out of mind.
"Those schools weren't about education, but just getting through the day," says Eric Freeman, assistant professor of educational policy studies at Georgia State University. "Those were the 'expendable kids.' It's no longer acceptable to have schools where kids are warehoused, but we still have a long way to go."
When it was founded in 1996, Community Education Partners touted itself as a way to get expendable kids back into the mainstream. From the start, however, there were indications CEP's considerable political weight was as responsible for its rise as were its education programs.
CEP was formed in Nashville by four men with heavy Republican connections.CEO Randle Richardson, was chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party from 1992 to 1995 and oversaw a 1994 electoral sweep in which Bill Frist and Fred Thompson won Senate seats and Don Sundquist was elected governor. Another co-founder, John Danielson, would become chief of staff for Education Secretary Rod Paige under George W. Bush. One of the initial investors, Tom Beasley, had chaired the Tennessee GOP before Richardson did.
Beasley also founded the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs privatized prisons. Founded in 1984, CCA has grown to become the sixth-largest prison system in the country – trailing only the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and four states. But the company also has faced criticism for understaffing, high turnover and lax security. According to a 1999 state audit, neglect of medical care and security at CCA facilities in Georgia amounted to "borderline deliberate indifference."
The two companies – CCA and CEP – have turned out to share some parallels. Both had business plans that relied on obtaining contracts to operate government services. Both were started in Nashville by major Republican Party players. And both went to Texas to make their mark. Texas was a natural entry point for CEP. In 1995, George W. Bush had become governor, and his administration was brimming with ideas to reform schools. The bundle of changes would be touted during Bush's 2000 presidential run as the "Texas Miracle." In that environment, George Scott, president of a Texas nonprofit education reform group, helped CEP gain a foothold.
"I got pulled into it by the former superintendent for the Houston school department," Scott says. "It's a sinister manipulation of reality to say that public education is meeting its constitutional and moral obligation to these children; we throw at-risk kids into alternative centers and forget about them. Then along came a company that said it was going to do something different." Scott says he first used his political connections to help the company land a contract to take over the education services at a juvenile detention center. He was impressed by CEP's pitch that its methods could help problem children get up to speed academically so they go back to mainstream schools.
"You have kids in the ninth grade who can't do fractions," Scott says. "If a kid is in the ninth grade but is at the fifth-grade level, giving them an algebra book is useless. Under this program, we would start them at the level where they are at, and build from there. CEP promised two years of academic growth for every year a student was in their school."
In 1997, Scott says, he used his relationship with Paige, then Houston's school superintendent, to help CEP land its first public school contract. Under the future education secretary's stewardship, the Houston Independent School District was becoming a cradle of the so-called Texas Miracle. Paige had put a system in place that held individual principals accountable for dropout rates and test scores. Then, the district signed a $17.9 million contract to turn the education of as many as 2,500 children to CEP.
Initially, the corporation hired Carl Shaw – who was the former chairman of the Texas Education Agency's assessment committee – to develop an independent test to grade the progress of the CEP students. "I will never forget the day the school board approved the CEP contract," Scott says. "Randle Richardson and I were walking out of the building and I told him that not all the kids in this are going to make two [years of progress] in one. But that is going to be your strength. You'll say that you're being held accountable for the program."
Before CEP's contract with Houston took effect, however, the first test results from the juvenile detention facility came back. Scott recalls that they showed the students weren't making much progress – some had even regressed. CEP blamed the test, and fired Shaw.
Richardson disputes that account. He says Scott let his friendship with Shaw intrude on his judgment and that the scores showed 20 student inmates had regressed in math but that most had made great progress. His own expert looked at the test and determined it was flawed, an opinion seconded by the Texas Education Agency.
Whether it was over a principle or a friendship, the incident left Scott with strong feelings about CEP. He now says the one thing he's most ashamed of in his professional life is helping the company get into the Texas schools. The absence of Shaw's test, he says, left the company devoid of the very thing that had attracted him to the concept in the first place: accountability.
Instead, Scott says, CEP began to cull its political connections. A sitting Houston school board member was hired as a consultant. Sandy Kress, who later authored Bush's No Child Left Behind program, was hired as a lobbyist. And when the company opened the campus of its first alternative school, in Houston in 1997, former President George H.W. Bush was at the opening ceremony to offer his endorsement. "They put together a very powerful, politically juiced operation in Texas," Scott says.
CEP followed its Houston deal with a five-year, $10 million-a-year contract in Dallas. Then, it moved on to Florida and Philadelphia. And all along it followed a familiar pattern: It hired well-connected lobbyists to sell the program and courted elected officials with generous campaign contributions. CEP claimed it had found the key to educating a student population that was thought to be beyond help. The schools used a computer-based education program called PLATO that CEP said enables students to quickly catch up to their age level in reading and math skills.
The company was swept up in the middle of what became a nationwide education reform movement. Bush campaigned for the presidency heralding his "Texas Miracle" of low dropout rates and high test scores. When he was elected, he named Paige to his Cabinet and pushed through Congress the No Child Left Behind Act, which instituted high achievement goals for the nation's public schools. But even as it rode the wave of its association with Bush's education changes, CEP became a target of criticism. Some parents complained of prisonlike conditions inside CEP schools. Others claimed CEP was, in reality, doing little more than warehousing problem students.
There were official rebukes as well. An internal evaluation in Dallas found that "the model of education provided by [CEP] was untenable." "The reliance on noncertified teachers for the bulk of the student-teacher interaction was useful for the company to save money, but was not a design in the best interest of the students," the report went on to say. "Students who attended Community Education Partners did not do very well academically." CEP had even refused to provide its budget data to the school district, the report said, which made it impossible to know just how it was spending the money it received.
In 2002, the Dallas school system fired CEP. By then, however, the company was developing its relationship with a new customer: Atlanta.
It's unclear exactly how CEP came to acquire a $6.9 million contract to open an alternative school in Atlanta. Richardson says the school system contacted the company in 2001. Citing the pending ACLU lawsuit, Atlanta school officials won't even talk about CEP. At the time the contract was signed, Atlanta officials brushed aside concerns already brewing in Dallas. They cited a "task force" report that supposedly recommended the district privatize its alternative schools; when the AJC requested a copy of that report, however, school officials said they couldn't find one.
It didn't take long for concerns to crop up in Atlanta. In August 2002, CEP opened its alternative school in temporary quarters at the old Archer High School. Parents of some of the students attended the Rev. Darryl Winston's southeast Atlanta church. "We were hearing allegations of mistreatment and a prison environment," says Winston, president of the Greater American Ministerial Council. "We met with the staff, and they admitted that 90 percent of what we described had to do with the building. The Archer High School campus was extremely chaotic. They told us the building did not give us an accurate picture of what the program was about."
CEP even flew Winston and other community leaders to Houston to tour their schools there. "We were impressed by what we saw," he says. The company assured Winston the problem was that the Atlanta school had yet to find a permanent location. The company prefers a specific design for its schools. Kids are segregated into male and female classes, and the classes are isolated inside pods within the building. "In school, kids get in trouble in the hallway or the cafeteria or going to the restrooms," says Anthony Edwards, a CEP vice president. "So we control that. There are restrooms and water fountains in each of the common areas. It eliminates movement. Kids get in trouble when they're moving."
Three properties had already been identified, but each was scuttled by community opposition to an alternative school in the neighborhood. CEP asked for Winston's patience, and he was willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, the company did what it could to strengthen its political ties in Atlanta.
When school board members faced re-election in 2005, CEP and its executives gave money in four races. According to Fulton County records, Randle Richardson made a $250 contribution to Mark Riley, who easily won re-election. He also contributed $500 to Brenda Muhammad, a former board member who ran successfully to regain a seat. CEP's chief financial officer, Phil Baggett, contributed another $250 to Muhammad. CEP was more generous in two other contests: Richardson and Baggett each made three separate contributions to incumbent Eric Wilson that totaled $2,000, and newcomer Yolanda Johnson received a total of $2,500.
Although Georgia law requires candidates to list the occupations and employers of their contributors on their disclosure forms, none of the school board candidates did that for the CEP executives. Muhammad says she had no idea Richardson and Baggett were CEP executives until CL told her. "If they were standing in front of me, I wouldn't know them," she says. "No campaign contribution will influence me from making my decisions based on the best interest of the children of Atlanta."
Riley also said he was unaware that Richardson led CEP. "That's a little embarrassing," he says. "I make a point of never accepting contributions from vendors. I've even returned checks before." Six months after the school board began its new term, it extended CEP's contract to 2009. When school opened in August, Patti Welch and her son got their first look at Forrest Hill. Welch went through a 90-minute orientation, where the rules of the school were laid out. Patrick wasn't to bring anything onto campus that was considered contraband. The list included watches, jewelry, purses, combs, brushes, keys and money in excess of $5. Paper and pens weren't allowed either; the school would provide everything that was needed, even tampons for female students.
Patrick would go through a metal detector each morning and be patted down by a security guard to ensure he didn't have weapons or drugs. Backpacks weren't allowed, and books couldn't be taken home. In fact, there was no homework for Forrest Hill students.
Patrick went through a weeklong orientation that included tests on the PLATO computer system to determine where he stood academically. On his first day, he sent his mother a text message: "This school is so bad."
He found the lessons boring. He complained that the teacher would simply put an assignment on the board; then the kids would be expected to do it on their own. Once the students were finished, they were given crossword puzzles to fill out. "Patrick found it totally uninteresting and totally unmotivating," Welch says. "He kept sending me text messages, and I didn't believe him. He started missing days, so I went up there."
What Welch saw alarmed her. The building was new and well-maintained, but the pods where students were segregated reminded her of a jail. "There's one steel door to the classroom, no windows. It looked like a mini-prison." Not long after that, she heard the ACLU wanted to interview parents with children at Forrest Hill Academy for a potential lawsuit. Welch decided to talk to the organization.
Two years ago, a special education lawyer in Atlanta called the ACLU and suggested they investigate the CEP school in Atlanta. "As soon as we began to scratch the surface, we were so outraged by what we found," says the ACLU's Chiang. "The standardized test scores are really shocking. No one was passing."
State statistics show the school has made few strides toward improving its students' academic standing. According to state Department of Education figures from the 2006-07 school year, 91 percent of CEP's students failed the state's assessment test in mathematics; 66 percent failed the reading portion.
In its latest contract with Atlanta, CEP agreed to a performance goal of making measurable progress in 31 categories for the 2005-06 school year, based primarily on results from the state's Criterion Referenced Competency tests. Of those categories, six couldn't be measured because there were too few students enrolled to get a proper study group, and CEP students showed improvement in 11 from the previous year. But in 13 categories, the students tested worse. In the final category – ninth grade physical science – there was no change: 100 percent of the students failed both years.
"They cannot deny their standardized test scores are abysmal," Chiang says.
Shirley Kilgore, a former Washington High School principal in Atlanta who now conults for CEP, counters that it's unfair to evaluate the program based on state tests. "Students in an alternative program are transient," she says. "We had a girl come in here last week. She's been here a matter of days, but her score belongs to us. Some of these students taking the tests have not been with us for any length of time."
Richardson, the company's CEO, points out that almost 90 percent of students sent to Forrest Hill are at least two grade levels behind in reading and mathematics: "You wouldn't pass it either, if you're reading at the fourth grade level and you're taking a ninth grade competency test."
The ACLU claims the heart of the problem is that Forrest Hill cuts corners when it comes to academics. The teachers don't teach, Chiang says, but instead hand out worksheets for the students to fill out.
She also notes that CEP has a practice of hiring inexperienced teachers. According to state figures, the average level of experience of the teaching staff at Forrest Hill is less than a year.
Kilgore, the CEP consultant, argues that few quality teachers want to work at an alternative school. "They are either committed to making a difference," she says, "or else a new teacher starting out." But at least one other alternative school attracts far more senior teachers: The average level of experience at Fulton County's McClarin Alternative School is 19 years.
The ACLU also alleges that students often are manhandled by the school's staff, that teachers have even thrown textbooks at the children in their rooms. CEP denies there is any student mistreatment.
"Inexperienced teachers are a recipe for problems," says GSU's Freeman. "These kinds of schools are special places and full of a challenging population of kids." Most of CEP's teachers aren't instructing in their fields of expertise either. According to state records, of the 76 total core classes taught at Forrest Hill, only 45 percent are taught by "highly qualified" teachers – those who have majored in the subject they teach. The statewide average is 96 percent. "We're very deeply concerned, especially in an alternative school setting where you need highly-qualified educators to work with the children," says Georgia Association of Educators President Jeff Hubbard, whose group has lobbied against privatizing schools. "We don't think students should be put in a situation where a company is trying to make a profit off their education."
CEP says it spends $9,300 per student compared with $12,406 per pupil for the rest of the students in Atlanta's public school system.The company contends the school saves money because it doesn't have to offer such activities as sports or music programs that are required in regular school programs.
But Freeman's skeptical. While the savings sound efficient, he stresses that, in education, you generally get what you pay for: "These kids need a lot; they're needy kids. You need to spend more money on them than typical schools. If they are spending less, I'd want to know why it costs less to educate a student with exceptional needs. Where are they saving money? What are they subtracting and is it good? Are they saving money by hiring less experienced teachers who have no training in dealing with these kids?"
Freeman is careful to say he hasn't studied Forrest Hill enough to make an ironclad assessment. But, he says, "I know people who teach in alternative schools. It's not an easy environment. It usually requires very special teachers who can work with those kids. It's a big challenge."
The Rev. Darryl Winston is angry that he sees many of the same issues raised in the ACLU lawsuit that led him to confront CEP officials four years ago. And his anger isn't just directed at the company.
"We need a statement from Superintendent Beverly Hall that she takes these allegations seriously and that the APS is looking into them," he says. "All we got was a statement from the press person that amounted to kind of 'dismissing' it. I've been told as recently as last week that the APS position is to wait and see what comes out in court." What especially frustrates him is that no one who isn't behind the walls at Forrest Hill can really know what's going on there. "CEP has denied every one of the charges, but there's no way to verify that," Winston says. "We need experts. I've called on the board of education to launch its own investigation and see if the charges are true. If they can't, they need a task force appointed by the governor to see what is going on at CEP."
As far back as Houston, CEP officials have had to deal with complaints that the company's performance needed to be evaluated by independent parties. "We want to be held accountable for attendance and behavior and academics," insists CEP's Anthony Edwards. "It's very important to us that we are a standards-based program."
CEP claims students who attended Forrest Hill in the 2006-07 school year were, on average, performing math and reading on the third-grade level when they arrived. The school claims that students who were at the school for at least 150 days made remarkable progress: an increase of 3.2 grade levels in reading and four years in math.
Under its Atlanta contract, however, CEP both administers and grades those tests. There's no independent verification of the results, but longtime educators say making those kinds of academic strides in one year is virtually impossible. For a certain percentage of students who are highly motivated, yes, it can be done; for an entire student population, unlikely. "Kids with emotional and behavioral problems don't do well in school," Freeman says. "And kids aren't just going to snap to and start learning."
Chiang says lack of progress on standardized tests make it clear the PLATO test scores are skewed. Students have told the ACLU that they take the PLATO tests unsupervised and can ask each other for the answers they don't know. "CEP claims a pronounced spike in the test scores, but we believe it is because of PLATO," she says. "In reality, there's no teaching going on." Edwards downplays PLATO's results. "We are not judged by these," he says. "It's just a mechanism, a diagnostic tool. The student is given a grade level of functionality."
But the contract with the Atlanta school system says that Forrest Hill's success or failure will be measured by a combination of results from PLATO tests and state standardized tests. In addition, if a student who attends CEP for at least 120 days doesn't show growth in reading and mathematics of at least one year on the PLATO system, the contract mandates that CEP must educate that student at no additional cost to the school district until he or she has reached that level.
Patti Welch says her son continues to struggle at Forrest Hill, and has missed extended stretches of school because he doesn't want to be there. But she says his disciplinary problems now seem to be behind him. She plans to take him out of the alternative school at the end of the year; she wants to home-school him.
But ACLU lawyers say the federal lawsuit – which names the school system, board members and CEP as defendants – is about more than just eight kids in one school. It cuts to the heart of a public school's responsibilities to kids who are in the margins, and it raises questions about the risks of privatizing public education. "We see it as a broader national problem, the trend of privatization of government functions and warehousing kids in a school-to-prison pipeline," Chiang says.
For the students at Forrest Hill, it's also about not being forgotten by the officials who sent them there. "The problem is that Atlanta didn't build in an adequate system for oversight and evaluation," Freeman says. "You want it written into the contract to have a good program evaluation. It's got to be done by people who know how to do it, people not connected to the school department or CEP so there's no conflict of interest."
Freeman says there should be an annual independent review of Forrest Hill. Evaluators would go into the school, see the teaching methods, and interview students and teachers and the administrators.
"I hope the CEP school is investigated by people who know what they're doing," he says. "There are good questions to ask, and they deserve good answers. The school can't answer those question, they can only provide the information. Somebody else has to be the evaluator."
Monday, May 12, 2008
The Road Not Taken
Today was a good day for me. I took a walk in nature in a park with a paved road. The paved road led the people around the grass, but not to touch it. It is a beautiful day. As I walked a few feet upon the pavement, my eyes caught sight of the clover on the hills I would pass by. The wind blew the fragrant scent of honeysuckle, blackberry and clover my way, and I was immediately silly drunk and enticed by the smell. I looked at the few people there and turned to walk across the grassy hills. What a difference that made. I felt my little girl self emerge with the remembrances of running through grass barefoot in the spring growing up in the countrysides of Alabama and Kansas. There was no thought. I felt the dew on my toes as if it were the start of a fresh new morning. I remembered walking through the wet grass with my co-worker Dave early one morning on our way to work. In this memory, I am 19. We both were free spirits and wanted that fresh feeling to last all day. Something to get us started. Better than coffee. Better than a doughnut with that coffee. I was so happy in that moment touching the Earth touching me. I had a flashback to the time my sister, my daughter and I amused fellow travelers by rolling downhill at a rest stop in Virginia. It had the perfect hills for rolling. In this memory, I am a mother, playing. We were freed up from our long held prisons of behaving as we were expected to behave for women "our age." We laughed so hard! We could not find that one last roll down the hill. But you know, no one looked at us disapprovingly. Everyone had a look of longing in their eyes as they heard and saw our joy. This poem, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is exactly the energy I felt this day as I stepped off the paved road onto the grass. How many times have we simply followed after the footsteps of others in our adventure of living, of life? How often have we been moved to go a way that no one else has gone, or to go to a place very few have ventured to? There is a system in place that keeps us so locked in to certain patterns: red lights, stop signs, dead ends, doorways locked and opened only with certain types of keys: keys of color, gender, wealth, celebrity, status, education......So few of us truly have the right to the freedom we desire simply because the gatekeepers place signs saying "Stay out!" "Stay off!" "Go back!" "Not now!" "Not here!" "Not you!" Except that there lay dangers ahead, ignore the signs, buck the system, resist the messages put in your head that you must, for some reason others have designed for you, stay on the paved road. Step out onto the grassy hills, smell the honeysuckles/clovers/blackberries, walk barefooted, roll down that hill, laugh out loud till snot comes out your nose, AND BE FREE. Touch the Earth that touches you!
.
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THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
by Robert Frost
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
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