Thursday, July 12, 2012

Down the Memory Hole: The Atlanta Public School Scandal and the Chamber of Commerce that Covered it up

The Black scandal that rocked Atlanta; and the white Chamber of Commerce that covered it up
The latest Paul Kersey at Vdare: A look back at the biggest academic scandal in American history, and the Chamber of Commerce that tried to cover it up. Here's a taste of the article (The Atlanta School Scandal After A Year: Chamber of Commerce a.k.a. Conservatism Inc Doesn't Want To Know, Vdare.com, July 12, 2012):

There’s a possibly apocryphal story featuring longtime Coca-Cola President Robert Woodruff—although the direction Atlanta took afterwards seems to confirm it.
In the early 1950s, in a smoke-filled room at the exclusive Piedmont Driving Club—the all-white club for the Atlanta WASP elite that   Jay Gatsby couldn’t  have bought his way into—Woodruff supposedly made an announcement: the Old South was dying. Integration was coming. There was no use resisting the end of segregation, Woodruff supposedly said. Capitalism must be colorblind—to ensure that Atlanta led the way for the “New South.”
Looking around the room, he asked that a vote be taken by public show of hands: those for integration, and those opposed.
The men who raised their hands in opposition had their names jotted down by one of Woodruff’s Coca-Cola flunkies.
Woodruff’s goal from that point forward: to ostracize them—to see that their businesses and commercial endeavors failed.
This story is unconfirmed. But it is indisputable that, for example, Woodruff strong-armed Atlanta’s white business community into attending (white) Mayor Ivan Allen’s banquet in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. upon King’s being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Realizing that if respectable Southern society didn’t attend, the national Main Stream Media would embarrass Atlanta, and, by extension Coca-Cola, Woodruff made it known through his subordinates that he favored the dinner. [For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, by Mark Pendergrast, p. 282.)
Woodruff and Atlanta’s white business elite aimed to stay wealthy by protecting the image of the city “too busy to hate”—fostering outside investment and attracting talent to staff the Fortune 500 companies that called the metro area home.
Secure in their upscale economic gated community, they simply did not care how inept and corrupt the black-ruled city of Atlanta became.
Six decades later, and almost forty years   after the election of Atlanta’s first black mayor, the charade continues.
Exactly one year ago, it emerged that the very white Atlanta Chamber of Commerce was complicit in covering-up the very black Atlanta Public Schools (APS) cheating scandal—the systematic falsification of test results that involved teachers, principals and apparently even APS Superintendent Beverly Hall. Farcically, Hall had been named 2009 National Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators’ National Conference on Education, largely after being hyped by over-eager white business leaders hoping to promote an image of Atlanta that would be inviting to outside investors.
The scandal had been first exposed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and was finally confirmed in July 2011 by a special investigation ordered by Georgia’s then-Governor Sonny Perdue after he rejected the district’s own whitewashing report. (Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level, by Heather Vogeil, July 6, 2011. For more AJC coverage, see here)
Prior to Hall’s fall from grace, the Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta had been touting Superintendent Hall as the Superperson that black children had patiently waited for. white business leaders from Delta Airlines, Georgia Power, GE, UPS, Home Depot, and Coca-Cola all considered Hall a great investment who would help bridge that notorious “racial gap” in achievement—and, more importantly, continue Woodruff’s policy of keeping the pig that is Atlanta’s race relations slathered in lipstick.
In a devastating follow-up story, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Alan Judd showed the extraordinary lengths members of the respectable white community went to cover up the scandal:
In February 2010, some of Atlanta’s top business leaders realized they had a problem.
For a decade, they had aligned themselves with Beverly Hall, the superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools. They willingly accepted Hall’s story line of rebirth in an urban school system. They promoted and sometimes exaggerated Hall’s achievements — for her benefit and for their own.
State officials, though, were suggesting gains by Atlanta schools resulted from widespread cheating. Suddenly, the deal between Hall and the business community took on Faustian overtones.
The way business leaders responded underscores their complicity in creating the façade of success that hid a decade of alleged wrongdoing, an examination by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows…
The city’s chamber of commerce and another business group took control of the district’s investigation last year into irregularities on state-mandated tests. Executives at the Metro Atlanta Chamber set the parameters of the inquiry and largely selected the people who ran it. Later, they suggested ways to “finesse” the findings past the governor.
Business leaders published opinion pieces and letters to the editor defending Hall before cheating inquiries were complete; calls for the superintendent to resign, they said, could undermine the district’s progress. And just as they had lobbied almost a decade earlier to give the superintendent more autonomy from the Board of Education, this year they sought new power for the governor to remove recalcitrant board members.
A memo drafted by a chamber executive on Feb. 15 last year laid out the hazards that a cheating investigation might unloose:
“This issue has serious implications—on Dr. Hall’s reputation and career, for the principals and administrators who perhaps let lapses occur in testing procedures, and most importantly for the children who may be missing out on critical remediation,” said the memo, obtained recently by the AJC.
But, the document continued: “It also has implications on the business community, many of whom ... are heavy investors, and on the economic development community who touts the superintendent and school board’s recent awards as best in the nation”.
[Major execs invested in Hall, July 17, 2011]
(For more on how the white business community was complicit in hiding the embarrassingly black APS scandal: How biz community dealt with APS scandal by Maria Saporta, Atlanta Business Chronicle, July 15, 2011, and leftwing loony John Sugg’s The 'Atlanta Way' failed a generation of children: The city's business elite were complicit in Beverly Hall's con, Creative Loafing, July 20, 2012).
The enrollment of APS is currently 79 percent black and 12 percent white. (Needless to say, the sons and daughters of Atlanta’s white elite going to private schools like Marist and Westminster). The teachers, school administrators, and principals behind the cheating scandal were virtually all black.

Read the rest here; comment on it at SBPDL.


25 comments:

Mr. Rational said...

The apparent Black economic progress depends on subsidies; the apparent Black intellectual progress depends on cheating.  The whole thing's a fraud underwritten by YT.

Same old story, same old song and dance.

Jeff! said...

What can we do to prevent this from fading? Obviously, in the internet age, it is much harder to simply disappear a story, especially one that got such widespread coverage. What's a good strategy for reminding "them", the DWLs and others, of what's happening in Atlanta?

One thing I keep noticing is that, if Blacks are being manipulated by these rich Whites, why is it they keep running to them? It would seem that segregation is the best answer for all.

Anonymous said...

Ex New Yorker here.....When I moved out of NY in 1984 the schools had metal detectors for 6 year old kids. This was for schools with large numbers of blacks. 12, 13 and 14 year old Mau Maus were shooting other kids for sunglasses and tennis shoes.
I had a friend who was an artist. She would go up to Harlem and help young kids express themselves though art. I always worried about her because she was a pretty blonde. A year later I came back to NY to pick up stuff I left
in storage. She had stopped working with these kids because she told me it was useless. "No matter what you do, nothing works." She blamed it on the parents and the home life. Blacks are a lost cause.

joshrandall said...

Just happened to read an update on the Facebook/Zuckerman $100 million to Newark NJ schooze donation. The 100 mil was a pledge to be matched by the governor & mayor's fundraising. The locals got real upset by that,seeing this as a "takeover" by dem rich Y-T's. Like,who would WANT these schooze?? It seems that in an effort to --all together now--reform the schooze,the Guv had seen fit to appoint a white woman as schoo superintendent who herself saw fit to dissolve the schoo board. Why? seems the board were sucking the system dry by stealing the money! Cars and luxury getaways were popular uses of the WFTD(White folks tax dollars.)--not the "education" of the keeyuds. Atlanta,Newark,...its all da same! Now i hear that maybe Cory Booker,the Chocolate mayor of Newark,may be "heppin' " himself to some of that money. LOL!

Anonymous said...

School for blacks is just a place to send their worthless offspring to get free food. Why should mommaboon spend money from her EBT card for "dose kids." That EBT money "be fo da steak and lobsta dinner I be's habbin tonight!"
School also gets them out from under their feet and is a wonderful baby sitting service.
If it weren't for those two factors and the law that all children must attend school up to a certain age, blacks wouldn't even bother to go.
After all, "education be actin' white!"
Who needs an education when you can just pop out several worthless niglets by age 18 and live off welfare, EBT cards and section 8 housing?

Anonymous said...

wow their all black things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....oh wait that does not have anything at all to do with this sorry lol....

Robert the Biker said...

More proof (if more was needed) that our problem is not so much the nigger as the nigger enabler.

Ray Scissom said...

If you are a white taxpayer living in a majority black area, you deserve to have the black morons and their white accomplices looting you. You are the fuel for the fire that they're using to burn our civilization to the ground. Get out of there and come to where the white folks live. We have jobs, safe places to live and remarkably low taxes in most areas. The sooner you move away, the sooner these morons will implode the system in on themselves. Is it hard to uproot your job and home and move somewhere else? Of course it is. Your life will be better because you made the step, and is likely to be longer, too.

There are tools out there that are useful to the cause:

Zillow - Compare Home Values and Demographics Side By Side

City-Data - Demographic Info by Zip/City

Lie down with apes, wake up fleeced.

Anonymous said...

How do we fight for our own interests when we're our own worst enemies?

Dissident said...

I think this is one reason that America is losing its technological egde and most definitely its manufacturing edge.

Any nation that has to babysit a large portion of its population, to pacify and constantly enable, will never be a cutting edge nation. We are doomed as a top-tier country, we're doomed to the dust-bin of history unless something drastic happens. I don't want to sound defeatist, but I feel that we're going to be sucking hind-tit from here on out.

How can we survive having to take care of infantile, unappreciative and violent racists that hate us-please somebody tell me?

Mr. Rational said...

How can we survive having to take care of infantile, unappreciative and violent racists that hate us

We can't.  They have to leave us, simple as that.  Where and how they go doesn't matter, as long as they're gone.

kas said...

My favorite part of this scandal was watching news anchor Monica (I change my hairstyle every day) Pearson hunt down Beverly Hall in Hawaii where she fled when the scandal broke (don't we all wish we could do such things!) Beverly wouldn't give Monica an exclusive because "she wasn't well." LOL. These people.

http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2011/07/11/beverly-hall-located-in-hawaii-and-surprise-she-wont-talk

Anonymous said...

(N.GA)-Black leadership leads straight to illegitimate practices, favoritism and greed. Other wise known as Corruption! Their social standings or order, become based on a stacked deck that they control.( Whine & cry = majority donations and free shit.) The rest of the black communities will write it off as, “Well, day be gettin' ova on us since fo eva”


Watch the video of the Knoxville Tenn murders. The black women representing the NAACP says it like it is. “The black community does not feel affected by the actions of a few, out of control people”. “The majority of the black community had nothing to do with this” Now, I ask you. Isn't that what we always try say, and get across to them when the tables are turned? Doesn't work when we say it, because the white race is responsible for their entire misfortune and complete sorry position in life they choose. Just ask 'em, they'll tell ya.


INEPTOCRACY= (in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

YIH said...

(somewhat) OT: I picked up today's local fishwrap and I see this on the front page:
Romney booed at NAACP convention. And the first thing that popped into my mind was ''why the hell did he even bother to go there? Did he honestly think anyone there was going to vote (or donate) for him? Really?''
In fact I gotta give credit to Zero on this one, he sent Biden to rattle off a stock speech.
Now granted, Mitt didn't have the luxury of a loyal flunky to dispatch, but still, he should have simply not bothered and gave the standard ''I'm sorry I could not attend, blah, blah, blah''. If anything there would be more respect if he treated it with all the meaninglessness it so richly deserves.

Anonymous said...

Ex New Yorker again....One Winter in Key West, Florida I met a school teacher at a local coffee shop. This was about 5 years ago. She told us about this rule in school. When ever you use the word "black" you have to have another in front of it.
You can't say "He drove a black car". YOU MUST SAY he drove a "shiny black car." A long black. A new black car. A big black car. Etc.
When we asked her why she said she didn't know. That was the NEW RULE. She also said in a couple years she was going to move up to Kansas or Colorado and live with white people. She had been in Florida for 3 years and had enough.

MuayTyson said...

Like insolent children who crave structure and discipline so is the black. They would be much happier segregated. The poof is in the history and the numbers higher employment, more businesses owned, more intact families. It is very hard to argue against segregation.

Ileyne said...

Speaking of low IQs, brain stem reactivity, and limited understanding:


Do any of you remember this insane debacle?

Anonymous said...

Ugh...just the idea of sending my kids to a predominantly black school with agenda-ridden black teachers....Ughh......ughhhh.... I shudder to think about it.
Private schooling has been a blessing, albeit a very expensive blessing, for us.

Anonymous said...

Bolshevism at its finest. Thanks ex NYer!

Anonymous said...

just the idea of sending my kids to a predominantly black school with agenda-ridden black teachers....Ughh......ughhhh.... I shudder to think about it.

My parents learned that my assigned "counselor" would have been a Black militant, and sent me to a private school for grades 7-9 instead.

Best. Move. EVER. I am so glad they had the money to do it. My younger siblings got better lots in the luck of the draw, so they went where I didn't.

Anonymous said...

Public education in black communities is a giant subsidy project. Free food. Free babysitting. Free parkland. Union salaries for teachers. Construction contracts.

Learning is a distant afterthought.

All of this is usually payed for by non-black taxpayers.

Blacks continue to do everything possible to tear apart the school system. Theft. Cheating. Violence against other students. Violence against teachers. Vandalism. Harassment. Sexual assault. Drugs. Teenage pregnancy.

HaroldC said...

@ ex-New Yorker Would these have worked?

He drove a dirty black car.
He drove a old black car.
He drove a POS black car.
He drove a stupid black car.
He drove a lazy black car.

Something tells me they wouldn't have.

Zenster said...

Ray Scissom: Lie down with apes, wake up fleeced.

Ray, you just keep on knocking them out of the park. Yet another one for the Catalog of Race Realism Memes.

Zenster said...

Black administrators supervising Black teachers testing Black pupils…

What could possibly go wrong?

A quick thought experiment:

Black scientists providing designs to Black aerospace engineers being overseen by a Black-run government agency to construct and fly a Black-piloted space shuttle.

Are we quite done?

Mr. Rational said...

Related to this:

Man accused of orchestrating teacher certification examination scheme (that's a scheme to get "teachers" who could not pass the Praxis exams into classrooms anyway).

Guess what race he is?  Also:

ACLU alleges Michigan school district violated students’ ‘right to learn to read’.  Guess what race makes up 93.5% of that district, and probably 96% of the "students"?

No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.