WAR OF PERCEPTION

ALL THE KINGS HORSES AND GOVERNMENT AID, COULDN'T BRING LITERACY TO KATRINA REFUGEES

New Orleans is one of the most violent cities in the world with one of the highest rates of illiteracy in the world. This is common when non-Whites are given control of civilization.

All the state tests in the world won't stop the "Africanization" of our culture. Katrina refugee's have shown the world the benefits of this "Africanization" process...Crime, disease, and illiteracy.

Why can't Johnny read and write?

Because he is too busy raping, robbing and doing drugs...He is celebrating his "African Roots".

One need only look at Africa to prove this point. When we cease fighting for civilization, man will revert back to his primitive state and the law of the jungle will reign supreme. (PS)

Ga. to exclude Katrina students' scores

[By KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press Writer]

Georgia schools will not have to count test scores from thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees in their progress reports this year, the state's top education official said.

Instead, federal officials have granted the state's request to list the evacuees' results in a separate category, said state schools Superintendent Kathy Cox said.

"They're not going to hold Georgia schools responsible for the product of Louisiana," Cox said Thursday at a state Board of Education meeting.

Georgia saw its overall test scores drop this year, but it does not yet have a breakdown for Katrina and non-Katrina students. State education officials attributed the overall decline to a new curriculum and more challenging tests, but they also worry that the evacuees' performance will not match up to other Georgia students, as has happened elsewhere.

Besides having their lives uprooted, the evacuees may be following a different curriculum in their new schools, said state Education Department spokesman Dana Tofig.

The standardized tests are part of the federal No Child Left Behind law, which mandates reading and math proficiency for all public school students by 2014. Schools receiving federal poverty aid must demonstrate annually that students in all racial categories are progressing or risk penalties that include extending the school year, changing curriculum or firing administrators and teachers.

Texas and Tennessee are also counting evacuee test scores in a separate category this year.

Louisiana education officials expect that many student displaced by last August's hurricane and flooding will not perform well on standardized tests in other states, said Meg Casper, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Education.

Many evacuees were from New Orleans, which had Louisiana's lowest performing schools before Katrina.

"We're not surprised that they're struggling in the states where they've been displaced to because they were struggling in Louisiana," Casper said Friday.

But she said other states must now take responsibility for the students who have moved to their school districts.

Georgia will count the evacuees' scores next year, when they will have been in Georgia schools for almost two years, Cox said.

Katrina evacuees in Georgia schools numbered more than 7,000 on April 1.

The roughly 35,000 Katrina students living in Texas scored considerably lower on a statewide standardized exam than Texas children this year, and thousands risk being held back.

Texas teachers and state officials blame the low scores on New Orleans' poor school system, the trauma of being forced from their homes, and the possibility that some students were put in the wrong grade after arriving in Texas with no records.

SENATE PANEL: 'FEMA SHOULD BE ABOLISHED'

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 

Hurricane Katrina's latest fatality should be FEMA, the nation's disaster response agency, a Senate inquiry concluded in calling for a government overhaul to avoid future failures like those the devastating storm exposed.

Eighty-six recommendations by the bipartisan panel indicate the United States is still woefully unprepared for a storm of Katrina's scope with the start of the hurricane season little more than a month away.

Though the proposed changes do not place blame on any official or government agency, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., will offer "additional views" to the panel's findings in a statement accusing President Bush of failing "to provide critical leadership when it was most needed."

"The United States was, and is, ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic event of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina," said the recommendations. "Catastrophic events are, by their nature, difficult to imagine and to adequately plan for, and the existing plans and training proved inadequate in Katrina."

The recommendations were being released Thursday and will be included in the Senate panel's full report to be issued next week.

The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the product of a seven-month Senate investigation. The probe follows similar inquiries by the House and White House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on Katrina to attack the Bush administration.

President Bush was visiting Louisiana and Mississippi — which bore the brunt of Katrina's wrath — on Thursday.

Katrina, which struck on Aug. 29, was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. The storm killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, left hundreds of thousands of homeless and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

The recommendations conclude that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is crippled beyond repair by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding. They call for a new agency — the National Preparedness and Response Authority — to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters.

Unlike now, the authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within the Homeland Security Department and would continue receiving resources from the department.

The new authority would be "better equipped with the tools to prepare for and respond to a disaster," said Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, who led the inquiry by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. She described FEMA as a "shambles" and said the change "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."

But the proposal drew disdain from Homeland Security and its critics, both sides questioning the need for another bureaucratic shuffling that they said wouldn't accomplish much.

"It's time to stop playing around with the organizational charts and to start focusing on government, at all levels, that are preparing for this storm season," Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who resigned under fire after Katrina, said the new agency would basically have the same mission FEMA had a year ago before its disaster planning responsibilities were taken away to focus solely on responding to calls for help.

"It sounds like they're just re-creating the wheel and making it look like they're calling for change," Brown said. "If indeed that's all they're doing, they owe more than that to the American public."

The House report, issued in February, similarly criticized Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Brown for moving too slowly to trigger federal relief. The White House report, which came a week later, took a softer tone and singled out Homeland Security for most of the breakdowns.

Many of the rest of the Senate recommendations were far less dramatic, ranging from creating a Homeland Security Academy to encouraging plans to evacuate and shelter pets during a disaster.

They also called for more funding for disaster planning and response at all levels of government, clarifying levee maintenance responsibilities, and suggested better contracting procedures to avoid waste or fraud in the rush to get aid to disaster victims

KATRINA REFUGEES: MURDER, GANG VIOLENCE WEAR OUT WELCOME IN HOUSTON

By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press WriterWed Mar 29

Seven months after taking in about 200,000 Louisiana residents left homeless by Hurricane Katrina, Houstonians aren't feeling so hospitable anymore.

Many people in the nation's fourth-largest city complain that the influx has led to more murders and gang violence, long lines at health clinics and bus stops, and fights and greater overcrowding in the schools. Some of those claims are debatable, but the sentiment is real.

"We still feel sorry for them. We still want to help them, but it's to the point where enough is enough," said Torah Whitaker, 25, of Missouri City, a Houston suburb.

Houston received national acclaim for accepting more Katrina evacuees than any other U.S. city. It gave them apartments, houses and health care, and held job fairs for them. Celebrities visited schools and brought gifts for the youngsters.

About 150,000 refugees remain in the greater Houston area, which has more than 4 million people. While some evacuees plan to return to Louisiana, thousands have secured their own housing and jobs and plan to make Houston their home.

But a survey last month of 765 Houston-area residents by Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg found that three-fourths believed that helping the refugees put a "considerable strain" on the community, and two-thirds blamed evacuees for a surge in violent crime. Half thought Houston would be worse off if evacuees stayed, while one-fourth thought the city would be better off.

The murder rate between the Katrina refugees' arrival in September and last week was up nearly 32 percent from the same period a year ago, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt said. He said some of that is attributable to Katrina refugees, but added: "I don't mean to send the message that all Katrina evacuees are involved in drug dealing, gangs and violent offenses."

Refugees were involved — as victims or suspects — in 35 of the 212 murders in that time period, Hurtt said. In January, Houston police arrested eight members of rival New Orleans gangs in the murders of 11 fellow refugees. Earlier this month, half of the 18 people arrested in an auto theft sweep were evacuees.

Angelo Edwards, a storm victim from New Orleans and vice chairman of the Katrina Survivors Association, said most evacuees are law-abiding citizens trying to find jobs.

"The majority of evacuees are not thugs, looters and hoodlums," Edwards said. "We'd like for the people of Houston to walk in our shoes." If Hurricane Rita had taken a slightly different course, he added, the people of Houston "just as well could have been in our situation."

Some 21,000 students from Louisiana now attend southeastern Texas schools, including roughly 6,000 in Houston. Across the state, Louisiana children scored considerably worse than Texas youngsters on a state exam and thousands could be held back, imposing even higher costs on overburdened districts that are still awaiting federal reimbursement for helping the storm victims.

Tatiana Boone, a Houston 11th-grader, attends one of several schools where brawls have broken out between local teens and Katrina refugees.

"A city that sleeps and a city that don't sleep — it just does not mix. It's two different cultures," the 17-year-old said, comparing Houston with the more boisterous New Orleans.

She complained that the Katrina refugees are getting preferential treatment, even though some of her classmates are even poorer than they are. Storm victims were taken on shopping sprees to buy clothes and were showered with other gifts after they arrived.

"I feel like they shouldn't have to use that as an excuse all the time, as like, `Oh, I'm an evacuee from New Orleans,' so you get this and you get that," Tatiana said.

Just after the August hurricane, the Harris County Hospital District, the agency that runs the public hospitals and health clinics in Houston and surrounding Harris County, treated 15,000 evacuees in two weeks at the Astrodome, but now sees about 800 extra patients a month, said spokesman Bryan McLeod.

The agency treats 1.2 million patients a year, so apart from the first few weeks, the number of evacuees is "not overwhelming" and is not delaying care for Houston residents, McLeod said.

Still, treating refugees has cost $11.6 million, and the district has been reimbursed only $1.6 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Medicaid, he said. The district has dipped into reserve funds, he said.

Bus ridership at the Metropolitan Transit Authority was up 12 percent in October through December from the same period a year ago. Spokeswoman Raequel Roberts attributed the increase to evacuees as well as high gas prices.

Keesha Ramos of the Houston suburb of Sugar Land said she does not believe evacuees have been getting help at the expense of Houston residents. She said people should have more compassion for the storm victims.

"They're not thinking about how long it's going to take one family to get back on their feet," said Ramos, 34, a bank information analyst.

Mayor Bill White said that most Houston residents are still proud of the city's response and that only a small percentage of refugees are "bad apples."

"Everyone understands when you evacuate a major American city that some of those people will be those who committed a crime or have special needs," he said.