{"id":185799,"date":"2014-08-12T21:10:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T02:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/12\/i-am-actually-familiar-with-the-turkish-cleric-and-his-charter-schools\/"},"modified":"2014-08-12T21:10:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T02:10:00","slug":"i-am-actually-familiar-with-the-turkish-cleric-and-his-charter-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/12\/i-am-actually-familiar-with-the-turkish-cleric-and-his-charter-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"I am Actually Familiar With the Turkish Cleric and His Charter Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of his charter schools is Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School<\/a>, which holds a Rubik’s cube competition, and so I’ve been down there a couple of times, and it seemed a bit different, so I Googled it, and discovered that it was a part of the G\u00fclen movement schools<\/a>, which is led by Fethullah G\u00fclen<\/a>, a Turkish preacher living in self-imposed exile in the United States.<\/p>\n

To be clear, Chesapeake Science Point is not a religious schools in any way shape or form, it’s more of an international school.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting things that I discovered about this is that Fethullah G\u00fclen is an ally turned opponent of Islamist PM (now President) of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, despite his residing in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

So, I found it rather interesting when The Atlantic found the movement, and looked at the schools<\/a>. The initial discussion is measured and anodyne:<\/p>\n

It reads like something out of a John Le Carre novel: The charismatic Sunni imam Fethullah G\u00fclen, leader of a politically powerful Turkish religious movement likened by The Guardian to an \u201cIslamic Opus Dei,\u201d occasionally webcasts sermons from self-imposed exile in the Poconos while his organization quickly grows to head the largest chain of charter schools in America. It might sound quite foreboding\u2014and it should, but not for the reasons you might think.<\/span>

<\/span>You can be excused if you\u2019ve never heard of Fethullah G\u00fclen or his eponymous movement. He isn\u2019t known for his openness, despite the size of his organization, which is rumored to have between 1 and 8 million adherents. It\u2019s difficult to estimate the depth of its bench, however, without an official roster of membership. Known informally in Turkey as Hizmet, or \u201cthe service\u201d, the G\u00fclen movement prides itself on being a pacifist, internationalist, modern, and moderate alternative to more extreme derivations of Sunni Islam. The group does emphasize the importance of interfaith dialogue, education, and a kind of cosmopolitanism. One prominent sociologist described it as \u201cthe world\u2019s most global movement.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Much of the praise for the G\u00fclen movement comes from its emphasis on providing education to children worldwide. In countries like Pakistan, its schools often serve as an alternative to more fundamentalist madrassas. G\u00fclen schools enroll an estimated two million students around the globe, usually with English as the language of instruction, and the tuition is often paid in full by the institution. In Islamic countries, where the G\u00fclen schools aren\u2019t entirely secular: The New York Times reported that in many of the Pakistani schools, \u201c\u2026teachers encourage Islam in their dormitories, where teachers set the example in lifestyle and prayers.\u201d But the focus is still largely on academics. Fethullah G\u00fclen put it in one of his sermons, \u201cStudying physics, mathematics, and chemistry is worshipping Allah.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>In Western countries such as the United States, Germany, and France, there isn\u2019t any evidence whatsoever that the nearly 120 G\u00fclen charter schools in America include Islamic indoctrination in their curriculum. The schools are so secular that singling out the G\u00fclen schools as particularly nefarious, simply for being run predominantly by Muslims, smacks of xenophobia.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He appears to be running modernist schools, some secular, and some Islamic<\/b> (not Islamist<\/b>).<\/p>\n

The next part is interesting to me because, once it gets into the nitty gritty of charter schools, as in pretty much every<\/b> case where I have looked into charter schools, the finances become disturbing:<\/p>\n

However, these schools might be suspect for reasons that are completely unrelated to Islamic doctrine. One of their most troubling characteristics is that they don\u2019t have a great track record when it comes to financial and legal transparency. \u2026\u2026\u2026 Furthermore, as the Deseret News reported, the school\u2019s administrators seemed to be reserving coveted jobs for their own countrymen and women: \u201cIn a time of teacher layoffs, Beehive has recruited a high percentage of teachers from overseas, mainly Turkey.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>There are similar stories from other states. In Texas, where 33 G\u00fclen charter schools receive close to $100 million a year in taxpayer funds, the New York Times reported in 2011 that two schools had given $50 million to G\u00fclen-connected contractors, including the month-old Atlas Texas Construction and Training, even though other contractors had offered lower bids. It was the same thing in Georgia, where Fulton County audited three G\u00fclen schools after allegations that they\u2019d skipped the bidding process altogether and paid nearly half a million dollars to organizations associated with the G\u00fclen movement.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>There are similar stories from other states. In Texas, where 33 G\u00fclen charter schools receive close to $100 million a year in taxpayer funds, the New York Times reported in 2011 that two schools had given $50 million to G\u00fclen-connected contractors, including the month-old Atlas Texas Construction and Training, even though other contractors had offered lower bids. It was the same thing in Georgia, where Fulton County audited three G\u00fclen schools after allegations that they\u2019d skipped the bidding process altogether and paid nearly half a million dollars to organizations associated with the G\u00fclen movement.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s be clear here: This is actually typical behavior within the Charter school movement, as Diane Ravich notes when contacted by The Atlantic<\/i>:<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026Diane Ravitch, education professor at New York University and Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush, writes about this larger transparency issue in her latest book, Reign of Error, explaining, \u201cIn 2009, New York Charter School Association successfully sued to prevent the state comptroller from auditing the finances of charter schools, even though they receive public funding. The association contended that charter school\u2019s are not government agencies but \u2018non-profit educational corporations carrying out a public purpose.\u2019\u201d The New York State Court of Appeals agreed with the organization in a 7 to 0 vote. It took an act of legislation from the state\u2014specifically designed to allow the comptroller to audit charter schools\u2014for this to change.<\/span>

<\/span>Ravitch also writes of a similar instance in North Carolina in which the state, urged on by lobbying giant ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), proposed the creation of a special commission, composed entirely of charter school advocates, as a way for charter schools to bypass the oversight of the State Board of Education or the local school boards. Ravitch writes, \u201cThe charters would not be required to hire certified teachers. Charter school staff would not be required to pass criminal background checks. The proposed law would not require any checks for conflicts of interest\u2014not for commission members or for the charter schools.\u201d In other words, it isn\u2019t the G\u00fclen movement that makes G\u00fclen charter schools so secretive. It\u2019s the charter school movement itself.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It turns out that the G\u00fclen schools got raided by the FBI for steering money from the E-Rate program to favored contractors: (One wonders if the FBI, who has employed nut-job Islamophobic consultants, would have bother to investigated if the target wasn’t Islamic)<\/p>\n

This comes across in the latest news story related to the G\u00fclen schools: an FBI raid last month on the headquarters of over 19 G\u00fclen-operated Horizon Science Academies in Midwest. According to search warrants obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, federal authorities were interested in gathering general financial documents and records of communication. The warrant specifically mentions something called the E-rate program\u2014a federal program that, according to the Sun-Times, \u201cpays for schools to expand telecommunications and Internet access.\u201d A handful of the G\u00fclen-affiliated contractors assisting the schools were receiving money from this federal fund. It\u2019s difficult speculate what this could all mean, as all documents pertaining to the investigation, save the warrants themselves, have been sealed from the public.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then there is Ohio:<\/p>\n

I contacted Matthew Blair, and he told me that the problems with the G\u00fclen schools were merely symptomatic of a larger problem within the state\u2019s education system. \u201cThe charter school system in Ohio is broken beyond repair,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cAs it is, charter schools operate in a lawless frontier. Regulations are few and far between. Those that exist are consistently and consciously overlooked.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>The G\u00fclen schools, he wrote, \u201care an excellent example\u201d of this problem: \u201cA G\u00fclen organization controls the real estate companies that own their schools. They charge rent to their own schools and tax-payers foot the bill. They refuse to answer public records requests, falsify attendance records, and cheat on standardized tests. Yet, Ohio continues to grant them charters to operate.\u201d He added, \u201cIt doesn’t hurt that the G\u00fclen organization is politically active and treats state politicians to lavish trips abroad.\u201d But overall, he said, \u201cthis Wild West atmosphere of few regulations creates incestuous relationships among politicians, vendors, and schools. Charter schools like G\u00fclen’s give generously. In return, they are allowed to keep their saloons open and serve whatever they want. The only way to save the charter school system is to start over again by using the model of effective public schools.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me reiterate: This is not a problem specific to the G\u00fclen Schools. This is the standard way that charter schools do business.<\/p>\n

I have already wrote about how Rocketship Schools loots taxpayer fund by paying exorbitant prices for software from a for-profit firm whose owners constitute a bulk of the board of directors of the nominally non profit schools<\/a>, and the real-estate shenanigans are pretty much standard fare.<\/p>\n

Charter schools as they are implemented in the United States are a remarkably criminogenic manner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of his charter schools is Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School, which holds a Rubik’s cube competition, and so I’ve been down there a couple of times, and it seemed a bit different, so I Googled it, and discovered that it was a part of the G\u00fclen movement schools, which is led by Fethullah …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,966,970,968,1004],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-charter-schools","category-corruption","category-education","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}