Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Who Is Watching? Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup,
Controls Large Network of Charter Schools in the U.S.
________________________________________
Who Is Watching? Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup,
Controls Large Network of Charter Schools in the U.S.
By Gene Bruskin [1] / AlterNet [2]
August 30, 2016
The calls were coming from around the country. A call from Springfield,
Mass. was followed by a call from New Orleans, followed by a call from
Columbus and also a call from Chicago. The callers were contacting my office
at the American Federation of Teachers asking about charter schools in their
area operated by Turkish men. We didn't have any good answers.
By now, the scale and ambition of Fethullah Gulen and his followers are in
the news daily with the fallout of the apparent coup attempt in Turkey this
summer. I'd be lying if I said I knew how to interpret the events in Turkey.
However, I am not the least surprised by the direct assertions by Republic
of Turkey officials that Gulen-a nearly 80-year-old mullah living in the
Poconos since 1997-is behind a large network of charter schools here in the
United States. This fact has taken far too long to pierce the headlines, but
it has now become a standard paragraph in both international and domestic
coverage of the confusing events in Turkey.
In 2009, we were stunned by what we were finding as we ran down charter
applications and tax forms for these widely dispersed but seemingly related
schools. Teachers at the schools were contacting the union to determine how
to proceed with asserting their rights in the face of management practices.
(This is part of the challenge charter schools overall pose in public
education, as these schools may receive nearly all their revenue from public
sources, but their practices more resemble private entities than public
schools. The teachers at one of those charter schools, the Chicago Math and
Science Academy, ultimately became the subject of a landmark National Labor
Relations Board case that found the CMSA was in fact a private employer and
not covered by Illinois public sector labor law.)
As we pieced together the origin stories of more than 100 charter schools
across the country, we found what can only be described as a public
conspiracy. Dozens of Turkish men were forming charter school boards and
applying to open schools for approval by city officials or school district
administrators or state education department bureaucrats. These charter
schools were allied with education management organizations-the private
foundations or companies hired to run the daily operations of the
schools-that were also run exclusively by Turkish men. The charter
applications stated that these schools in part would be staffed by teachers
or administrators brought to the United States from Turkey under the H1-B
visa program for "specialty occupations." (The cumulative numbers of staff
with H1-B visas nationally are difficult to know precisely; in 2014, the
Cincinnati Enquirer [3] identified 67 H1-B visa holders out of a total
teacher workforce of 541-comprising 12 percent of staff at 17 Concept
Schools in Ohio.)
The Turkish individuals who came as H1-B visa teachers then became founding
charter board members at subsequent generation charter schools. The historic
research showed that starting in 1999, the first Turkish charter schools
were approved, and that by 2009, entire charter chains had been created to
operate dozens of schools: the Horizon Science Academy chain in Ohio, the
Magnolia Science Academy chain in California, the Harmony Science Academy
chain in Texas, the Sonoma Science Academy chain in Arizona.
As a labor organizer, I was surprised by the organizational capacity and
sheer bravado of the whole charter school enterprise. But then we found the
links to Fethullah Gulen in the academic work of Joshua Hendrick, a scholar
then at the University of Oregon. And I was simply amazed. Was it really
possible that a network of charter schools in the United States was in fact
affiliated with the Turkish international missionary organization headed by
the exiled Fethullah Gulen from Pennsylvania?
Was it really possible that no one in the American education administration
knew about this network or grasped the implications? A strict interpretation
at face value of all of the Gulenist movement's declared intentions means
one has to accept its missionary purpose as primary. In the United States,
the Gulen movement has successfully employed many hundreds of its adherents
inside the charter schools and used public funds to further employ many
thousands of other adherents through contracted products or services to the
charter schools.
In retrospect, the pattern exhibited by the group of school founders seems
so transparent and yet wholly undeclared. Academics like Joshua Hendrick
have described [4] their actions as "strategic ambiguity" in masking their
true intentions. Hendrick said after the coup:
"[The Gulen movement's] organizational culture emerged in a context that
demanded strategic ambiguity. While some people are open and proud about
their affiliation, others deny it completely. This starts with Fethullah
Gulen himself. He is a very ambiguous character, right to his birthdate one
cannot get a straight answer from him about anything.
"The movement operates in over 100 countries and over 100 legal spheres, and
this model ensures that if something goes wrong in one place, it doesn't
affect everywhere else. It's a calculated measure. For example, when lots of
questions were raised about charter schools linked to Gulen in Texas [5],
you started to see the same answers appearing from institutions in Ohio,
Maryland, Alabama with the same script: 'Some people might be influenced by
Gulen because they come from Turkey, in the same way as people from the U.S.
are influenced by Martin Luther King Jr.'"
This is how it works in the American charter school "sphere": The Turkish
men who applied and vouched for the academic pursuits of the founding board
would also be inviting local school district officials or local politicians
to Interfaith Dinners as is common with the Gulenist movement activities
worldwide. The schools publicized their STEM focus (science, technology,
engineering, mathematics) but these courses were often taught by recently
arrived Turkish teachers who spoke such heavily accented English many
students couldn't comprehend the instructors. The schools invariably offered
Turkish language instruction and the most promising students were
"volunteered" to participate in language competitions that culminated in
national or even international "Turkish Olympiads."
American families were allowing their children to travel around the United
States or even to Turkey [6] with Turkish teachers for little or no cost.
Local politicians all the way up to representatives and senators were
accepting "donated" trips to Turkey hosted by Gulenist officials in the
United States and traveling within Gulenist networks of hotels, guest
houses, restaurants and institutions. And to start the cycle all over again,
those politicians or parents were advocating alongside the Turkish men to
open new schools within the charter application process.
Even within the insular charter school industry where public funds regularly
become private profit like modern alchemy, the presence of charter operators
dominated by recently arrived Turkish men has no precedents. Perhaps the
establishment of parochial schools by the Catholic Church in the early 20th
century is similar, but those schools were subjected to highly charged
constitutional changes in state constitutions (known as Blaine Amendments)
that precluded public funds from going to those schools. The legal fights
for public funding for religious-based schools recurs regularly around the
so-called "voucher" programs around the country.
The franchise-like growth of "unrelated" schools run by Turks "influenced by
the teachings of the Iman Gulen" took place in full public view and can
easily be compiled from public records or the promotional websites of the
Gulen movement. This went on for years in communities all across the country
with seemingly few people asking any questions, including state and federal
educational regulatory bodies. I can only assume the thinking among the
education bureaucrats was if the Turks were taking the financial risk to
open the schools, then their motivations must be true and legitimate. Now,
in retrospect, we have a deeper insight into their intentions from the
accusations coming from their home country.
Over the last few years, many local newspapers or national reporters covered
this charter school network and Gulen's role in it as local interest
stories. The New York Times in 2011 did a front-page profile of the Harmony
Science Academy chain and its sole-source contracting practices with
seemingly related Turkish companies. Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" did an
infamous piece in 2012 in which Stahl stood around sheepishly at the empty
seat where Gulen would have sat if she were granted an interview for her
segment. And still the Gulen schools continued to apply and receive new
charters in nearly all cases.
The Turkish charter school applicants and their supporters were prepared to
go after the critical voices who spoke against their applications by raising
the apparent ties to the Gulen movement: they attacked the messengers.
Anyone who raised the public records and activities and cited the Gulen
movement's own declarations linking its worldwide network of private schools
to the charter school networks was dismissed as anti-Muslim, xenophobic or
unhinged.
After closely watching the pressure mount on the Gulenist schools and their
defenders since 2009, I am concerned that these claims of anti-Muslim
motivations are intentionally confusing the central issue of public
oversight of charter schools. The administration of public education within
the bounds of our laws and tradition of separation of church and state is
severely tested by the charter school model of the Gulenists-as is equally
true if the charter schools or other public institutions were hijacked to
surreptitiously serve any criminal conspiracy or sect's missionary goals.
The demands for full disclosure and public transparency in the Gulenist
schools' operations are the same for charter school mismanagement (as
documented [7] even by the comedian John Oliver).
The fact is that all those accusations of "discriminatory motives" made
toward the critics are bluster. We know this because the bark of any of the
Gulenists with the anti-Muslim dodge has never been followed by any bite in
civil actions claiming defamation or libel in American courts.
However, slowly but surely over the last few years, as the pro-public
education activists were increasingly vocal of challenging charter schools
generally, the critical voices started to gain traction in some communities.
The Gulen charter schools in the Atlanta area were shut down completely by
community demands including from former students and families who felt duped
by the dishonest practices at the school.
More and more of the darker workings of the Gulen charter schools have
started to be aired from former teachers or insiders. There are repeated but
so far not proven in court of law accusations of mandated tithing by the
Turkish immigrant adherents; this would certainly be in line with Gulen
movement practices elsewhere. In the U.S., however, the added twist is these
charter school employee salaries are entirely from public sources, so it's
not a stretch to say the American education system is indirectly subsidizing
the Gulenist missionary purposes.
The other troubling-and substantiated-practice is the active, regular
workplace discrimination that takes place against the American educators and
staffers from the Turkish staff and administrators. The reviews of the
publicly available teacher rosters and the labor condition applications for
the Turkish workers showed that American teachers were commonly paid
substantially less than the Turkish visa-holding educators. In the Chicago
Math and Science Academy unionization drive, a vocal union supporter who was
in her third trimester of pregnancy was summarily fired; she later won her
labor board case alleging violations under federal labor law. Many teachers
in Ohio called [8] for investigations into questionable practices at the
Concept Schools, including disparate treatment of American certified
teachers compared to the H1-B visa teachers from Turkey.
In my most sympathetic moods, I can see how some of the local education
bureaucrats have been too inattentive to these growing accusations against
the Gulen charter school chains. In most cases, however, the entire charter
school industry has convinced the public that these schools are exempt from
any regulation at all and now are "self-policed" by a captured set of
pro-market ideologues who serve solely to advance even more charter school
openings. But I hold no sympathies for the federal Department of Education,
which could have intervened at any point to notify the states and localities
of the actions of federal or congressional authorities around some of the
Gulen charter chains and foundations.
The FBI and other agencies (including the Dept of Ed) in 2014 jointly raided
[9] the offices of Concept Schools, a Gulenist management foundation, and a
handful of schools under the Horizon Science brand to investigate illegal
contracting for the E-Rate program that wires schools for internet services.
Those investigations are now more than two years old and are "still
on-going" according to FBI spokesmen in July before the so-called coup
attempt.
The U.S. Dept of Education awarded the Gulenist Cosmos Foundation a
multimillion-dollar grant to "replicate" its Harmony Science Academies
program and grow the charter chain in Texas in 2011. In 2014, the Dept of
Education Office of Civil Rights and the Harmony Science Academies and
Cosmos Foundation "settled" an investigation into Harmony's possible
violations of anti-discrimination laws in the selective admission of English
Language Learner and disabled students. According to the settlement record
[10], the Dept. of Education had been at multiple Harmony schools reviewing
admission policies for many years and was offered a settlement by Harmony
administrators before any formal investigation was concluded.
In October 2015, USA Today reported on the possible unethical foreign trips
taken by dozens of Congress members to Turkey at the invitation of multiple
Gulenist institutions including the Turquoise Council of Texas, a sister
organization to the Cosmos Foundation. A followup story [11] by USA Today
cited dozens of suspicious political contributions by Turkish individuals
employed at Gulenist institutions or charter schools. In one instance a
large donor to Sen. Kelly Ayotte is quoted saying, "He is a good guy. He is
doing a good job so far. I know him." Both Senate and House Ethics
Committees are reportedly investigating the facts behind USA Today's
reporting.
So what exactly is going on in Washington since the July 17 violence in
Turkey? Vice President Biden was dispatched to Istanbul to hear the Turkish
government's grievances. The Republic of Turkey is demanding the exiled
Gulen be extradited. Multiple departments and agencies of the federal
government have monitored or investigated Gulenist institutions and charter
schools for years, so there is undeniably a paper trail somewhere. However,
the network of charter schools is now estimated to be more than 150 schools
with enrollment of nearly 70,000 students.
The neighboring public school systems are normally expected to accept
displaced students with any charter school closure, although some students
would choose to enroll in other local charter operators. But could any local
district manage the sudden arrival of dozens or hundreds of students from a
shuttered Gulen school? In the Concept Schools case, 540 teachers across 17
schools enrolled nearly 6,500 students across a dozen or more districts in
2014. We all take for granted-and certainly the charter industry knows
it-that no student would be turned away from their neighborhood public
school. That is their right to attend and be admitted. But is the education
bureaucracy contemplating this possible outcome of the shutdown of these
Gulen schools?
The lack of transparency of the Gulen charter network and the failure of
federal and state oversight are warning signs of the dangers involved in
turning over taxpayer dollars for public education to private charter
operators. In the case of the Gulen network, the amount of money involved is
enormous-hundreds of millions of dollars. Shouldn't there be government
investigations? A moratorium on adding more schools to these networks? Where
is the voice of the charter industry for due diligence in schools where we
send our children? Our children deserve better [12].
Gene Bruskin is a 40-year veteran of the labor movement. He has been a local
union president, as well as an organizer and campaign coordinator for
numerous local and national unions. He retired in September 2012 after
establishing and leading the Strategic Campaigns Department for the AFT. He
is currently producing a musical comedy he wrote called Pray for the Dead-A
Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutiny. [13]
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [14]
[15]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/education/what-happens-gulen-charter-turkish-schools
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/gene-bruskin
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/10/05/charter-school-turns-turkish
-teachers/16791669/
[4]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-is-gulen-movement_us_5797d735e4b0d3
568f84fa37
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/education/07charter.html
[6] http://http://hizmetnews.com/tag/turkish-olympiads/
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_GbcYFwwAY
[8]
http://http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/04/most_accusations_aga
inst_horizon_charter_schools_lack_enough_detail_and_evidence_state_school_bo
ard_is_told.html
[9]
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/firms-fbi-targeted-kept-getting-federal-mon
ey-after-charter-raids/
[10]
http://www2.ed.gov/documents/press-releases/harmony-public-schools-letter.pd
f)
[11]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/29/turkish-faith-movemen
t-secretly-funded-200-trips-lawmakers-and-staff/74535104/
[12]
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2016/07/is-fethullah-g%C3%BCle
n-behind-turkeys-coup.html
[13] https://www.facebook.com/PrayfortheDeadMusical/
[14] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Who Is Watching?
Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup, Controls Large Network
of Charter Schools in the U.S.
[15] http://www.alternet.org/
[16] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Who Is Watching? Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup,
Controls Large Network of Charter Schools in the U.S.
Who Is Watching? Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup,
Controls Large Network of Charter Schools in the U.S.
By Gene Bruskin [1] / AlterNet [2]
August 30, 2016
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The calls were coming from around the country. A call from Springfield,
Mass. was followed by a call from New Orleans, followed by a call from
Columbus and also a call from Chicago. The callers were contacting my office
at the American Federation of Teachers asking about charter schools in their
area operated by Turkish men. We didn't have any good answers.
By now, the scale and ambition of Fethullah Gulen and his followers are in
the news daily with the fallout of the apparent coup attempt in Turkey this
summer. I'd be lying if I said I knew how to interpret the events in Turkey.
However, I am not the least surprised by the direct assertions by Republic
of Turkey officials that Gulen-a nearly 80-year-old mullah living in the
Poconos since 1997-is behind a large network of charter schools here in the
United States. This fact has taken far too long to pierce the headlines, but
it has now become a standard paragraph in both international and domestic
coverage of the confusing events in Turkey.
In 2009, we were stunned by what we were finding as we ran down charter
applications and tax forms for these widely dispersed but seemingly related
schools. Teachers at the schools were contacting the union to determine how
to proceed with asserting their rights in the face of management practices.
(This is part of the challenge charter schools overall pose in public
education, as these schools may receive nearly all their revenue from public
sources, but their practices more resemble private entities than public
schools. The teachers at one of those charter schools, the Chicago Math and
Science Academy, ultimately became the subject of a landmark National Labor
Relations Board case that found the CMSA was in fact a private employer and
not covered by Illinois public sector labor law.)
As we pieced together the origin stories of more than 100 charter schools
across the country, we found what can only be described as a public
conspiracy. Dozens of Turkish men were forming charter school boards and
applying to open schools for approval by city officials or school district
administrators or state education department bureaucrats. These charter
schools were allied with education management organizations-the private
foundations or companies hired to run the daily operations of the
schools-that were also run exclusively by Turkish men. The charter
applications stated that these schools in part would be staffed by teachers
or administrators brought to the United States from Turkey under the H1-B
visa program for "specialty occupations." (The cumulative numbers of staff
with H1-B visas nationally are difficult to know precisely; in 2014, the
Cincinnati Enquirer [3] identified 67 H1-B visa holders out of a total
teacher workforce of 541-comprising 12 percent of staff at 17 Concept
Schools in Ohio.)
The Turkish individuals who came as H1-B visa teachers then became founding
charter board members at subsequent generation charter schools. The historic
research showed that starting in 1999, the first Turkish charter schools
were approved, and that by 2009, entire charter chains had been created to
operate dozens of schools: the Horizon Science Academy chain in Ohio, the
Magnolia Science Academy chain in California, the Harmony Science Academy
chain in Texas, the Sonoma Science Academy chain in Arizona.
As a labor organizer, I was surprised by the organizational capacity and
sheer bravado of the whole charter school enterprise. But then we found the
links to Fethullah Gulen in the academic work of Joshua Hendrick, a scholar
then at the University of Oregon. And I was simply amazed. Was it really
possible that a network of charter schools in the United States was in fact
affiliated with the Turkish international missionary organization headed by
the exiled Fethullah Gulen from Pennsylvania?
Was it really possible that no one in the American education administration
knew about this network or grasped the implications? A strict interpretation
at face value of all of the Gulenist movement's declared intentions means
one has to accept its missionary purpose as primary. In the United States,
the Gulen movement has successfully employed many hundreds of its adherents
inside the charter schools and used public funds to further employ many
thousands of other adherents through contracted products or services to the
charter schools.
In retrospect, the pattern exhibited by the group of school founders seems
so transparent and yet wholly undeclared. Academics like Joshua Hendrick
have described [4] their actions as "strategic ambiguity" in masking their
true intentions. Hendrick said after the coup:
"[The Gulen movement's] organizational culture emerged in a context that
demanded strategic ambiguity. While some people are open and proud about
their affiliation, others deny it completely. This starts with Fethullah
Gulen himself. He is a very ambiguous character, right to his birthdate one
cannot get a straight answer from him about anything.
"The movement operates in over 100 countries and over 100 legal spheres, and
this model ensures that if something goes wrong in one place, it doesn't
affect everywhere else. It's a calculated measure. For example, when lots of
questions were raised about charter schools linked to Gulen in Texas [5],
you started to see the same answers appearing from institutions in Ohio,
Maryland, Alabama with the same script: 'Some people might be influenced by
Gulen because they come from Turkey, in the same way as people from the U.S.
are influenced by Martin Luther King Jr.'"
This is how it works in the American charter school "sphere": The Turkish
men who applied and vouched for the academic pursuits of the founding board
would also be inviting local school district officials or local politicians
to Interfaith Dinners as is common with the Gulenist movement activities
worldwide. The schools publicized their STEM focus (science, technology,
engineering, mathematics) but these courses were often taught by recently
arrived Turkish teachers who spoke such heavily accented English many
students couldn't comprehend the instructors. The schools invariably offered
Turkish language instruction and the most promising students were
"volunteered" to participate in language competitions that culminated in
national or even international "Turkish Olympiads."
American families were allowing their children to travel around the United
States or even to Turkey [6] with Turkish teachers for little or no cost.
Local politicians all the way up to representatives and senators were
accepting "donated" trips to Turkey hosted by Gulenist officials in the
United States and traveling within Gulenist networks of hotels, guest
houses, restaurants and institutions. And to start the cycle all over again,
those politicians or parents were advocating alongside the Turkish men to
open new schools within the charter application process.
Even within the insular charter school industry where public funds regularly
become private profit like modern alchemy, the presence of charter operators
dominated by recently arrived Turkish men has no precedents. Perhaps the
establishment of parochial schools by the Catholic Church in the early 20th
century is similar, but those schools were subjected to highly charged
constitutional changes in state constitutions (known as Blaine Amendments)
that precluded public funds from going to those schools. The legal fights
for public funding for religious-based schools recurs regularly around the
so-called "voucher" programs around the country.
The franchise-like growth of "unrelated" schools run by Turks "influenced by
the teachings of the Iman Gulen" took place in full public view and can
easily be compiled from public records or the promotional websites of the
Gulen movement. This went on for years in communities all across the country
with seemingly few people asking any questions, including state and federal
educational regulatory bodies. I can only assume the thinking among the
education bureaucrats was if the Turks were taking the financial risk to
open the schools, then their motivations must be true and legitimate. Now,
in retrospect, we have a deeper insight into their intentions from the
accusations coming from their home country.
Over the last few years, many local newspapers or national reporters covered
this charter school network and Gulen's role in it as local interest
stories. The New York Times in 2011 did a front-page profile of the Harmony
Science Academy chain and its sole-source contracting practices with
seemingly related Turkish companies. Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" did an
infamous piece in 2012 in which Stahl stood around sheepishly at the empty
seat where Gulen would have sat if she were granted an interview for her
segment. And still the Gulen schools continued to apply and receive new
charters in nearly all cases.
The Turkish charter school applicants and their supporters were prepared to
go after the critical voices who spoke against their applications by raising
the apparent ties to the Gulen movement: they attacked the messengers.
Anyone who raised the public records and activities and cited the Gulen
movement's own declarations linking its worldwide network of private schools
to the charter school networks was dismissed as anti-Muslim, xenophobic or
unhinged.
After closely watching the pressure mount on the Gulenist schools and their
defenders since 2009, I am concerned that these claims of anti-Muslim
motivations are intentionally confusing the central issue of public
oversight of charter schools. The administration of public education within
the bounds of our laws and tradition of separation of church and state is
severely tested by the charter school model of the Gulenists-as is equally
true if the charter schools or other public institutions were hijacked to
surreptitiously serve any criminal conspiracy or sect's missionary goals.
The demands for full disclosure and public transparency in the Gulenist
schools' operations are the same for charter school mismanagement (as
documented [7] even by the comedian John Oliver).
The fact is that all those accusations of "discriminatory motives" made
toward the critics are bluster. We know this because the bark of any of the
Gulenists with the anti-Muslim dodge has never been followed by any bite in
civil actions claiming defamation or libel in American courts.
However, slowly but surely over the last few years, as the pro-public
education activists were increasingly vocal of challenging charter schools
generally, the critical voices started to gain traction in some communities.
The Gulen charter schools in the Atlanta area were shut down completely by
community demands including from former students and families who felt duped
by the dishonest practices at the school.
More and more of the darker workings of the Gulen charter schools have
started to be aired from former teachers or insiders. There are repeated but
so far not proven in court of law accusations of mandated tithing by the
Turkish immigrant adherents; this would certainly be in line with Gulen
movement practices elsewhere. In the U.S., however, the added twist is these
charter school employee salaries are entirely from public sources, so it's
not a stretch to say the American education system is indirectly subsidizing
the Gulenist missionary purposes.
The other troubling-and substantiated-practice is the active, regular
workplace discrimination that takes place against the American educators and
staffers from the Turkish staff and administrators. The reviews of the
publicly available teacher rosters and the labor condition applications for
the Turkish workers showed that American teachers were commonly paid
substantially less than the Turkish visa-holding educators. In the Chicago
Math and Science Academy unionization drive, a vocal union supporter who was
in her third trimester of pregnancy was summarily fired; she later won her
labor board case alleging violations under federal labor law. Many teachers
in Ohio called [8] for investigations into questionable practices at the
Concept Schools, including disparate treatment of American certified
teachers compared to the H1-B visa teachers from Turkey.
In my most sympathetic moods, I can see how some of the local education
bureaucrats have been too inattentive to these growing accusations against
the Gulen charter school chains. In most cases, however, the entire charter
school industry has convinced the public that these schools are exempt from
any regulation at all and now are "self-policed" by a captured set of
pro-market ideologues who serve solely to advance even more charter school
openings. But I hold no sympathies for the federal Department of Education,
which could have intervened at any point to notify the states and localities
of the actions of federal or congressional authorities around some of the
Gulen charter chains and foundations.
The FBI and other agencies (including the Dept of Ed) in 2014 jointly raided
[9] the offices of Concept Schools, a Gulenist management foundation, and a
handful of schools under the Horizon Science brand to investigate illegal
contracting for the E-Rate program that wires schools for internet services.
Those investigations are now more than two years old and are "still
on-going" according to FBI spokesmen in July before the so-called coup
attempt.
The U.S. Dept of Education awarded the Gulenist Cosmos Foundation a
multimillion-dollar grant to "replicate" its Harmony Science Academies
program and grow the charter chain in Texas in 2011. In 2014, the Dept of
Education Office of Civil Rights and the Harmony Science Academies and
Cosmos Foundation "settled" an investigation into Harmony's possible
violations of anti-discrimination laws in the selective admission of English
Language Learner and disabled students. According to the settlement record
[10], the Dept. of Education had been at multiple Harmony schools reviewing
admission policies for many years and was offered a settlement by Harmony
administrators before any formal investigation was concluded.
In October 2015, USA Today reported on the possible unethical foreign trips
taken by dozens of Congress members to Turkey at the invitation of multiple
Gulenist institutions including the Turquoise Council of Texas, a sister
organization to the Cosmos Foundation. A followup story [11] by USA Today
cited dozens of suspicious political contributions by Turkish individuals
employed at Gulenist institutions or charter schools. In one instance a
large donor to Sen. Kelly Ayotte is quoted saying, "He is a good guy. He is
doing a good job so far. I know him." Both Senate and House Ethics
Committees are reportedly investigating the facts behind USA Today's
reporting.
So what exactly is going on in Washington since the July 17 violence in
Turkey? Vice President Biden was dispatched to Istanbul to hear the Turkish
government's grievances. The Republic of Turkey is demanding the exiled
Gulen be extradited. Multiple departments and agencies of the federal
government have monitored or investigated Gulenist institutions and charter
schools for years, so there is undeniably a paper trail somewhere. However,
the network of charter schools is now estimated to be more than 150 schools
with enrollment of nearly 70,000 students.
The neighboring public school systems are normally expected to accept
displaced students with any charter school closure, although some students
would choose to enroll in other local charter operators. But could any local
district manage the sudden arrival of dozens or hundreds of students from a
shuttered Gulen school? In the Concept Schools case, 540 teachers across 17
schools enrolled nearly 6,500 students across a dozen or more districts in
2014. We all take for granted-and certainly the charter industry knows
it-that no student would be turned away from their neighborhood public
school. That is their right to attend and be admitted. But is the education
bureaucracy contemplating this possible outcome of the shutdown of these
Gulen schools?
The lack of transparency of the Gulen charter network and the failure of
federal and state oversight are warning signs of the dangers involved in
turning over taxpayer dollars for public education to private charter
operators. In the case of the Gulen network, the amount of money involved is
enormous-hundreds of millions of dollars. Shouldn't there be government
investigations? A moratorium on adding more schools to these networks? Where
is the voice of the charter industry for due diligence in schools where we
send our children? Our children deserve better [12].
Gene Bruskin is a 40-year veteran of the labor movement. He has been a local
union president, as well as an organizer and campaign coordinator for
numerous local and national unions. He retired in September 2012 after
establishing and leading the Strategic Campaigns Department for the AFT. He
is currently producing a musical comedy he wrote called Pray for the Dead-A
Musical Tale of Morgues, Moguls and Mutiny. [13]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [14]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[15]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/education/what-happens-gulen-charter-turkish-schools
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/gene-bruskin
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/10/05/charter-school-turns-turkish
-teachers/16791669/
[4]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/what-is-gulen-movement_us_5797d735e4b0d3
568f84fa37
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/education/07charter.html
[6] http://http://hizmetnews.com/tag/turkish-olympiads/
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_GbcYFwwAY
[8]
http://http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/04/most_accusations_aga
inst_horizon_charter_schools_lack_enough_detail_and_evidence_state_school_bo
ard_is_told.html
[9]
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/firms-fbi-targeted-kept-getting-federal-mon
ey-after-charter-raids/
[10]
http://www2.ed.gov/documents/press-releases/harmony-public-schools-letter.pd
f)
[11]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/29/turkish-faith-movemen
t-secretly-funded-200-trips-lawmakers-and-staff/74535104/
[12]
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2016/07/is-fethullah-g%C3%BCle
n-behind-turkeys-coup.html
[13] https://www.facebook.com/PrayfortheDeadMusical/
[14] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Who Is Watching?
Turkish Cleric, Accused of Motivating Military Coup, Controls Large Network
of Charter Schools in the U.S.
[15] http://www.alternet.org/
[16] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
