Gulen Charter Schools in the USA: Gulen Charter Schools in the USA - Under scrutiny ...

Gulen Charter Schools in the USA: Gulen Charter Schools in the USA - Under scrutiny ...: "Fethullah Gulen’s Missionary Charter Schools Coming under Increasing Scrutiny in the United States and around the Worldhttp://www.kurdishas..."

Gulen Schools Worldwide: Gulen's Turkish HIBs School in Vietnam- another sc...

Gulen Schools Worldwide: Gulen's Turkish HIBs School in Vietnam- another sc...: "The new Gulen Turkish School In Vietnam is called the Horizon International Bilingual School. It is the “same” story …blah blah- Turk..."

Gulen Schools Worldwide: Gulen Movement "How to Destroy a Country for Dummi...

Gulen Schools Worldwide: Gulen Movement "How to Destroy a Country for Dummi...: "Oxford Analytica versus Turkish democracy Last week the US ambassador to Turkey created havoc when he directly commented on a legal case a..."

Gulen Charter Schools - Under Federal Investigation "Somebody's Watching Me"

An article exposing a federal investigation into the Gulen Movement's involvement in charter schools (>30,000 students) has just been published in Il Sole 24 Ore (considered to be The Wall Street Journal of Italian newspapers): Un imam alla conquista degli Usa.

Yet still, the U.S. public remains uninformed about this whole situation because the American press has revealed very little to them.

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Here is the translation.

http://gulenforeignmedia.weebly.com/feb-20-2011-italy.html

An imam in the conquest of the United States -
by Claudio Gatti  -  Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)

February 20, 2011

NEW YORK -  A Muslim religious movement wants to conquer America. In fact, in a sense it has already conquered and no one has yet noticed.  Nothing to do with al-Qaeda, terrorism or Islamic fundamentalism. We speak of a sect that is rather mysterious - so much so that it has been called the Muslim Opus Dei - founded in Turkey in the 1970s by an imam named Fethullah Gülen. And noted rather for its moderation.

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Gulen’s followers opened dozens of schools in Central Asia. From there, the network of “Gulenist” schools has spread across all of Asia and in many African countries with the aim of forming a new ruling class tied to Turkey and the Gulen movement. Eleven years ago, to escape the military, Gulen relocated from Turkey to a spiritual center in Pennsylvania that is two hours from New York. Since then, his movement, known among followers simply as "the Service" - Hizmet in Turkish – have opened a flurry of schools in the U.S.. The difference is that it is being done at the expense of American taxpayers.

Il Sole 24 Ore has been able to determine that for months, the FBI, Department of Justice and Department of Education have been investigating the possible illegal use of these education funds, a criminal conspiracy, extortion, and violation of immigration laws. "The suspicion is that, behind an educational effort, there is a giant conspiracy" a federal officer, requesting anonymity, explained to our newspaper. "The plan is as simple as it is brilliant: to use public funding for schools to educate a new generation of Americans favorably inclined to Turkey and thus indirectly to the Gulen movement, and also to spend some of that money to fund foundations and cultural centers."

Federal authorities have identified at least 120 schools opened in recent years by the movement in some twenty U.S. states, all charter schools, which are outside the loop of public education but financed by states and the federal government. Since each of these schools receives from 1.5 to 3 million dollars each year in public funds, it is a matter of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Those funds also serve to give employment to thousands of followers of the movement brought in specially from Turkey to teach scientific subjects. An analysis of work permits for teachers reveals that between just 2007 and 2009,  the "Gulen" schools requested and were granted 1,851 visas in three years, more than some major American corporations such as Motorola and Google.

Part of the public funds also ends up in the coffers of companies founded by Gulen to provide services to schools. Il Sole 24 Ore has identified two such companies, Concept Schools and Breeze Inc., which in various documents appear to have contracted for over 100 thousand dollars a month with each of six schools in Ohio suspected of being affiliated to Hizmet.

Gulen declined to answer our questions, but when Il Sole 24 Ore asked Beksir [sic- should read Bekir] Aksoy, chairman of the spiritual center of Pennsylvania where the onetime imam lives, if the founder has any relationship with these schools, the response was an emphatic no. And the school administrators themselves have always denied any formal relationship with the movement.

But federal authorities have documents and emails that prove the link. Not only that, they show that the Hizmet would split the U.S. territory into five regions, assigning each of these to a single responsible individual, and that each teacher "imported" from Turkey would be required to return a percentage of their salary to the movement.

The region including Ohio was to be entrusted to a Turkish imam named Veli Aslan, better known as "brother Veli.”  An email sent in June 2008 with regard to teachers who were late in making the paybacks reads: "Brother Veli wants to have all the “salary returns."  And he says to withhold future salaries from those who have not made them."

More incriminating still is an email dated June 13, 2007 and sent to the principal of a school in Ohio and copied to the CEO of Concept Schools, a board member of Breeze, and the Executive Director of the Niagara Foundation, a foundation personally headed by Fethullah Gulen. The email recommends "increasing the number of teachers from Turkey ... to acquire more money."

Federal investigators believe that proves the involvement of all the various branches of Hizmet - schools, service organizations, and the most important Gulenist foundation in the U.S. - in what they call "the Tuzuk conspiracy", namely the illegal financing of the movement at the expense of taxpayers.


The man
From Izmir to Washington

Fethullah Gulen, born in 1941 in Erzurum, Turkey, was in his youth a disciple of the Muslim leader Said Nursi. In 1966 he moved to Izmir, where the audience of faithful who attended his sermons began to widen.  In the 70s he founded the Gulen Movement, which takes its name, known to his followers as Hizmet, "the service:" an organization in no time very active in establishing schools, first in Asia and Africa, and today in the United States, with  the goal of creating a ruling class tied to Turkey and the movement.

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Gulen Movement -Mind Control Cults Similarities?

Chicago Math and Science Academy- STOP BREAKING THE LAW February 11, 2011

This school is also under the Concept Schools as Horizon Science Academy is
They fall under Niagara Foundation in Chicago, and have had issues with following
the labor laws of the state of Illinois as previously reported on here.


Stop breaking the law’ protest tells Chicago charter school [with video]

http://peoplesworld.org/stop-breaking-the-law-protest-tells-chicago-charter-school#PageComment_11124

by: John Bachtell

February 14 2011

tags: Chicago, Illinois, education, unions

CHICAGO - If Sulejman Dizdarevic were peeking out the window of his swanky law offices on Feb. 11, he surely would have been startled. There staring at him from the opposite side of the street, with bulging eyes, long nose and whiskers, chomping on a cigar and holding sacks of cash, was a giant, ugly rat.
The inflatable rat was erected by supporters of teachers at Chicago Mathematics and Science Academy in front of Dizdarevic's office, because he sits on the board of directors of the charter school that they accuse of subverting teacher's rights to form a union and violating Illinois labor law by refusing to negotiate a contract. Dizdarevic is an attorney at Belongia, Shapiro and Franklin.
CMSA is part of Concept Schools, a charter chain with schools across the Midwest.
Teachers at the school voted 67 percent in favor of joining the Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Chicago ACTS) in June of last year. CMSA management fired Rhonda Hartwell, a leader of the organizing effort who was eight months pregnant, fifteen minutes before teachers announced they were forming a union. CMSA said her firing was for budgetary reasons but later announced a $1.5 million profit.
The teachers saw joining the union as a means to gain a voice in school decisions. They have been shut out and the resulting frustrations contributed to a high turnover rate.
They have been in a battle for recognition ever since. Instead of investing resources in staff salaries, CMSA hired a notorious, expensive union busting firm, Seyfarth Shaw (partner Jim Powers has since left the law firm but took the CMSA account with him).
"Regardless of the anti-union reasons motivating these charters, we are finding fear of transparency is the key issue," said James Thindwa, an organizer for Chicago ACTS, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and now represents teachers at eight charter schools.
"In almost every case, we have discovered that schools have more money than they claim. Teachers at Civitas were told there was no money for a raise, but when an audit was done, $2.5 million was found lying around," said Thindwa
The battle for union recognition by charter schoolteachers has grown as charters have assumed a larger presence in the city. The Board of Education voted to create another 13 charter schools on Jan. 26.
"CMSA are saying this is a private school, not subject to state law," said Thindwa. "They walked away from the bargaining table despite the fact that this union is certified under state law. What CMSA is saying is they don't recognize the state."
Charter schools are covered under Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board and employees are required to get the support of 50 percent plus one to gain union recognition. CMSA refused to accept this and took their case to the National Labor Relations Board, claiming they were a private company not covered under the law.
But the NLRB ruled CMSA is indeed a public school receiving public funds and management must follow state law. CMSA has appealed the decision and in the meantime walked away from the bargaining table.
Thindwa said every board member of CMSA would be targeted for pressure because they were personally responsible for the downward spiral the school finds itself in. They started with Dizdarevic; a delegation of community, clergy and academics delivered a letter to his office demanding management comply with state law.
"We told him we are not going away," said Martha Biondi, a professor at Northwestern University. "We are community members concerned about the right of teachers to organize a union, especially under the law of Illinois. It's outrageous that they are flouting the law of Illinois."
Episcopal Church Deacon Tim Yeager joined the protest because "it's for the teachers to decide if they want a union. They've chosen to have one. It's none of the management's business but management is obligated to sit down and bargain with them over the mandatory subjects of bargaining. They should do it."

If Sulejman Dizdarevic were peeking out the window of his swanky law offices on Feb. 11, he surely would have been startled. There staring at him from the opposite side of the street, with bulging eyes, long nose and whiskers, chomping on a cigar and holding sacks of cash, was a giant, ugly rat.

Gulen Charter Schools in the USA: Gateway Science Academy- Gulen managed School conv...

Gulen Charter Schools in the USA: Gateway Science Academy- Gulen managed School conv...: "Epiphany of Our Lord Catholic School held its 95th, and final, graduation ceremony. After several years of financial struggle, and despite v..."

Horizon Science Academy- Charter School Test Scores tell the REAL Story

Charter School Test Scores tell the REAL story
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/riehl/article_40c956c0-3ee2-587a-b89b-630bdb95f18b.html?mode=story
Is competition the key to improving our public schools? If a business doesn't deliver on its promises, shoppers go elsewhere. If they don't return, it closes its doors.
That's how No Child Left Behind was designed. In education's survival of the fittest, schools with chronically low test scores face sanctions ranging from allowing parents to take their children elsewhere to closure.
Our 10-year obsession with test scores has resulted only in glacial-speed improvement. All students were supposed to be at grade-level proficiency in reading and math by 2014. At California's annual rate of test score increases, white students will be fully proficient by 2025, Latinos and blacks by 2030.
Competition among schools has been promoted on this newspaper's opinion page. A recent editorial cartoon depicted an elephant named "Vista School District," emitting a cowardly "Eeek!" as it perches on a chair opposite a teacher pointing to the words "Charter success" written on a Classical Academies blackboard.
If pictures are worth a thousand words, this one needed another three hundred. Its companion editorial criticized Vista school administrators for resisting an Escondido charter school's plan to set up shop in their district.
The cartoon suggests charter schools are better than other public schools. The editorial says students should be allowed to vote with their feet to find better schools. Neither compared the test scores held sacred as quality indicators by the California Department of Education.
Here's what they left out.
Seventy-seven percent of the Escondido charter school's students are white; one is an English Language Learner. In the Vista school district, 30 percent of grade-schoolers are white, 30 percent are English Language Learners.
Here's a small sample of the 2010 California Standards test scores report, comparing the charter school's predominantly white enrollment with the 5,000 white students enrolled in Vista's elementary schools.
In eighth-grade English language arts, 76 percent of charter school students were proficient at or above grade level, compared to 81 percent of the comparable Vista subgroup.
In mathematics, 31 percent of Classical Academy eighth-graders were proficient in Algebra I, compared to 72 percent of white Vista students.
National studies have shown that charter school test scores are generally no better than those of other public schools.
California's academic performance indicator for Escondido's Classical Academy ranks it above 80 percent of other California schools. But it ranks above only 20 percent of schools with similar student populations.
The Classical Academy's ability to attract students is evidently unrelated to competitive test scores, which is the only way we measure a school's success under No Child Left Behind.

RICHARD RIEHL is a Carlsbad resident. Contact him at fogcutter1@yahoo.com.

Horizon Science Academy- Gulen's Turkish Olympiad in Ankara, Turkey

Ohio people compare your local Turkish Olympiad sponsored by the Concept
Schools, Rumi Forum of Cleveland, Niagara Foundation.  This show in Turkey
represents 115 countries where the Gulen Schools are.  And you thought
your Turkish Olympiad was unique?  You are only part of the dog and pony
show.

Horizon Science Academy- Excellent article by Steve Elwart

02/05/2011

The Gulen Movement: Islam Taught in Charter Schools

by Steve Elwart, IDB Folio Specialist  |  KHouse.org  |  February 2011 
Over the last twenty years there has been a movement in schools that has changed the way many children are educated—charter schools. Charter schools are public schools, Kindergarten through 12^th grade, that receive public money, but are not subject to the same rules that apply to other public schools. In return, charter schools are accountable to achieve certain goals that are outlined in the school charter.
The goal of a charter school is to provide a better education than can be received though the normal public schools. Some of the schools specialize in certain fields; i.e., mathematics and the sciences. Attendance at charter schools is voluntary and the schools are not allowed to charge tuition. In most cases, the charter schools are doing well—59% of the schools have a waiting list to enroll.¹
Within the charter school system, though, there is a danger. There is a group of charter schools that may be teaching more than ABC’s. They have innocuous names like Chicago Math and Science Academy and Pioneer Charter School of Science. Currently, they are educating as many as 35,000 students in 100 publicly funded schools and make up the largest charter school network in the United States. They promote an Islamic agenda, but receive government money, unlike other religious schools in the United States. These are the schools that are part of what is called Fethullah Gülen Community (FGC), also known as “the Gülen Movement.”

Over the past 10 years, the schools have imported thousands of Turkish educators to work in the schools, most of them with ties to a Turkish Muslim named Fethullah Gülen, who lives in a small Pennsylvania town called Saylorsburg. Gülen is described by his followers as a moderate Muslim and has been called “contemporary Islam’s Billy Graham.”²
Who is Fethullah Gülen?
Fethullah Gülen (pictured) is a Turkish preacher who has started a worldwide network of Muslims to take the principles of Islam and move the religion into the modern world. He was born in 1938 in a village in eastern Turkey. His father was an Imam, and from him, Gülen learned the principles of Islam.
Gülen’s beliefs are connected to Sufism, a mystical form of Islam. He became an Imam in his own right in 1957 when he was appointed to a mosque in Edirne, Turkey, near the Bulgarian border. It was there he came to learn the teachings of Said-i Nursi (1876-1960), a politically active Kurdish preacher. Nursi taught that Muslims should not reject modernity, but engage with it. Gülen put Nursi’s ideas into practice when he was transferred to a mosque in Izmir in 1966. (Izmir is the present-day name for Smyrna, one of the Seven Churches Christ wrote to in Revelation 2.) From this pro-Western base, Gülen started a network of student boarding-houses known as “lighthouses.”
It was in Izmir that Gülen applied Nursi’s teaching to create a network of private schools, residences and later universities and turn them into centers of excellence promoting a modern, Islam-based ethical framework.³ From this base in Turkey, Gülen expanded his network into countries that make up the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and finally the West. He started to make inroads into the secular world in earnest after he moved to the United States in 1997.
Once in the United States, Gülen applied for permanent re-sidency, which was denied. The Department of Homeland Security characterized Gülen as neither an expert in the field of education nor an educator but rather as “the leader of a large and influential religious and political movement with immense commercial holdings.”⁴ (His formal education is limited to five years of elementary school.)⁵ In their written denial, U.S. attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security also stated a suspicion about CIA involvement in funding the Gülen Movement’s global projects. His visa was approved after his appeal, with the help of several CIA agents. Gülen moved to South-eastern Pennsylvania and established his network of schools in the United States.
Gülen’s Educational Philosophy and Gülen Schools
A religious-based educational philosophy is one of Gülen’s primary themes; he has very specific notions about the way in which children should be instructed in schools, some of which are described in “The Educational Philosophy of Fethullah Gülen and Its Application in South Africa.”
The Gülen charter schools are founded and operated by Turkish immigrants (male scientists and businessmen) who can often be tied to the American Gülenist organizations. An unusually strong pattern of similarities in their establishment and operation indicates that these U.S. schools are likely tied into a larger network of international Gülen schools. However, the operators of the schools are extremely reluctant to discuss Gülen, the Gülen Movement, or Gülen’s approach to education. Sometimes they will admit that the schools are “Gülen-inspired.”
The schools’ connection to Gülen’s educational philosophy is never volunteered to the public; it is not mentioned on the web sites or in the charter school petitions. In other countries, the Gülen schools are tuition-based, but as charter schools, the U.S. Gülen schools receive public state and federal funds. American news organizations have done little to inform the public about the Gülen Movement, its schools, or any deeper significance or associated controversies. To date, only one news story has been produced by the mainstream press, USA To-day’s “Objectives of charter schools with Turkish connections questioned.”⁶
Broad public awareness about the Gülen charter schools has not yet occurred. One reason this national phenomenon has gone unnoticed for so long is because charter school authorization is fragmented and oversight is local and inadequate. It has taken awhile for anyone to become aware that there is a multi-district, multi-state charter school pattern in operation.
Each year that goes by, more and more U.S. tax dollars have become involved with the establishment and support of these Gülen charter schools with very little public discussion about using taxes to fund them.
Taken individually, the Gülenist schools seem quite promising and their oddities are not noticeable. However, despite the schools and school clusters claiming to have no, or minimal, affiliation with one another, they have extremely unusual similarities, which they even share with the international Gülen schools. The characteristics of these schools will include most of the following:

• Emphasis on math and science; yet little experimental science.
• High scores on standardized tests, even in cases of very challenging demographics.
• Chronic problems with special education compliance.
• High teacher turnover; teachers, administrators disappear and appear mysteriously.
• High usage of H-1B Visas to fill staffing needs.⁷
• Turkish cultural activities such as Turkish clubs, elaborately costumed student participation in regional “Turkish Olympiads” and class trips to Anatolian/Turkish festivals.
• School-sponsored trips to Turkey, usually disguised as “International” or “European” trips (scan the photo galleries on the school web sites).

Even with the large number of foreign-born Islamic teachers and administrators in the Gülen school network, why should people be concerned about these charter schools? One reason is given by Bayram Balci, a Turkish scholar with the Institut Français d’Etudes sur l’Asie Centrale in Grenoble, France. Dr. Balci states that Gülen schools have been established through-out the world to bring about a universal caliphate ruled by Islamic law.⁸ Graham Fuller, a former CIA agent and the author of several books on political Islam, says that Gülen is leading “one of the most important movements in the Muslim world today.”⁹
In a sermon that was aired on Turkish television, Gülen said:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria…like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it…You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey…Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] con-fronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence …trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.¹⁰

Gülen does not approve of the title, “Gülen Movement.” In-stead he refers to it as a “volunteers’ (hizmet) movement.” Hizmet is one of the highest duties in Islam, implying both a religious and national service. Gülen’s community of followers is known as the cemaat. He is referred to as their hocaefendi (master lord).
Several countries have outlawed the establishment of Gülen schools, including Russia and Uzbekistan. Even the Nether-lands, a nation that embraces “pluralism” and “tolerance,” has opted to cut funding to the Gülen schools because of its aggressive promotion of Islam. One of these charter schools—Tarek ibn Zayed Academy (TiZA) in Minnesota—is so radically Islamic and subversive in nature that the Minnesota Department of Education issued two citations against it and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing it.¹¹
Equally disturbing is the encroachment of the Gülen Movement into American politics. The FGC is known to have sup-ported the election campaigns of various U.S. politicians. These same politicians also sought the blessing of the Gülen Movement by appearing at FGC events. For instance, Hillary Clinton is known to have attended FGC events in the U.S., including a September 2007 Ramadan breakfast organized by the Gülenist Turkish Cultural Center in New York City.
Dalia Mogahed is a Senior Analyst and Executive Director at the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. She is also an advisor on Islamic Affairs to President Barack Obama and a strong supporter of the Gülen Movement. When asked about the movement’s hidden agenda, Mogahed was quoted as saying that she does not attach any importance to such allegations: “It [the Gülen Movement] has moved beyond Turkey in its very benevolent projects and it serves people from all around the world of all backgrounds, but it is still made up mostly of Turks. That is what I feel is in need of expanding,” she said.¹²
One can draw parallels between the United States and the Northern Kingdom written about in the Book of Hosea. Both had advanced technologies and unparalleled prosperity. Also, they both had evidence of moral decay: they rejected God throughout the culture. Hosea then chronicles the Northern Kingdom’s suffering from God’s judgment: he gave the Kingdom over to Assyria, a country now made up of Iraq, Syria, and parts of Iran, Egypt, and Turkey. All of these countries are now predominantly Muslim.
Is God giving the United States over to modern-day “Assyrians”? Imagine a cityscape in which the minaret, not the church steeple, dominates. Many fear that the “Ground Zero Mosque” may be the start of just such a skyline. After the morning of September 11, 2001, Americans remain perplexed about the faith of Islam. How could a religion like Islam make young men decide to fly airplanes into buildings? How could such a view of the world produce such zealots? Such world-views are complex and confusing to the Western mind. Schools such as those in the Gülen Movement promote a skewed view of the world and expose young minds to the dangers of Islam.
Americans should ask how the Gülen Movement has man-aged to establish such inroads into the American education system. It is a movement that needs to have oversight and must be made to conform to the laws of the United States, just as any other education institution that receives public funding.

* * *

Danene Vincent, Silver Medallion holder, did the original research for this article. Steve Elwart can be contacted at Steve.Elwart@studycenter.com.
Notes:

1.    http://www.edreform.com/Archive/?Annual_Survey_of_Americas_Charter_Schools_2008. Retrieved September 19, 2009.
2.    “Objectives of charter schools with Turkish ties questioned”: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm.
3.    New York Times. (2008, January 8). TURKEY: Fethullah Gülen profile
4.    Fethullah Gülen’s Grand Ambition, The Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2009, http://www.meforum.org/2045/fethullah-gulens-grand-ambition#ftn51.
5.    Ibid.
6.    Greg Toppo (August 17, 2010), http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm.
7.    The H-1B visa allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign work-ers in specialty occupations.
8.    Fethullah Gülen’s Missionary Schools in Central Asia and their Role in the Spreading of Turkism and Islam, Religion, State & Society, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2003, ISSN 0963-7494 print/ISSN 1465-3975 online/03/020151-27
9.    “Objectives of charter schools with Turkish ties questioned”: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm.
10.    World’s “Most Dangerous Islamist” Alive, Well, and Living in Pennsyl-vania, Paul Williams, Ph.D., April 7, 2010, Family Security Matters.
11.    Ibid.
12.    Williams, Paul. “White House Muslim Advisor Supports Islamist Gülen Movement.” www.familysecuritymatters.org. Family Security Matters, 15 Jun. 2010. Web. 15 Aug. 2010.  http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6467/pub_detail.asp
Source:  http://www.khouse.org/articles/2011/971