Concept Schools, Gulen Charter Schools Midwest operations

Concept Schools, Gulen Charter Schools Midwest operations
DISCLAIMER:If you find some videos are disabled this is a result of Gulen Censorship and filing of fake copyright infringements to Utube.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

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.

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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Monday, February 14, 2011

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]
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.

Friday, February 11, 2011

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.

Monday, February 7, 2011

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.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Horizon Science Academy- Excellent article by Steve Elwart

02/05/2011