A judge in Los Angeles halted school officials’ efforts to close two Gulen related schools despite claims of millions of dollars missing. The schools have high test scores. The investigation continues.

Categories Charter Schools, Los Angeles

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Chris in Florida says:

July 25, 2014 at 4:17 pm

I know this is cynical but in todays reformy world high test scores means they will probably get away with stealing millions of dollars since high test scores are all that matters for anything educational. There is precedent, I believe, reported here a few weeks ago about a school that had high test scores but a corrupt administration and the judge said that the high scores were more important. Sad but true.

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- Former Harmony Parent says:
  
  July 25, 2014 at 5:19 pm
  
  Sad indeed.
  
  It is incredible that a judge could make such a decision. If school officials can cheat with monetary funds, how can one assume they won’t cheat on state tests? Or rig the lottery in selecting students with great test scores from their previous school? Anyone can have a “miracle” school with great test scores by cheating!
  
  By the way, my child used to attend a Gulen school here in Texas. They are called Harmony. At that time, we never heard about Gulen. We left the school after witnessing too much corruption, even though our child loved the school. We never bothered to pick up our child’s test results because we thought it was possible that the test answers were modified.
  
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- dianeravitch says:
  
  July 25, 2014 at 7:02 pm
  
  Chris in Florida,
  
  That was the American Indian Model Charter Schools in Oakland.
  
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Tim says:

July 25, 2014 at 4:24 pm

Due process.

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- Chris in Florida says:
  
  July 25, 2014 at 5:42 pm
  
  Funny, Tim. Is that some of that droll conservative ‘humor’ I’ve heard about?
  
  Due process is having their day in court. Judges make decisions all the time to protect public assets from possible malfeasance leading up to and during trials. It’s common sense.
  
  Teachers aren’t allowed to stay in the classroom while being investigated even if they still have due process. Just ask one of the rubber room teachers in LA or NY. Several comment here regularly.
  
  Of course it makes perfect sense to continue handing over large sums of money to a group that has been accused of stealing millions of dollars.
  
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  - eric says:
    
    July 25, 2014 at 8:00 pm
    
    I have no love for charters and would prefer them all to be closed. That said, i strongly support the principle that the accused are assumed innocent until proven guilty in court of law rather than a court of public opinion. Given that the trial may extend past the start date for schools there is also a matter of practicality. It’s much less disruptive to replace a single teacher who is being investigated than find new schools for all of the affected students – particularly if it’s only for a short time. There’s also the matter of state funding… If you send the students from these schools to public schools, you need to pay the public schools for them. What then if Gulen is found not guilty? Do you punish the public schools more by making them to give back a significant amount of money – much of which would have already been spent? The loss of students would not be the same scale as normal student migration. Being that there’s the matter of the students. Inconsistency in learning environment can have significant side effects on their learning – that’s one of the arguments we raise against TFA. It also applies here…
    
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  - Chris in Florida says:
    
    July 25, 2014 at 10:23 pm
    
    And eric, what if Gulen is found guilty of fraud and closed midyear? What about the children then? It happens quite frequently with charters, I believe. They are told, sometimes with very short notice, that they must find a new “choice” for their education and they are on their own.
    
    Families who have chosen Gulen are probably OK with this but I see nothing wrong with enrolling the children in the local public schools and sending the money with them. That’s how some of the charters scam the money, isn’t it? They enroll the kids, collect the checks, and then ‘counsel’ the kids out, expel them, or make like miserable for the kids and parents so they will leave. That money is not refunded to the public school district — why should charters get a different set of rules?
    
    Cloaking concern for keeping charters open with flush budgets and profits as a concern for children’s welfare is not something I would be comfortable doing but to each their own. It certainly fits in with the charter philosophy of the reformists. Children are resilient and they will recover whatever happens. I believe in them.
    
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  - Eric says:
    
    July 28, 2014 at 1:45 am
    
    If they are found guilty and closed mid-year, then that would still be only 1 change for the students. To me, though, the most critical point is that students should NEVER be treated as ‘collateral damage’ of adults’ decisions. The students (and I’m assuming most of the teachers) had nothing to do with the allegations, but they will be the most heavily affected by any judgment. Yes. They’re resilient, but there is a great deal of research documenting the very harmful effects of inconsistency (both migrancy, teacher turnover, instability at home, etc.) on students’ learning. Having taught in two areas with very high student migration, I’ve repeatedly seen how big a shock emotionally and academically it is to kids to move from school to school. If Gulen is found guilty, I would much rather see the state appoint a special administrator to oversee the schools’ finances so that the school can remain open until the end of the year (or at least semester) allowing families and the public schools time to prepare for the transition to make it smoother. This case demonstrates an under-utilized argument against privatization of education: the processes of ‘marketizing’ the education system by introducing competition NECESSITATES turmoil in students’ education as a result of competition-based attrition. Proponents suggest that as the ‘losers’ of competition close, they would be replaced with fresh new upstarts with a new ‘solution’ – perpetually stimulating innovation in education. While this may be OK for soft drinks, it’s not OK for students. I think the same applies in this particular instance. With all of the harmful and even dangerous ideas being imposed on our schools seemingly every day in the name of ‘reform’, I think it is especially important that we as educators avoid knee-jerk reactions that can exacerbate the impact on students. We must carefully consider not only what’s best for taxpayers and students overall, but also what is best for this specific group of students in this specific school right now – specifically, how we can minimize any possible collateral damage from the adults’ mistakes. I don’t believe blindly shuffling them from school to school is the answer.
    
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Sharon says:

July 25, 2014 at 5:29 pm

Maybe one day some ex-Magnolia Science Academy teachers will publicly come forward with tales of what goes on in those schools, as ex-Horizon Science Academy teachers have now done in Ohio. I know one who told me that low performers at her Magnolia school were told by the principal ‘it’s okay, you can just stay home’ on testing day. She also told me about personally hearing the Turkish teacher tell his students that Turkish was the most widely spoken language in the world.

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- Former Harmony Parent says:
  
  July 25, 2014 at 5:55 pm
  
  A few years ago at our Harmony school, the principal went into a 4th grade classroom and threatened the students by saying if they didn’t pass the state test, they were not be able to come back to Harmony.
  
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- Dawn says:
  
  July 25, 2014 at 6:11 pm
  
  That’s the plan. The Ottoman Empire shall rise again. People do not understand how strategically placed Turkey is. Americans never look at world maps except to find an island that might be lovely to visit.
  
  Wake up. Fethullah Gulen is a powerful world figure hunkering down in the Poconos taking full advantage of H1 B visas and E-B5 green cards for all foreign investors and their families who put up more than $500,000. And then there are the e-rate grants for technology….and the pro-charter school media and the foolish U.S. politicians that take free junkets to Turkey in exchange for a free pass on accountability and consequences for stealing tax payer money and cheating on tests to create bogus scores.
  
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  - Linda says:
    
    July 27, 2014 at 5:06 pm
    
    Today, journalist, Josh Swigart, at the Dayton Daily News, “Allegations Mount at Area Charter School”, reports that a junior, at the Harmony (Gulen) School, claims administrators paid him, in 2010, “$20 to fill in the bubbles on hundreds of test sheets.”
    
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  - lafered says:
    
    July 27, 2014 at 5:46 pm
    
    I have been interested in the Gulen schools for a long time, ever since a mentor of mine became a fan of the movement. One of my doctoral students is a Gulen advocate who has worked in Gulen schools in several countries, a Turkish man who I travelled with to Nigeria to do observational work at the Turkish Nigerian College of Abuja. Both my mentor and my student, now a professor in Istanbul have argued with me on several occasions over the years, they defending both the schools and the Gulen philosophy. I have had to hold to my belief that these schools, while they do not necessarily teach religion in a direct manner operate on certain religious principles that this observer saw to be communicated in many subtle and not so subtle ways and for me, one who thinks that good education must teach in ways that will eventually lead to the eradication of religion (sensible, truly sensible people do not find truth in things supernatural), this covert teaching was a form of indoctrination as all religious teaching is. At the school in Abuja, the issue of religion was key to understanding much of the reality that is the Nigerian reality, Christians and Muslims killing one another in good number while I was visiting, Boko Haram arising soon after I left. So, the religious thing was and is, for me, a problematic aspect of the Gulen schools. The other concern, related to the first in interesting ways is the emphasis on math and science or, more to the point, de-emphasis of the humanities disciplines, those disciplines that would help students to develop the skills, knowledge, and attitudes essential to asking legitimate and critical questions about what was happening around them, in regard to politics local and international, issues related to the economy (in a nation of mostly very poor people that produces incredible amounts of oil and oil revenue, in which oil companies have used their money to insure that few environmental rules exist and those that exist are regularly ignored, to the determent of the people who can no longer fish in spoiled waters or farm on oil soaked land).
    
    I do not think Gulen schools are evil or that those running them are not good at what they do; the schools do teach mathematics and science better than most other school I know of, certainly better than most public schools in the United States. The people who teach in the schools are well trained but certainly not activist thinkers; good numbers who work in the schools are Gulen devotees and Gulen does the thinking for them.
    
    Tragically, Gulen schools are not the only schools problematic in the ways cited here. While American public schools sidestep religion, they do little to enlighten students about what religion really is and the consequences of belief for individuals and society. Few schools appropriate adequate amounts of time and instruction to helping students understand and engage with the issues of the day–few schools even encourage discussion of the educational system in there classrooms and few teachers discuss with students the biographies of the authors of the textbooks used and the process by which those texts were selected, an important factor in understanding issues of bias and teaching to the skills and knowledge that are of critical importance to attaining deep understanding of the materials assigned and those that students will encounter if they live life with half a decent awareness of the realities impacting the quality of the lives they live.
    
    Fight Gulen and the charters and privatization, yes. At the same time, consider schools, all schools, all school systems, all of the debates over schools and education in the context they need to be considered and debated, the quality of the understandings schools help students develop, the relevance of what is learned to quality of life, this directly related (really) to the ability to participate in the decision making processes of this should be democratic society. Go after all that is wrong about schools and then point to the things that are particularly wrong with schools such as those affiliated with Gulen. This is the only way I know to improve the education and educational achievement of American students.
    
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Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

July 25, 2014 at 8:33 pm

Is the judge paid off?

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- Donna says:
  
  July 26, 2014 at 2:57 pm
  
  One would think, right? It seems “they” are all in it. The merry-go-round of 7-steps-to Rhee never ceases to amaze. When you are pointed to a chart of who is who in the Rheeform circle, they all are connected. I would not be surprised is this judge is paid, if the Vergara judge was paid, certainly the front-plaintiffs who were rounded up sold their souls for some cash – and so it goes.
  
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  - Chris in Florida says:
    
    July 26, 2014 at 7:29 pm
    
    The attorneys who have rated him say he is not fair and has his mind made up before a case is heard because he has aspirations of becoming an appellate court judge. I do not know myself but he has a history of siding with management, government, and ‘the man’ over litigants according to articles in the LA Times.
    
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