The Gülen charter schools are one of the biggest chains in the U.S. They have about 160 or more schools. They usually claim they have no connection to Imam Fethullah Gülen, but they can be identified by the unusual number of Turkish teachers in the school, many using H1B visas; by the preponderance of Turkish men on their board of directors; by their inclusion of Turkish language in their curriculum; and by their preference to award contracts to Turkish-owned contractors, even when those firms were not the low bidder.
The Gulen schools call themselves by different names, but they are all somehow connected to a reclusive imam who lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania.
I don’t know whether the Gülen schools are good or bad schools, I just think it odd to outsource what are supposed to be American public schools to foreign nationals.
The conservative journal EdNext, funded largely by the conservative Hoover Institution, defends the Gülen charters and critiques those who would dare to criticize them.
Should we outsource community public schools to Saudi Arabia? to Russia? to China? to North Korea? to Brazil?
Where would EdNext draw the line? Or do they think there should be no line at all? Why should America have public schools?
American public schools are supposed to teach civics, democratic values, and history. Can we turn that over to teachers who have never studied American history or civics? Is it a good idea to outsource our public schools? According to EdNext, yes.
For anyone who wants to learn more about the Gulen charter school movement, I recommend Mark Hall’s film, “Killing Ed” and parent activist Sharon Higgins’ investigative reporting about the Gulen schools.
Some Gulen schools have been investigated by the FBI. Here is a 2012 report in the New York Times that EdNext won’t mention.
The writer was Stephanie Saul.
A group of three publicly financed charter schools in Georgia run by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Turkish imam, have come under scrutiny after they defaulted on bonds and an audit found that the schools improperly granted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to businesses and groups, many of them with ties to the Gulen movement.
The audit, released Tuesday by the Fulton County Schools near Atlanta, found the schools made purchases like T-shirts, teacher training and video production services from organizations with connections to school officials or Gulen followers. Those included more than $500,000 in contracts since January 2010 with the Grace Institute, a foundation whose board has included school leaders. In some cases the awards skirted bidding requirements, the audit said.
“I would just question how those vendors were selected when price in many instances wasn’t part of the decision making,” said the Fulton County superintendent, Robert Avossa, who criticized the schools for conflicts of interest. “And those are public dollars.”
Gulen followers run more than 120 charter schools nationwide, making the loosely affiliated network one of the nation’s largest public charter school operators. Despite clear connections, the schools generally deny any affiliation with the Gulen movement, a powerful religious and political force in Turkey whose leader, Mr. Gulen, views establishing schools as part of his mission. While some of the charter schools have been praised for their academic performance, their business practices have raised questions.
The New York Times reported last year that the group’s 36 Texas schools had granted millions of dollars in construction and renovation contracts to firms run by Turkish-Americans with ties to the movement, in some cases bypassing lower bids from firms with no connections to the movement. The Texas schools also awarded deals for cafeteria food, after-school programs and teacher training to organizations affiliated with Gulen followers.
The Georgia audit, posted to the Fulton County Schools Web site Tuesday evening, focused on the Fulton Science Academy Middle School in Alpharetta, Ga., a 500-student school that was recently denied a renewal of its public charter. The school, which had received $32 million in public funds over the past 10 years, said it would operate as a private school. While the audit does not lay out all of the relationships between contractors and the movement, a chart shows connections between the people running the schools, some of the vendors and Gulen-connected groups.
Dr. Avossa said that the audit’s findings had raised concerns about the group’s two other public charter schools in his district: Fulton Science Academy High School and Fulton Sunshine Academy, an elementary school.
He said a full audit would be conducted of those schools “to gauge whether similar wrongdoing is taking place.”
The three schools have enrolled 1,200 students representing a cross section of students in the Fulton County district.
Wells Fargo Bank, trustee of a $19 million bond issue by the schools, told investors on May 15 that the three schools were in default on those bonds. The bank said the default was caused by the group’s failure to disclose in its bond offering last year that its middle school charter renewal might have been in jeopardy. “The failure to disclose the ongoing concerns with Fulton Science Academy’s charter renewal petition constituted an omission of material facts in the public statement,” Wells Fargo said.
A default gives the bondholders the right to demand immediate payment, possibly requiring a liquidation of some school assets. The bonds are trading at about 70 percent of face value.
Concerns about governance and transparency were partly behind the district’s rejection of the Fulton Science Academy Middle School’s demand for a 10-year charter renewal. The school was named a “blue-ribbon” school last year by the federal government for its performance and appealed unsuccessfully to the state.
Kenan Sener, the school’s principal, said that the audit contained significant inaccuracies and that the school would issue a statement on Wednesday, after fully reviewing the document.
Nationwide, the charter schools have pursued an aggressive expansion plan, much of it financed by public bond issues, with the Texas schools borrowing more than $200 million through bond offerings.
In Texas, the group’s spending has been the focus of investigations by the State Legislature and the Texas Education Agency. The federal Department of Education is also investigating the Texas schools, apparently focusing on allegations of discrimination against Hispanic special education students in enrollment. The schools have denied wrongdoing.
One criticism of the schools involves their reliance on teachers imported from Turkey while teacher unemployment in the United States remains high. The audit said the Fulton Science Academy Middle School had paid $75,000 in immigration-related expenses for such employees.
Although the schools are inspired by Mr. Gulen and teach Turkish language and culture, they do not teach religion.
SICK.
Gulen is BAD: https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/272424-charter-schools-vulnerable-to-controversial-turkish-movement
Thanks for the article. The idea that foreign nationals dominate an educational nook in another country’s education should be scary for any culture. The disruption caused by Christian missionaries in China in the later 1800s may have brought about an end to foot binding and other archaic practices, but the fabric of society was so torn apart that the boxer movement arose, tearing apart the society.
We need our communities to produce our schools. The stability thus achieved will help our communities. Gulen school cannot possibly be teaching pluralism.
This is not up-to-date, but the website tracks Gulenist activities in the US and to a lesser extent internationally. The following link reveals political contributions made to high profile legislators/politicians. Some of these are still in Congress. Some have aspirations to tbe president. https://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/investing-in-us-politicians.html
Thanks for the link. Sad to see Gillibrand and Sylvester Turner on the list.
(1) Mike Pence
(2) Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and corporate Democrats- too bad it’s not a surprise.
Any criticism of charter schools is per se invalid and means the critic or analyst is a bad person.
On the other hand, there is an entire consultancy class who spend whole careers criticizing public schools, and they are all bold truth tellers and completely without conflicts of interest or ideological bias.
It’s deliberate, Diane. They are hoping they can shut down real scrutiny until they succeed in replacing all the public schools with contractors. That’s only the first step, too. The funding is the real prize- they’re (now) hoping to set up systems where there are thousands of service contractors and the public get a small, low value voucher and cobble together an “education”. They will save billions of dollars and we will be stuck with it.
The goal is Gates/Z-berg’s for-profit, schools-in-a-box to be sold by Walmart.
In the short run, if Turkish nationals can make some money with the help of D.C., there’s no objection by anyone in the power circles.
Kim Smith founded Pahara, The head of one of the school groups linked to Turkish nationals was in a Pahara cohort.
Smith said in an interview at Philanthropy Roundtable, the goal of charters was “….brands on a large scale.”
I agree with you, Chiara, there’s some serious backing for the school plot. Even Michael Moore won’t touch the subject.
Minor correction: “They will MAKE (not save) billions of dollars and we will be stuck with THE BILL.
It’s truly amazing how scared Ohio politicians are of the Gulen contractors. Ask any of them about it. They’re like deer in the headlights.
I don’t know what the political play here is, but there’s one there. There is a reason no one may ask about these schools. They’re all terrified to criticize charters in general but THESE schools are in a whole different league of political clout. It’s mystifying.
It all has to do with our presence in the Middle East and HOW the USA (politicians) wants to control resources and political clout/posturing. The CIA definitely has their hand in this. When it goes down, a lot of politicians will go down with it (many many DEMS!).
Forcing an economic-depressed state like Ohio, the state with the most opiod deaths, to fund national schemes, while denying Ohioans local control of their schools.
It’s what an oligarchy looks like.
Hoover would know.
Gulen must be politically connected. Despite all the negatives, the money keeps flowing. We have a huge Air Force base in Turkey from which we launch our Middle East operations. When Erdogan demanded Gulen be returned to Turkey after the attempted coup, the US did not yield. Gulen must be connected.
YUP!
And, there’s the amount of money connected with Flynn and an alleged kidnapping attempt on Gulen.
It’s possible that Gulen is a CIA asset. The CIA sets up front businesses all over the world to hide its activities. Gulen still has deep roots in Turkey. Turkey is a key ally in the Middle East
A good read is ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man’ by John Perkins. He describes how his company bribed leaders with millions of dollars in developing countries to accept US corporation development projects. Those who refused were overthrown or assassinated.
Hoover is home to Fordham’s Chester Finn and Stanford’s Hanushek (a 37-page resume that fails to list grants received)..
Something is definitely FISHY re: Gulen Charter schools. Been trying to figure this one out and there is a huge cloud surrounding Gulen. How he is able to do what he does is hidden ‘under the table.”
Scary Indeed!
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Robert Kraft, New England Patriots owner, was charged a couple of days ago with sex trafficking involving vulnerable Chinese women, who had their passports taken and were working 7 days a week, sleeping on the massage tables and cooking their food on hot plates in the “spa” business.
The same Robert Kraft was a major donor to the Massachusetts Charter School Ballot issue in 2016. (Telegram.com 9-9-2016). Teachers and community leaders fought and fight against people like Kraft.