Public Employees using islamophobia to protect their cushy union jobs

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

madfloridian Donating Member (1000+ posts)  Journal Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list    Mon Oct-25-10 03:53 AM
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From Sibel Edmonds: The King of Madrasas Now Operates Over 100 Charter Schools in the US?   Updated at 5:45 AM
   
This topic has been covered here before, but it still is alarming. Remember that charter schools get public taxpayer money, yet there is little accountability.

Did You Know: The King of Madrasas Now Operates Over 100 Charter Schools in the US?

The Controversial Muslim preacher has now extended his tentacles into schools in the United States, where he controls and operates more than 100 charter schools within a calculatively set up maze of dubious NGOs. Fethullah Gulen, whose organizations’ net worth is estimated to be somewhere between $22 billion and $50 billion, owns and operates over three hundred Madrasas around the world, including Pakistan, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. While Gulen’s suspicious and secretive Madrasas have been shut down and or restrained in countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, based on these governments’ justified suspicions that his schools had more than just education on their agendas, his rapidly and secretively expanding charter school empire here in the US has gone quite unnoticed and unacknowledged.

In less than a decade Gulen’s Islamic network in the US has established over 100 publicly funded charter schools in 25 states. What makes this eyebrow raising phenomenon a very disturbing case is the fact that despite official documents and publicly available data Fethullah Gulen is going out of his way to deny his connections to these schools. The question is why? Here are a few excerpts from a USA Today article in August 2010:

The schools educate as many as 35,000 students — taken together they’d make up the largest charter school network in the USA — and have imported thousands of Turkish educators over the past decade.But the success of the schools at times has been clouded by nagging questions about what ties the schools may have to a reclusive Muslim leader in his late 60s living in exile in rural Pennsylvania.

Top administrators say they have no official ties to Gülen. And Gülen himself denies any connection to the schools. Still, documents available at various foundation websites and in federal forms required of non-profit groups show that virtually all of the schools have opened or operate with the aid of Gülen-inspired “dialogue” groups, local non-profits that promote Turkish culture. In one case, the Ohio-based Horizon Science Academy of Springfield in 2005 signed a five-year building lease with the parent organization of Chicago’s Niagara Foundation, which promotes Gülen’s philosophy of “peace, mutual respect, the culture of coexistence.” Gülen is the foundation’s honorary president. In many cases, charter school board members also serve as dialogue group leaders.

More from the USA Today article:

They have generic, forward-sounding names like Horizon Science Academy, Pioneer Charter School of Science and Beehive Science & Technology Academy. Quietly established over the past decade by a loosely affiliated group of Turkish-American educators, these 100 or so publicly funded charter schools in 25 states are often among the top-performing public schools in their towns.

The schools educate as many as 35,000 students — taken together they'd make up the largest charter school network in the USA — and have imported thousands of Turkish educators over the past decade.

..."The University of Oregon's Hendrick, whose writings explore the Gülen Movement, calls him "Turkey's most famous religious personality." His movement is considered the nation's "third force" alongside the military and Turkey's ruling Adalet ve Kalkýnma Partisi, or AKP Party.

In 1999, after traveling to the USA for medical treatment, Gülen was charged in Turkey with trying to create an Islamic state. Since then he has remained in Pennsylvania. After the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in 2007 denied his bid for a visa as an "alien of extraordinary ability in education," Gülen sued, saying his followers "had established more than 600 educational institutions" worldwide. He eventually prevailed, earning a green card in 2008. But Turkish educators in the USA continue to disavow their ties.

"Gülen is both the reason behind his schools, and he has nothing whatsoever to do with them," Hendrick says.

The Perimeter Primate Blog has covered these schools extensively there.

Perimeter Primate

PLEASE READ THIS GULEN MOVEMENT & GULEN CHARTER SCHOOL UPDATE!
Under the radar of the American public, the Gulen Movement, an Islamic-based movement out of Turkey, has been quietly advancing its presence and influence in the U.S. via the establishment of charter schools, "cultural centers", and "interfaith dialogue" centers. Politicians, reporters, academics, community leaders, and charter school families have been strategically targeted and wooed by Gulenists who are building up their body of unsuspecting American sympathizers. Do the sympathizers who defend the GM's activities have an understanding of the controversies which surround this secretive movement and its worldwide political ambitions? Are they aware of the GM's current role in eroding the secularness of the Turkish state?

That blog also has a list of all the Gulen Schools in the US.

List of Gulen Charter schools in US

There are all kinds of religious schools getting public money now through charters.

I am not sure how they are getting away with it unless those in charge choose to turn away and not confront the issue.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9381826

MadFloriDUHian is a teacher who claims all efforts to privatize education or endorse charter schools is the moral equivalent of gay bashing.

Note, if what Gulen was saying was being said in any other format--including a public school--this asshat would be defending it.

Keep the charter schools, ban the radical.

And fire MadFloriDUHian.

[Tantal]

Doncha just love it when two of the DUmp's favorite victim groups are at odds and they have to make a choice as to which is the bigger victim? Incompetent Union teachers vs. the bomb vest wearing, airplane hijacking, head-cutters. It's going to be intersting to see how this one plays out. I'll get my popcorn.

[true_blood]

Under the radar of the American public, the Gulen Movement, an Islamic-based movement out of Turkey, has been quietly advancing its presence and influence in the U.S. via the establishment of charter schools, "cultural centers", and "interfaith dialogue" centers.

WOW! "Cultural center"?! Sort of like the "cultural center", or "victory mosque" they want to build in NYC near GZ?!?

[TrueBlueAmerican]

Hey everyone this Gulen character is dangerous to our American Democracy;
 
The Gulen Charter schools are guilty of Visa Fraud, their schools Magnolia Science Academy, Horizon Science Academy, Harmony Science Academy and Sonoran Science Academy are bringing foreign teachers without credentials to the USA under h1-b fraud.  American Tax payers are footing this bill, you will note that they have more h1-b visas for teachers than the largest school district in the USA (LAUSD)
At a time when great American Teachers are getting pink slipped the Islamic Gulen Movement is dismantling the American Public School System one state at a time.   The Gulen Charter Schools have robbed American Taxpayers of over $1 billion in Educational funds over the span of the last 10 years.  Throught the network of Gulen Foundations, and bribes via their interfaith dialogue, they have managed to snow job members of congress, local politics, local religious leaders, and local academia.  Free dinners and free trips to Turkey to side step their true agenda which is to dominate and control American Education, politics, interfaith dialog, police, media and military.  As Fethullah Gulen has done world wide and in his native Turkey which got him exiled for attempting to overthrow a secular government.   
http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php?q=science%20teacher
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/07/gulen-schools-and-their-booming-h1b.html

[TrueBlueAmerican]

 

Any of you talked to your state education boards about this growing trend of foreign entities taking over the traditional public school systems?  This is some scary sh*t, what a freak this Gulen character is:

Publicly funded yet privately managed – Charter School fraud is an easy concept. Charters can be succesful it depends on the “agenda” of the the managing company. Accountability has not caught up to the growth of the Charter movement. In the USA we have an Islamic Imam – Fethullah Gulen (Gulen Movement) that manages over 130 US Charter schools they have taken over $1 billion in Educational monies in the last 10 years and are growing like rapid fire.
The Gulen schools have a network of foundations and instutitions layered over the schools and much of our educational money is going to non-educational expenses such as: Turkish Olympiads, trips to Turkey for the students and local politicians, H1-b Visas of over 2,000 uncredentialed teachers from Turkey (while American teachers are handed pink slips) this money is to fuel the grand ambition of Fethullah Gulen who lives in exile (for a reason) in the Poconos, PA area with his $25 billion in wealth from inflitration in: education, media, police, poltics and military. Seems the same model works very nicely in the USA. Do your research!!!
http://www.charterschoolwatchdog.com
http://www.charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com

[Tantal]

I think that madfloridian made her way over here as TrueBlueAmerican.......heavy on the BLUE. True or American? Not so much.

[Tucker]

I think that madfloridian made her way over here as TrueBlueAmerican.......heavy on the BLUE. True or American? Not so much.

Or the ex school bus driver, HannaBell. She's  madfloridan's lap dog. Where there is one of em, the stench of the other one is not far behind.