The NY Regents approve fourth Gulen charter school

Fethullah Gulen

The below post was written by Sharon Higgins, who is one of the nation’s top experts on the Gulen chain of charters,which has more than 120 schools in 25 states.  Be sure to follow her excellent blog, Charter School Scandals.  Though the Gulen movement runs private schools in many countries, ours is the only country that subsidizes Gulen schools with federal, state and city taxpayer dollars.  Meanwhile, Gulen schools are being investigated for money laundering and other violations of law in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Hawaii, Arizona, Utah, Texas, and elsewhere.  See this 60 Minutes report.

This week the application for the Utica Academy of Science Charter School (UASCS) was approved by the New York State Board of Regents. Founders of this school have described it as a “sister school” to the Syracuse Academy of Science Charter School (SASCS). When it opens next fall, UASCS will be the fourth Gulen Movement (GM)-affiliated charter school in New York state.

The Gulen Movement is a secretive and controversial religious group from Turkey that follows the teachings of Fethullah Gulen. Referred to as the cemaat (“The Community”) in Turkey, the GM is well-known for its schools. It operates a large number of private schools in Turkey and in many other countries around the world. In addition, the GM operates the largest network of charter schools in the United States.

The Syracuse Academy of Science Charter School (link), the Buffalo Academy of Science Charter School (link), and the Rochester Academy Charter School (link) have been identified as GM-affiliated. The Syracuse and Buffalo schools have exhibited high suspension rates, and the lease for the Buffalo school is a related-party deal. Further investigation into these and other aspects should be conducted.

All GM-associated schools provide Turkish cultural and language instruction, although that is rarely mentioned in their charter school applications. The Syracuse school has even gone so far as to teach students how to perform the religious ritual dance practiced by the Sufi Dervishes of the Mevlevi order (the GM is Sufi-inspired). It is unlikely that SASCS parents were aware of this aspect when they enrolled their children at the school, or even fully understand the reason behind it at this point.

A case study of a local politician

 This past Tuesday, New York State Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz (HD-45) celebrated his re-election with a small group of supporters at the Turkish Cultural Center of Brooklyn. Cymbrowitz has been embraced by the Gulen Movement and he has fully embraced them back. An observer once noted that the Gulen Movement employs a “strategy of seduction” towards parents and local governments (see this 1.33 MB pdf).

 In May 2011, the NY Legislature adopted a Cymbrowitz, et al. sponsored resolution (K541-2011) “Commending the Turkish Cultural Centers upon the occasion of celebrating their 6th Annual Turkish Cultural Day.” The resolution states: “The Turkish Cultural Centers were first created by Fethullah Gulen...” and “There are 11 Turkish Cultural Centers in New York State, located in Albany, Binghamton, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Long Island, Manhattan, Rochester, Queens, Staten Island, Syracuse and Westchester...”

 In November 2011, Cymbrowitz and others gathered for the inauguration of a new building for Brooklyn Amity School, a private Gulen school. A report by Ebru TV (one of many media outlets controlled by the GM) stated: “... New York State Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz said that founders of school had stayed true to teachings of Turkish Scholar Fethullah Gulen.”

 A number of individuals from Brooklyn Amity School have also been involved with operating the GM’s charter schools.

 And in February 2012, at one of the many dinners hosted by the GM, Cymbrowitz presented an official assembly proclamation of appreciation to Fethullah Gulen and mentioned his recent trip to Turkey (video). GM-affiliated organizations regularly provide influential Americans with free, guided, pro-GM propaganda trips to Turkey.

Political contributions

 Like other special interest groups, the GM strategically invests its energy and money in politicians. In 2010 a Wall Street Journal article about Fethullah Gulen stated: “An English-language Turkish newspaper reported that Mr. Gulen has told his followers they couldn't visit him on his Poconos estate if they didn't first donate to their local congressman. Mr. Gulen denies making the remark.”

 In 2011, Cymbrowitz received at least $7500 in political contributions from nine individuals involved with either the Turkish Cultural Center of NY or Brooklyn Amity School.

May 2011

·    $350 from Hayrullah Erdogan (Brooklyn Amity School building manager)

·    $350 from Ayse Sevinc (Brooklyn Amity School science teacher)

June 2011

·    $900 from Taner Kanbir (Brooklyn Amity School website domain owner and teacher)

·    $500 from Mehmet Ozbilgen (Brooklyn Amity School employment contact; petitioner of City Academy of Science charter school, a 2009 attempt)

·    $500 from Ayse Sevinc (2nd contribution in 2011; see above)

·    $350 from Zafer A. Akin (Brooklyn Amity School board member; President of Turkish Cultural Center of NY; lead petitioner of Staten Island Fusion Charter School, a 2011 attempt)

November 2011

·    $1500 from Cengiz Karabekmez (Brooklyn Amity School director)

·    $1000 from Ismail Topkaya (Brooklyn Amity School assistant principal)

·    $650 from Hayrullah Erdogan (2nd contribution in 2011; see above)

·    $500 from Erdem Duran (Brooklyn Amity School teacher)

·    $350 from Zafer A. Akin (2nd contribution in 2011; see above)

·    $300 from Mehmet Ozbilgen (2nd contribution in 2011; see above)

·    $250 from Mehmet Kilic (Vice President of Turkish Cultural Center of NY)

These political contributions, had they been made in one lump sum, would have ranked as Cymbrowitz’ third top contributor.

The Gulen Movement is highly controversial

 Last May, during the CBS 60 Minutes report about the Gulen Movement, Lesley Stahl made this observation: “You know we have confronted real fear about this movement, particularly when we've tried to get critics to give us an interview.”

Dani Rodrik, Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University and his wife Pinar Dogan recently posted this commentary on their blog:

The Gülen movement’s rhetoric and activities have won Gülen plaudits as an exemplary Islamic scholar who tries to build bridges between different faiths. Over the last decade, he has assiduously cultivated ties with Jewish and Christian leaders, and his efforts have yielded praise for his inter-faith activities and tolerance...

It is a massive understatement to say that these activities are at odds with Gülen’s sermons and writings prior to his move to the United States, which contain vitriolic passages against Jews, Christians, the West, and the U.S... Moreover, these anti-Semitic rants can still be found in their Turkish original on web sites maintained by the movement. At the same time, the managers of Gülen’s official site have taken care to ensure that there are no direct links to the content with the most offensive language...

Maybe Gülen has really changed his mind, and shed some of the offensive views he held shortly before he moved to the U.S... clearly his devotees are still propagating these odious views, while taking precautions to insulate Gülen’s official persona, especially the one presented to non-Turkish audiences, from them.

When confronted with Fethullah Gülen’s own distasteful writings, Gülen’s defenders shoot back with accusations of propaganda and disinformation... This is part of a pattern of deception and hypocrisy we have encountered repeatedly. In Turkey, Gülenist rhetoric is replete with democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Yet, as we have documented elsewhere, the movement is entangled in an astonishing range of misdeeds that run the full gamut from slander to the framing of perceived opponents...

New Yorkers should inform themselves about the Gulen Movement, the controversies which surround it, and closely monitor their state’s expanding network of taxpayer-supported, privately-managed Gulen charter schools. 

Fred Smith: why the NY State Education Department deserves an "F" on their own exams

Fred Smith is an expert on testing who used to work in the NYC Board of Education, and has been instrumental in uncovering and publicizing the rampant state test score inflation that has occurred over the last eight years in NY state.  He has an article in this month's City Limits, showing the lack of concerted action on the part of the Board of Regents and New York State Education Department, even after admitting that this inflation did indeed occur, to take the necessary steps to address it properly:

Several issues have never been addressed:

--Why have SED administrators been protected, given their misleading reporting and defense of inadequate testing from 2006 to 2009?
--Why did the state’s technical advisors insist that cut off scores on the tests were lowered because the items had gotten harder—when they had evidence to the contrary?
--Who’s responsible for the field testing procedures that yielded inaccurate data on which the exams were built, and what’s been the penalty?
--Who set the 2009 cut points so low that kids with serious academic problems could guess their way out of this category, depriving them of needed support services?

Those are questions about the past that have been ducked.  But the state of the latest tests also demands scrutiny. 2010’s exams were advertised as more rigorous. Analysis of these instruments reveals the items were easier than ever…

Please read this important analysis; instead of showing the proper humility, the Regents and SED recently decided that state test score results should account for up to 40% of a teacher's evaluation.  Given their sorry record in developing reliable assessments, their insistence in this regard is quite amazing. 

Sign our petition against any more charters that will take space from our public schools!

In NYC, our public schools are increasingly overcrowded, a crisis made worse by the insistence of the NYC Department of Education to continue placing charter schools in our district school buildings. This has led to class size increases, the loss of art rooms, science labs, libraries, and preK programs, as well as special needs children receiving their services in hallways and in closets in our district schools.

NY charter authorizers will be voting in the next few weeks on several charter schools, whose founders have stated that they intend to be located inside our already overcrowded public schools.

Please sign our petition to urge the the SUNY board of trustees, the State Education Department, and the Board of Regents, along with their advisers, not to approve any more charter schools in NYC, unless they have a plan to be located in their own space, separate from our existing infrastructure.

The petition is here, and when you sign it, it automatically sends an email to the above decisionmakers. Please also feel free to adapt the message however you like. Thanks!

Send a message to the Regents about harmful changes in special ed

The Board of Regents are considering adopting a number of "cost-savings" changes to special ed, including increasing the number of special needs students that can be enrolled in CTT or inclusion classes.

More and more in recent years, DOE is pushing students with disabilities into these classes, with no evidence that that they will meet their need for extra attention and support.

Right now, there can be only 40 percent sped students in these classes. CTT classes are already too big in NYC schools, even with two teachers; they are allowed to be as large as regular gened classes, with as many as 25 students in Kindergarten and up to 34 students per class in high school.

The ARISE coalition has written a letter to the Regents, pointing out how many of the proposed changes will be harmful. Among their comments:

...no studies have been conducted or offered to demonstrate whether the current ratios and class size limits for integrated co-teaching are even effective and whether students with disabilities in those settings are making the educational strides anticipated. How can NYSED propose altering those ratios and limits without conducting such research?

Not surprisingly, Chancellor Klein supports these changes.

Send a message to the Regents now; let them that these proposed policies are simply unacceptable. You can find their contact information here.

The Audacity of Hubris (and Money)

It all seems so innocent, so generously charming. A young woman named Jessica Tisch, doubtless a hardworking, upwardly-striving, small town coed identified only as “a law and business student,” is granted the honor of a guest editorial in the New York Post. In her opinion piece, ever-so-colloquially titled “Mike and Term Limits” (we all smile at the unabashed forwardness of youth), young Ms. Tisch argues enthusiastically in favor of allowing NYC voters to decide if they want to overturn the current term limit rules in the City Charter so our beloved Mayor Bloomberg can run for a third term.

Who is this honoree, the recipient of such public opinion largesse from a major metropolitan newspaper? Just fifteen seconds’ worth of Google search and reading reveals the likely answer almost immediately: Jessica Sarah Tisch, Harvard graduate and (as of November, 2006) a student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law, daughter of Merryl and James S. Tisch. Yes, the same James Tisch who is president of Loews Corporation (passed down to him by his father Laurence A. Tisch, and uncle, Preston Tisch). The same James Tisch who can be found listed as a member of the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee, Romney for President, and John McCain 2008 (Mr. Tisch is clearly a man of abiding political convictions.) The same James Tisch who serves as a Director of the unreservedly Mayor Mike-supporting Partnership for New York City, the organization that provides private (corporate) funding for DOE initiatives that would never past muster in the City Council or with voters were they ever actually voted upon as expenditures of public funds.

Ms. Tisch fille offers as her main argument for NYC voters re-deciding the term limits legislation that this particular charter revision is now all of twelve years old. “Much, after all, has happened since then,” she posits with the compelling argumentative force of a Harvard Law School student/graduate. Maybe the voters feel differently now, she suggests.

Is Ms. Tisch only concerned about Mayoral term limits, and if so, why just the Mayor? Should her sense of unrestricted public service not include the City Comptroller, the Public Advocate, and the City Council? If not, why not? While we’re at it, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution (universal suffrage) was adopted in 1920. Certainly, much has changed since then. Is it not time for voters to re-assess this as well? How about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, or the Title IX legislation of 1972 equalizing federal expenditures for educational programs and activities between men and women? If a decade is enough for a do-over, what should we say to 50-100 year old legislation?

Another of Ms. Tisch’s arguments concerns Mayor Bloomberg’s unarguable success at, among other things, having “improved schools.” Doubtless Ms. Tisch never came closer to a NYC public school than being chauffeured past one (although her mother, Merryl, is a member of the NYS Board of Regents), so it is difficult to imagine her bona fides for taking an informed position on Mayor Bloomberg's efforts with respect to the City's public schools.

Whether expressing opinions of her own or not, Ms. Tisch’s presence as an editorialist certainly gives the impression of shilling for her father’s business interests if not those of the corporate collective that comprises the New York City Partnership. The Post’s patently disingenuous effort to present Ms. Tisch as just some random, average student expressing a young person’s idealistic worldview only compounds the offensiveness of the conflict of interest they are abetting. Forget about political term limits – are there no limits to “shameful?”

An honest disclosure of Ms. Tisch’s family connections would have at least allowed readers to make their own fully-informed judgments about both the merits and the motivations of her message. Then again, perhaps full and accurate information is exactly what the NY Post editors most do not want their readers to have. There wouldn’t be anything new in that now, would there?

Would that the Post (or the Daily News or Times) ever give equal time and space to an actual student or recent graduate of a NYC public school who could speak from the heart - and from first-hand experience - about how Mayor Bloomberg's eight years has changed his or her life. It would be nice to hear from a young, non-white, non-upper class person writing about "life under Mike," rather than reading the opinions of someone who doubtless aspires mostly to “be like Mike.” And I don’t mean Jordan, either.

Is there adequate public review for charter schools? Letter from Marge Kolb

Here is a letter to the New York State Board of Regents from Marge Kolb, a parent leader in Queens. It points out that while state law requires a public review process by members of the community before the applications of charter schools are approved, in NYC this occurring without sufficient notice and information being disclosed to parents.

At the September Community Education Council meeting in D24 (Queens) the prospective Principal and AP for La Cima, a proposed charter school, made a public presentation. I am a former member of that CEC and the current D24 designee to CPAC. I was at the La Cima presentation and I have the following comments:

• I believe there is a requirement under state law that prospective charter schools seek public opinion. If that was what was trying to be accomplished at the September CEC meeting, I must point out that there was not adequate notice given to the "public." The CEC agenda only listed an item under the District Superintendent's monthly report which said "presentation regarding charter schools by DOE officials." It did NOT say that it was a public hearing or request for public input regarding a new charter school proposed for Jackson Heights or Corona.

Consequently, affected parties from those neighborhoods were not put on notice. For this reason, I believe this charter school must be heard from again at a future CEC meeting. (In fact, I met some PTA members from a Corona school, PS 19, a week after the CEC meeting and they told me that their parent coordinator had told them it wasn't necessary for them to attend CEC meetings!)

• I object to this charter school being placed in any current or future DOE facility in D24. If the school organizers are able to find their own space, so be it, but inasmuch as D24 is one of the most overcrowded districts in NYC, especially in the Corona area, any use of public school space for a charter school - which can cap class size and overall enrollment and accept students from outside the school zone (and indeed, outside the district) would only serve to increase overcrowding in other area schools. The new school which will open in September 2008 in Corona is already going to be at- or over-capacity accepting students from the two nearby schools (PS 19 and PS 16).

• I didn't think the idea of the La Cima school was particularly unique. The speakers said it would be a dual-language school which celebrates Hispanic culture and seeks to involve parents. PS 19 in Corona already has a dual language program and I believe one of the DOE's core values is to involve parents. Furthermore, I defy anyone to identify a school in D24 which does not "celebrate diversity."

Finally, on a note about dual-language programs, I looked into the question of whether my zoned school, PS 229, could have a dual-language program and was told by the District Superintendent that Central places a cap on the number of such programs that any given district can have. Why would you deny such programs to public schools and then sponsor a Charter School just because it plans such a program?

Thank you for your consideration of the above.

Marge Kolb, Woodside, NY

For more on this issue, see our recent posting on charter schools.

Bloomberg Administration Intransigence on Contract for Excellence Undermining Support for Mayoral Control

While the mayor and chancellor were being lionized in Washington yesterday by the Broad Foundation and Bush Administration, back home some key stakeholders in public education were not so flattering. In this article by Elizabeth Green in the NY Sun, Queens Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette expressed his frustration over the Bloomberg Administration's failure to submit an acceptable plan to spend new state funds:

Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette, a Democrat of Queens who is the deputy speaker, said he is concerned that the city might not agree to revise its plan. "We're offering all that extra money, but the city refuses to use it as they're requested to do," he said. "They're like petulant children."

Mr. Lafayette said the resistance has convinced him that his support for mayoral control of the schools was a mistake. "The one nice thing we did about this turning the power over to the mayor is that it sunsets in '09," he said.

The article goes on to quote Regents Vice Chancellor Merryl Tisch who also made the misbehaving-children comparison.

Several members of the Board of Regents, the body that governs state education policy, said they have been assured that the city will add a five-year plan to reduce class size and revise its distribution of funds among schools.

"If you don't like the rules, you just don't pick up your marbles and walk away," the Regents vice chancellor, Merryl Tisch, said. "The mayor and the chancellor are such responsible leaders that they would never adhere to ‘I'm picking up my marbles and walking away,'" she added, referring to Mr. Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, Joel Klein.

Earlier coverage of the Contracts for Excellence controversy can be found here and here.

Still No Approval from State on NYC's Contract for Excellence and Class Size Reduction Plan

There is still no word from the State Education Department on DOE's Contract for Excellence, the plan that needs to be approved in order for our schools to receive additional state funding. Parent Karen Koenig sends this message to the State Education Commissioner, Richard Mills, and his bosses on the Board of Regents. Parents can email the commissioner at Richard.Mills@mail.nysed.gov


Dear Board of Regents and Commissioner Mills:

I am a NYC public school parent. As you may be aware, the need for smaller classes in our schools was the top priority of parents in the recent DOE parent survey. Yet DOE’s proposal under its “Contract for Excellence” is inadequate, especially with respect to class size, and will not lead to the smaller classes necessary to provide my child and other NYC children with their right to a quality education.

Please refrain from releasing any state funds to NYC until and unless the DOE submits a real five year class size reduction plan, showing how class sizes will be significantly reduced in all grades starting this year, aligned with a capital plan that will provide sufficient space in the long term.

I am tired of high school classes with an average of 30 students (and sometimes way more than that). I am tired of my daughter attending a high school that was built for 2,000 and now has 3,500 kids in it. I am tired of my child not receiving adequate instruction in math and science because there are so many in the class that not all questions can be fully explained and responded to. I am tired of my child starting classes at 7:30 in the morning because of overcrowding. I am tired of not being able to meet with all teachers during parent/teacher conferences because there are so many other parents trying to do the same. I am tired of the DOE NOT listening to or respecting what parents have to say about school over-population and the need for smaller class size.

Regards,

Karen Koenig
Recording Secretary
John Bowne HS
Flushing, Queens