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Acting Commissioner Cerf Applauds Work of Educators, Calls for More Comprehensive and Transparent Graduation Data
"...when New Jersey’s graduation rate data is reported under the new, more transparent and accurate methodology, it is likely that the reported graduation rate will experience a decline."
Njspotlight.com - Research Spotlight: New Jersey High School Graduation Profile...New Jersey still leads the nation in graduation rate, but the scores tell only part of the story
Njspotlight.com - School Voucher Bill Proves Political Opposites Can Attract...The Opportunity Scholarship Act puts Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic power broker on the same stage and on the same page
NY Times - Charter Schools Tied to Turkey Grow in Texas Charter magnate gets OK for N. Camden school
Philadelphia Inquirer - Pennsylvania charter school magnate, lawyer, and entrepreneur Vahan Gureghian is bringing his charter school vision to Camden.
Acting Commissioner Cerf Applauds Work of Educators, Calls for More Comprehensive and Transparent Graduation Data
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For Immediate Release: |
Contact: Alan Guenther, Director |
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Date: June 7, 2011 |
609-292-1126 |
Trenton, N.J. – Applauding the work of New Jersey’s educators and describing soon-to-come federally mandated changes to the state’s graduation rate methodology, acting Commissioner Chris Cerf today issued the following statement in response to Education Week’s Diplomas Count report. The report, which provides comparative graduation rate data across the 50 states, placed New Jersey at the top of nation with a graduation rate of 86.9 percent for the 2007-2008 school year.
“New Jersey’s graduation rate is a source of pride, indicating that we have excellent school programs and teachers who are doing a great job in helping our students graduate. However, it is important that we know if our students are truly college-ready by generating more comprehensive and transparent data. It’s the reason why New Jersey is currently improving the way it collects and reports graduation rate data to comply with federal requirements for uniform methodology among all states.
“Our most important goal must be to see that students who graduate from New Jersey’s high schools are college- and career-ready. Statistics show that’s not the case. In 2009-2010, 91 percent of first-time Bergen Community College students tested into remedial math or English. In fall 2009, 61.2% of full-time, first-year students at Union County College were enrolled in at least one remedial class. In fall 2007, 89.5% of Essex County College students tested into remedial math, 58.2% tested into remedial reading, and 82.9% tested into remedial writing. We’re very proud of our graduation rate – but other studies show that we still have much work to do.
“The state currently uses a system of calculating each district’s graduation rate that relies on their self-reported data. The shortcomings of that system can result in graduation rates that are not an accurate representation of what is actually occurring in some districts. New Jersey is moving to an improved system that will require schools to use student records and hard data to justify the reported rate, increasing both the accuracy and reliability of the graduation rates for each district.
"As a consequence, when New Jersey’s graduation rate data is reported under the new, more transparent and accurate methodology, it is likely that the reported graduation rate will experience a decline."
Njspotlight.com - Research Spotlight: New Jersey High School Graduation Profile
New Jersey still leads the nation in graduation rate, but the scores tell only part of the stor
By John Mooney, June 7 in Education|Post a Comment
What it is: The report is compiled each year by Education Week, a trade newspaper, as part of its "Diploma Counts" project. This year it shows that New Jersey continues to be the nation’s leader in graduation rate, at least by one measure. According to the report, nearly 87 percent of New Jersey students entering high school four years earlier graduated in 2008, the most recent available data for every state. The national average was 71.7 percent.
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What it means: The state-by-state data is a couple of years old, but the report comes out at a time when arguments are raging about the quality of New Jersey public schools, or at least some of them. Gov. Chris Christie has built much of his reform agenda around what he calls the failures of urban schools (in particular). Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf says too many graduates are not adequately prepared for college or the workplace.
Not all good news: While the state's overall graduation rate is high, the gaps between races and ethnic groups are deep. For instance, the graduation rate for white students was 90.9 percent; for black students, 72.6 percent; and for Hispanic students, 68 percent.
A stunning number: By the report's estimate, even New Jersey's high graduation rate means 78 students are leaving school for one reason or another every day. Nationwide, it's more than 6,400 "lost" students each day.
On the one hand: Cerf last night put out a statement to go along with the report. It started, "New Jersey’s graduation rate is a source of pride, indicating that we have excellent school programs and teachers who are doing a great job in helping our students graduate."
On the other: Cerf also said, "Our most important goal must be to see that students who graduate from New Jersey’s high schools are college- and career-ready. Statistics show that’s not the case. In 2009-2010, 91 percent of first-time Bergen Community College students tested into remedial math or English. In Fall 2009, 61.2 percent of full-time, first-year students at Union County College were enrolled in at least one remedial class.
Math matters: The Education Week report, as it has in the past, uses what it calls a Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI) to calculate the graduation rate. Through a complex formula detailed in the report, it seeks to track the students who enrolled as freshman through their graduation to determine actual graduation rates, similar to the methodology that will be required by the federal government of all states next year. New Jersey currently uses different measures in its own rates, all self-reported by districts. That data put New Jersey’s graduation rate last year at close to 95 percent.
That will change: The Christie administration has already announced changes to the reporting process that will take it out of district hands. In addition to the changes required by the federal government, officials estimate that the state’s graduation rate will likely fall under the new measurement.
Njspotlight.com - School Voucher Bill Proves Political Opposites Can Attract
The Opportunity Scholarship Act puts Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic power broker on the same stage and on the same page
, June 6 in Education|3 Comments
In a stunning display of strange bedfellows, Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic power broker George Norcross took to a Camden graduation stage on Friday to call for the immediate passage of the tuition tax credit bill that would provide up to $12,000 vouchers for low-income students in select districts to attend private schools.
The odd pairing gave fresh speculation to the future of the Opportunity Scholarship Act (OSA), the long-debated school voucher bill. OSA has picked up new political momentum in the waning days of the legislative session this month.
But for the measure to actually pass, a few uncertainties and long-running battles remain to be resolved.
Excellent Education for Everyone (E3), the group that has championed the bill for nearly a decade, has plans for what executive director Derrell Bradford called an “intensive” campaign in the lead-up to the legislature’s extended summer and fall election break.
The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) has already started its counter-offensive, including a campaign against Democratic ally-turned-adversary, state Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Union), the main sponsor of the bill.
Meanwhile, at the Camden graduation on Friday, speaker after speaker characterized Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver as the main obstacle blocking further movement on the bill. Graduates of the Camden Education Resource Network , a non-profit alternative school, were urged to call the Speakers office to press or her support.
The event was a virtual pep rally for the OSA, with yellow t-shirts emblazoned "Support NJOSA Now" handed out to attendees as they walked into the auditorium at Rutgers-Camden.
More Support Needed
Thus far the OSA has passed by two committees in the Senate and one in the Assembly but needs further support before it can come to vote in either house.
The next stop is likely before state Assemblyman Lou Greenwald (D-Camden) and the Assembly budget committee he chairs. Greenwald said Sunday that if scaled back to a small pilot program, maybe as small as three or four districts, the OSA could have the necessary support.
In an interview this weekend, Greenwald several times mentioned three districts in particular: Camden, Passaic and Asbury Park. He said he would be open to others that had undeniable and pervasive records of low achievement.
However it ends up, he said it is a topic front and center on people’s minds.
“I am hesitant to say 30 days, given we have been talking about this and worked on this for years, but it is a focus," Greenwald said.
The Camden Contingent
The Camden event was organized by Angel Cordero, the school’s leader and the leading voice in Camden for E3. Cordero was already close with Christie, who had attended a graduation two years before as a candidate and laid out much of his education reform agenda, including school vouchers.
But since then, Cordero had also made peace separately with Norcross, the insurance executive and South Jersey Democratic leader with whom he had long clashed in Camden city politics, including when Cordero ran for mayor in 2009.
"I had been fighting with him for many, many years as the political machine that he was," Cordero said. "It was war."
But he said that after the election, Cordero sat down with Norcross and realized their common interests.
"He said he was about two things: safer streets in Camden and fixing the public schools," Cordero said. "And he said he not only supported OSA, but he would make sure it passed."
So, after Norcross agreed to speak at the graduation, Cordero said Christie then approached him to attend again as well.
"I told him Norcross was the keynote speaker, and he said 'OK,'" Cordero said. "It was an amazing day, with [acting education commissioner] Chris Cerf there, too, that was icing on the cake."
Also on stage were all the leaders of E3, including founder Peter Denton and Bradford.
Bradford yesterday said the public meeting of arguably the state’s two most powerful political figures, one Republican, one Democratic, was an important, symbolic step that could make the difference in the long-debated bill.
"It was very important that both Christie and Norcross went on stage at the same time and made the call for OSA to pass in the next 30 days," Bradford said. "We can help put the pieces together, but leadership will be what makes this happen."
Fits and Starts
Those words have been spoken before, several times, and the OSA has seen more than its share of fits and starts. Over the last year, it has drawn it closer than ever to passage, but then it stalled over the details, with some supporters pushing for more students and districts to be included and others pressing for less. Even the choice of what districts are in and which are out has been rife with politics.
And there’s the NJEA, the state’s dominant teachers union, which is poised to pull out the stops against the measure. It already sent a message last month when it chose not to endorse Lesniak, the Union County senator, in his Democratic primary because of his sponsorship of OSA. And the union’s influence in the fall’s general elections remains a formidable consideration for any candidate voting for or against.
"OSA has been fast-tracked before, and the more people find out about it, it has been knocked down," said Steve Baker, an NJEA spokesman. "The more people learn about it, the more they don’t like it, so we’ll do what we have in the past and make sure people find out what the bill really is.”
Baker said no formal campaign has yet been planned for the next month, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be ready if the bill gains momentum anew. "It won’t take long to get it up and running," he said.
NY Times June 6 2011 Charter Schools Tied to Turkey Grow in Texas
TDM Contracting was only a month old when it won its first job, an $8.2 million contract to build the Harmony School of Innovation, a publicly financed charter school that opened last fall in San Antonio.
It was one of six big charter school contracts TDM and another upstart company have shared since January 2009, a total of $50 million in construction business. Other companies scrambling for work in a poor economy wondered: How had they qualified for such big jobs so fast?
The secret lay in the meteoric rise and financial clout of the Cosmos Foundation, a charter school operator founded a decade ago by a group of professors and businessmen from Turkey. Operating under the name Harmony Schools, Cosmos has moved quickly to become the largest charter school operator in Texas, with 33 schools receiving more than $100 million a year in taxpayer funds.
While educating schoolchildren across Texas, the group has also nurtured a close-knit network of businesses and organizations run by Turkish immigrants. The businesses include not just big contractors like TDM but also a growing assemblage of smaller vendors selling school lunches, uniforms, after-school programs, Web design, teacher training and even special education assessments.
Some of the schools’ operators and founders, and many of their suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish preacher of a moderate brand of Islam whose devotees have built a worldwide religious, social and nationalistic movement in his name. Gulen followers have been involved in starting similar schools around the country — there are about 120 in all, mostly in urban centers in 25 states, one of the largest collections of charter schools in America.
The growth of these “Turkish schools,” as they are often called, has come with a measure of backlash, not all of it untainted by xenophobia. Nationwide, the primary focus of complaints has been on hundreds of teachers and administrators imported from Turkey: in Ohio and Illinois, the federal Department of Labor is investigating union accusations that the schools have abused a special visa program in bringing in their expatriate employees.
But an examination by The New York Times of the Harmony Schools in Texas casts light on a different area: the way they spend public money. And it raises questions about whether, ultimately, the schools are using taxpayer dollars to benefit the Gulen movement — by giving business to Gulen followers, or through financial arrangements with local foundations that promote Gulen teachings and Turkish culture.
Harmony Schools officials say they scrupulously avoid teaching about religion, and they deny any official connection to the Gulen movement. The say their goal in starting charter schools — publicly financed schools that operate independently from public school districts — has been to foster educational achievement, especially in science and math, where American students so often falter.
“It’s basically a mission of our organization,” said Soner Tarim, the superintendent of the 33 Texas schools.
The schools, Dr. Tarim said, follow all competitive bidding rules, and do not play favorites in awarding contracts. In many cases, Turkish-owned companies have in fact been the low bidders.
Even so, records show that virtually all recent construction and renovation work has been done by Turkish-owned contractors. Several established local companies said they had lost out even after bidding several hundred thousand dollars lower.
“It kind of boils my blood a little bit, all the money that was spent, when I know it could have been done for less,” said Deborah Jones, an owner of daj Construction, one of four lower bidders who failed to win a recent contract for a school renovation in the Austin area.
Harmony’s history underscores the vast latitude that many charter school systems have been granted to spend public funds. While the degree of oversight varies widely from state to state, the rush to approve charter schools has meant that some barely monitor charter school operations.
In Washington, concern is growing. A number of charter schools across the country have been accused of a range of improprieties in recent years, from self-dealing on contracts to grade-changing schemes and inflating attendance records to increase financing.
Last year, the inspector general’s office in the federal Education Department cited these complaints in a memo alerting the agency of “our concern about vulnerabilities in the oversight of charter schools.”
The Texas Education Agency has a total of nine people overseeing more than 500 charter school campuses. “They don’t have the capacity at the state level to do the job,” said Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. Even so, the state’s education commissioner, Robert Scott, last year took the unusual step of granting Harmony permission to open new schools outside the normal approval process.
Officials at the education agency said staffing was sufficient to oversee charter schools. They would not discuss Harmony’s contracts, but a check of the agency’s past audits — largely desk reviews of financial statements submitted by the schools — did not find any alarms raised about Harmony contracting.
In April, however, the agency notified Harmony of an unreleased preliminary audit questioning more than $540,000 in inadequately documented expenses, the vast majority involving federal grant money. Neither the agency nor Harmony would disclose details of the findings.
Starting Out
The charter school movement did not begin in Texas, but the state embraced it with ideological fervor in the late 1990s as a pet project of the governor at the time, George W. Bush. The schools’ independence from local school boards and union contracts, the theory went, would free them to become seedbeds of educational achievement in a landscape of underperforming failure.
While Texas charter schools must meet core curriculum standards, they may emphasize some subjects over others, as Harmony does with math, science and technology. They do not have to hew to standard public school calendars or hours. They may — and some do — pay teachers less than the standard state-mandated salaries. (In exchange for this flexibility, the schools get less state money than regular schools, with various calculations showing an annual difference of between $1,000 and $2,000 per pupil.)
David Bradley, a member of the Texas Board of Education, served on the panel that reviewed the early charter proposals. “The only requirement was that you expressed an interest,” he said, adding, “The first time Harmony came forth, they had a great application, and they were great people.”
One of those people was Yetkin Yildirim, who had arrived from Turkey in 1996 to attend the University of Texas in Austin. He also worked as a volunteer tutor in local high schools. The idea for the Harmony schools was born, he said, when he and friends — including Dr. Tarim — saw how much less rigorous the American high schools were in teaching science and math.
“Then we realized that something can be done,” said Dr. Yildirim, now a University of Texas professor specializing in asphalt technology. They spent a year writing their proposal, and in 2000 the group opened its first school, in Houston.
The schools represented the expansion of a mission that had already created hundreds of schools — and a number of universities — in Turkey and around the world. According to social scientists who have studied them, these schools have been the primary vehicle for the aspirations of the Gulen movement, a loose network of several million followers of Mr. Gulen, who preaches the need to embrace modernity in a peace-loving, ecumenical version of Islam. At the center of his philosophy is the concept of “hizmet” — public service.
The movement is also influential in Turkish politics and controls substantial commercial holdings, including a bank, Asya; one of Turkey’s largest daily newspapers, Zaman; and an American cable television network, Ebru-TV, based in New Jersey.
Mr. Gulen, 70, considers his teachings a bulwark against Islamic extremism. Yet he and the movement that bears his name have been surrounded by controversy in Turkey. He came to this country in 1999 while under pressure from secular Turkish authorities who accused him of promoting an Islamic state. He was charged, though the case was thrown out. More recently, the arrests of Turkish journalists critical of the Gulen movement have led to accusations of retaliation by followers in the current government, which has a more religious leaning.
Mr. Gulen now lives in a Pennsylvania retreat owned by a foundation. In an interview there last year with The International Herald Tribune, he said he had not benefited financially from the movement. His only possessions, he said, were a blanket, some bed sheets and a few prized books.
Still, at least for the schools, America has been a land of opportunity. The creation story has been enacted across the country — Turkish immigrants, often scientists or professors, founding charter schools run by boards of mostly Turkish-born men. Today the United States has more Gulen-inspired schools than any country but Turkey, according to a presentation by Joshua Hendrick, a professor at Loyola University Maryland whose 2009 dissertation explored the movement.
In Texas, Harmony now educates more than 16,000 children. Eight schools have opened in the last year alone.
Dr. Yildirim said that while he had been influenced by Mr. Gulen — he writes and speaks about his teachings — his primary motivation in starting the schools was to give back to the community.
“My life changed here. I’m so thankful for that,” he said. “I believe some people born in this country are taking some things for granted.”
At first, Harmony Schools used a mix of local American and Turkish immigrant contractors. But as it has grown, especially in the rush of new schools, Harmony has increasingly relied on its Turkish network.
In response to questions, Harmony provided a list showing that local American contractors had been awarded 13 construction and renovation jobs over the years. But a review of contracts since January 2009 — 35 contracts and $82 million worth of work — found that all but 3 jobs totaling about $1.5 million went to Turkish-owned businesses.
TDM, builder of the new San Antonio school, is one of several companies that stand out — for the size of their contracts, their seemingly overnight success or both. One of TDM’s owners, records and interviews show, is Kemal Oksuz, president of the Turquoise Council for Americans and Eurasians, an umbrella group over several foundations established by Gulen followers. Since TDM was formed in November 2009, its work has involved only Harmony Schools and a job at the Turquoise Council headquarters, according to a company accountant.
Another TDM principal is a civil engineer, Osman Ozguc.
“Please don’t think that I’m a new guy, inexperienced in this area,” Mr. Ozguc said when asked about the San Antonio project, explaining that he had 26 years of construction experience, mostly on large projects in Turkey. “I provided all the requirements asked in the bid. And when we got the job, we delivered in a very short time period, and with a very economical result.” He did acknowledge that change orders had added about $1 million to the cost.
Mr. Ozguc said he formed TDM after a split from Solidarity, another Houston company that has done major ground-up construction jobs for Harmony in the past two years. Records show that Solidarity is run by Levent Ulusal, a civil engineer with a prior connection to Harmony: he was a school business manager until March 2009, when he joined Solidarity.
Since Texas charter schools do not get separate public money for facilities, Harmony’s construction program is financed by bonds that will be paid off over time using regular public payments to the schools, bond documents show. The group has issued more than $200 million in bonds since 2007, making it the state’s largest charter school bond issuer.
With public money in play, Texas law requires charter schools to award contracts to the bidder that offers the “best value.” Lowest is not necessarily best, with the schools given leeway. But the criteria for choosing the best bidder must be clear.
Last year, local contractors questioned the fairness of bidding on two Harmony renovation jobs in the Austin area. On one job, in the suburb of Pflugerville, the low bidder, at $1.17 million, was a well-known Texas company, Harvey-Cleary. The job went to Atlas Texas Construction and Trading, even though its bid was several hundred thousand dollars higher. Atlas, with offices in Texas and Turkey, shows up on a list of Gulen-affiliated companies in a 2006 cable from the American Consul General in Istanbul, Deborah K. Jones, that was released by WikiLeaks.
A vice president of Harvey-Cleary said Harmony never explained its decision.
The same day Atlas won the Pflugerville contract, it got a job at another Austin-area Harmony school, even though four bidders came in lower.
Harmony Schools asked two architects to analyze the disputed Austin jobs. Both architects had previously worked for Harmony Schools; both concluded that the jobs should have been awarded to Atlas.
Atlas has an eclectic business portfolio: for several years, it has also supplied breakfast and lunch at many Harmony schools. The contract is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Two other bidders submitted formal catering proposals. One was Preferred Meal Systems, a national company that undercut Atlas’s price by 78 cents a day, a substantial margin given that the two meals are often supplied for about $4.
Jim Drumm, the regional vice president for Preferred Meal, said that when the company learned that its bid was lower than the winner’s, “We attempted, without success, to recontact Harmony Schools to learn why our proposal was rejected.”
Dr. Tarim said Preferred Meal was turned down because its food is heated in special company-installed ovens. With no kitchens in the schools, he said, there is no room for ovens.
Inside the Schools
Recently Dr. Tarim led a tour of one of Harmony’s big renovation jobs — the new home of the Harmony Science Academy, the chain’s marquee Houston high school. The academy, one of 11 Harmony schools in Houston, was recently rated among the city’s top 10 high schools by Children at Risk, an advocacy group. The campus used to be an ITT business center, and even now, the low-slung buildings communicate office park more than high school. There is also a new building, constructed by TDM, housing a gym and the Cosmos Foundation’s headquarters.
This being Texas, the academy is conspicuous for the absence of a football field. But in many ways, the Harmony Schools seem much like standard public schools, albeit of the strict, testing-oriented sort in vogue today.
Students wear uniforms, and anything that detracts from uniform appearance — even hoop earrings or highlighted hair — is frowned upon. One teacher described a disciplinary system in which students receive points for behavioral infractions as minor as tilting back in a chair.
The students, as at most Gulen-inspired schools, represent a racial and ethnic cross-section of the community. Many are children of immigrants drawn by the upwardly mobile allure of careers in technology and health care. Beginning in fourth grade, all students must complete science projects.
In a physics class, students demonstrated a homemade hovercraft — a simple plywood disc fitted with a chair. Rigged to a leaf blower, the contraption levitated inches above the ground, even with someone in the chair.
The project illustrates principles of physics, but the larger point, said the teacher, Levent Sakar, is developing an excitement about science.
“Once a student does a project like that, they will never forget it,” he said.
Still, the bottom line is measurable achievement. And so the Harmony schools place a heavy emphasis on preparing for state assessment tests, with four practice tests annually, according to schedules on school Web sites. Each practice test occupies the better part of a week, and students who fail get mandatory tutoring, some of it on Saturdays.
Judging school quality, of course, is an imprecise business. But by the measure that Harmony and most charter schools have embraced — scores on the state tests — the Harmony schools seem to be succeeding. Last year, 16 of the schools were deemed “exemplary,” the highest rating, while seven were rated “recognized,” and the other two “academically acceptable.” The eight new schools have not yet been rated.
The Harmony schools advertise themselves as college preparatory schools with every graduate accepted to college, and a bulletin board in the hallway at the science academy displays pictures of this year’s senior class, along with their college acceptances. But Harmony’s “100 percent” acceptance rate actually represents only a small census, since most of the schools do not have senior classes and many students transfer earlier on. Statewide, 154 students graduated this year, the largest class yet.
And while the schools’ combined math and English SAT scores — an average of 1026 — were 37 points above the statewide average last year, they fell short of the 1100 on those two parts that the state regards as predicting “college readiness.”
Dr. Tarim, who came from Turkey and studied aquatic ecology at Texas A&M, objects to common references to the schools as Turkish. Still, even if they are American charter schools first and foremost, the schools do have an undeniable Turkish flavor.
Many of the furnishings are imported from Turkey — at a San Antonio school, the entryway features a turquoise arch, and the lobby ceiling is decorated with images of the sun and a star and crescent moon. Harmony advertises that its teachers “are recruited from around the world,” but most of its foreign teachers are Turkish men, and all but a handful of the 33 principals are men from Turkey. In addition to the standard foreign languages, the schools offer instruction in Turkish. They encourage students and teachers, even parents, to join subsidized trips to Turkey.
What they avoid, as publicly financed schools, is religious instruction. And amid jabs from critics — educators, disaffected parents and bloggers — about their Turkishness and ties to a Muslim group, the schools take great pains to separate themselves from the Gulen movement. They are not “Gulen schools,” they insist, and have no affiliation with any movement.
“I’m not a follower of anybody,” Dr. Tarim said in an interview. Records show, however, that when applying to the State of Texas to form Harmony schools, he was a consultant to Virginia International University in Fairfax, one of the private universities that lawyers for Mr. Gulen say were originally inspired by his teachings.
At a forum on the schools last December in Houston, Dr. Hendrick, the Maryland professor, argued that such denials had only deepened the ambiguity and helped fuel suspicion. “Why do leaders deny affiliation when affiliation is clear?” he asked.
Ultimately, some scholars say, the schools are about more than just teaching schoolchildren.
Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish-born assistant professor at the University of Utah’s Middle East Center, says he does not oppose the movement, though he is critical of what he calls its male domination and lack of transparency. In his view, the schools are the foundation for the movement’s attempts to grow in the United States.
“The main purpose right now is to show the positive side of Islam and to make Americans sympathize with Islam,” Dr. Yavuz said.
Teachers and Visas
Around the country, the most persistent controversy involving the schools — and the one most covered in the news — centers on the hundreds of Turkish teachers and administrators working on special visas.
The schools say they bring in foreign teachers because of a shortage of Americans qualified to teach math and science. Of the 1,500 employees at the Texas Harmony schools this year, Dr. Tarim said, 292 were on the special “H-1B” visas, meant for highly skilled foreign workers who fill a need unmet by the American workforce.
But some teachers and their unions, as well as immigration experts, have questioned how earnestly the schools worked to recruit American workers. They say loopholes have made it easy to bring in workers with relatively ordinary skills who substitute for American workers.
“I think they have a preference for these H-1B workers,” said Dr. Ronil Hira, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has studied the visa program. “It may be a preference for a variety of reasons — lower wages or a network where they’ve got family or friends and connections and this is a stepping stone for them to get a green card.”
The American jobs, often offered to educators at Gulen schools around the world or graduates of Gulen universities, also provide a way for the movement to expand its ranks in this country, Dr. Yavuz said.
American consular employees reviewing visas have questioned the credentials of some teachers as they sought to enter the country. “Most applicants had no prior teaching experience, and the schools were listed as related to” Mr. Gulen, a consular employee wrote in a 2009 cable. It did not say which schools had hired the teachers. Some with dubious credentials were denied visas.
In February, a Chicago charter school union affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers complained to the federal Department of Labor, alleging that the Chicago Math and Science Academy and Concept Schools, a group that operates 25 schools in the Midwest, had abused the visa system by “routinely assigning these teachers duties or class load that seemingly do not take into account the laws governing H1-B visa holders.”
The Labor Department had already been investigating at least one Concept school. The investigation appeared to have been triggered by a complaint in July 2008 by Mustafa Emanet, a network systems administrator and teacher at a middle school in Cleveland. By law, imported teachers must be paid “prevailing wage.” Mr. Emanet alleged that while his visa reflected his promised salary, $44,000, he was actually paid $28,000 his first year.
A Labor Department spokesman said the investigation was ongoing.
Expanding the Network
The heart of the movement’s Texas operations is the Turquoise Center, a Houston complex that houses several foundations established by Gulen followers. Their activities show how the movement has integrated itself into life in Texas, often by dint of the foundations’ connections to the Harmony Schools.
The Turquoise Center opened in 2008, financed partly through donations from Gulen followers, who on average tithe 10 percent of their income, experts say. The money, Dr. Hendrick wrote in his dissertation, goes “to pay for a student’s scholarship, to provide start-up capital for a new school, to send a group of influential Americans on a two-week trip to Turkey or to sponsor an academic conference devoted to Fethullah Gulen.”
Dozens of Texans — from state lawmakers to congressional staff members to university professors — have taken trips to Turkey partly financed by the foundations.
One group, the Raindrop Foundation, helped pay for State Senator Leticia Van de Putte’s travel to Istanbul last year, according to a recent campaign report. In January, she co-sponsored a Senate resolution commending Mr. Gulen for “his ongoing and inspirational contributions to promoting global peace and understanding.”
In an interview, Ms. Van de Putte described the trip as a working visit.
The Raindrop Foundation says its mission is to promote Turkish culture in America. It sponsors cooking classes, traditional Turkish dinners and performances of the Whirling Dervishes, a dance group associated with Sufi Muslim tradition. It also organizes an annual Turkish Language Olympiad where 6,000 students, many from Harmony schools, compete in Turkish language, poetry, dance and singing contests.
The 2011 singing winner was a Hispanic girl from a Harmony school in northwest Houston.
The Raindrop Foundation’s president, Mehmet Okumus, is a former Harmony school principal, and some of the foundation’s income — $770,000 a year, he said — comes through arrangements with the schools. Two Raindrop Foundation units, Zenith Learning and Merit Learning, operate after-school programs, test preparation programs and summer camps at the schools. Parents pay Zenith up to $200 a week to leave their children after school. Of that, Harmony collects 25 cents per child per day, according to Dr. Tarim.
Another group at the Turquoise Center, the Institute of Interfaith Dialog, sponsors lectures on interfaith relations and finances the Gulen Institute at the University of Houston, which sponsors graduate scholarships in social work and pays for graduate students to study in Turkey.
The Institute of Interfaith Dialog — founded by Mr. Gulen himself, according to court documents — does not appear to have business dealings with Harmony. But its president, Yuksel Alp Aslandogan, does. Indeed, in 2002, he purchased the former Austin church that became Harmony’s second school.
Dr. Aslandogan, a former computer science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, paid $1.375 million for the building, then leased it to Harmony. Last year, he said in an e-mail, Harmony bought it for $1.7 million. He described his original purchase as “an investment opportunity toward a good cause” but declined to say how much he made off the deal, emphasizing that he had to pay taxes and make repairs.
Dr. Aslandogan has other connections to Harmony. He is chief executive of the Texas Gulf Foundation, a nonprofit that provides an array of services to the schools.
The foundation, in fact, grew out of Harmony: its owners and operators originally worked for the schools, according to a statement from Harmony, but left to form Texas Gulf, which they believed would “provide Harmony and other Texas schools with quality services at lower costs.” Until recently, Texas Gulf had offices at a Harmony campus.
Since 2007, Harmony says, it has paid Texas Gulf $525,000 for services that include an online professional development program for teachers and administrators, an assessment tool for students and special education assessments.
Dr. Aslandogan reflected on his role in Texas’ Turkish community in a PBS program on the Gulen movement broadcast in January. He said he donates “beyond the expected level in my income” and added: “I believe that all these actions — charitable donations, volunteerism — are pleasing to God. That’s why I am doing all this.”
Philadelphia Inquirer - Charter magnate gets OK for N. Camden school
By Claudia Vargas
Inquirer Staff Writer
Pennsylvania charter school magnate, lawyer, and entrepreneur Vahan Gureghian is bringing his charter school vision to Camden.
The Camden City Zoning Board of Adjustment granted a use variance to Gureghian and his partners Monday night to build a school in North Camden.
The school would be built near the Northgate I and II high-rises and the Ben Franklin Bridge, between Linden and Pearl Streets and Eighth and Ninth Streets. Zoned residential under the Gateway North Redevelopment Plan developed in 2005, the site has been vacant for several years.
Gureghian owns the Chester Community Charter School, on which he reportedly intends to model the future Camden Community Charter School.
Jake Der Hagopian, president of Gureghian's Chester School Management Inc., outlined plans for the school Monday at the zoning board meeting.
Camden Community Charter School was approved by the state in January and given a year to find a location.
Neighborhood groups had previously advocated for a supermarket at the North Camden site preferred by Gureghian, but one never took shape.
From a planning perspective, the property does not work for a supermarket in part because Linden is one-way and retail needs two-way traffic movement, said Dave Foster, chief executive of the now-merged Greater Camden Partnership and Cooper's Ferry Development Association. Cooper's Ferry helped Gureghian determine the location for his proposed Camden charter school.
It would consist of two 2,500-square-foot buildings and a gymnasium, and is scheduled to open in September 2012. Starting with kindergarten through fifth grade, it would eventually run through eighth grade and serve 950 students.
Four residents spoke at Monday's hearing, mostly in favor of the charter school, though concerns were raised about the traffic it might bring to the neighborhood.
In emphasizing the school's potential positive impacts, Der Hagopian noted that the land would be privately owned and thus subject to taxation. Camden Community would be a public charter school open to all Camden City students.
If there were space available, students from surrounding communities would be considered for enrollment, Der Hagopian said. But the intent is "to provide an anchor and help solidify this neighborhood," said professional planner Barbara Woolley-Dillon, who is working with Gureghian's group.
"We're shovel-ready . . . pending approval," she said.
The proposal will next go to the city planning board.
Contact staff writer Claudia Vargas at 856-779-3917 or cvargas@phillynews.com.
