Look What’s Happening in Charter Schools

Excerpts from Phyllis Schlafly Report April 11, 2012

Charter schools were presented as a way to have more parental control of public school education. Charter schools are financed by local taxpayers plus federal grants. Charter schools are able to hire and fire teachers, administrators and staff to avoid control by bureaucrats and the teachers’ unions. There are some good charter schools, but loose controls have allowed a very different kind of school to emerge.

A path has been opened for foreigners to run schools at taxpayers’ expense, without much news coverage. The New York Times did publish an article, about the many charter schools run by a secretive and powerful sect from Turkey called the Gulen Movement. Headed by a Turkish preacher named Fethullah Gulen who had already founded a network of schools in 100 other countries and with the first U.S. Charter School in 1999. The Gulen Movement now operates the largest charter school network in the United States with at least 135 schools teaching more than 45,000 students in at least 26 states financed by millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars a year. Hundreds of Turkish teachers and administrators have been admitted to the U.S., often using H-1B visas after claiming that qualified Americans cannot be found.

According to a guest post in the Washington Post, Gulen’s U.S. schools are openly discussed in the Turkish press. The goal of Gulen’s schools is to “teach tens of thousands of people the Turkish language, introduce them to our culture and win them over,” and so the schools regularly take students to Turkey for “cultural immersion.”

In Texas, 36 Turkish charter schools, called the ‘Harmony Network’, have received over $100 million in government funds. These schools now have 290 (mostly Turkish) employees on H-1B visas. In Grove Heights, Minnesota a teacher named Amanda Getz reported about what goes on in a K-8th grade charter school sponsored by ‘Islamic Relief.’ She says there is no clear division between the subjects during school and the study of the Qu’ran after school. She says the homework assignments for after-school religious instruction are written on the board right alongside assignments for math and social studies. She was informed that on Fridays, the Muslim holy day, there would be a school assembly in the gym after lunch and she was to take her students to the bathroom, four at a time for “ritual washing,” and afterwards “teachers led the kids into the gym where a man dressed in white with a white cap” led the students in Muslim prayers.

This school has only 300 students with a waiting list of 1500. The school shares its building with a mosque and with the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The religious instruction is technically not part of the school day, but the school buses don’t leave until after Islamic Studies are over.

Note: This is what is happening right under our noses and nothing is being done to stop it! Christian Studies would never be permitted in American schools, but the taxpayers are paying for what ultimately could change America into an Islamic nation! Pass this info on to your state legislators, members of the U.S. House and Senate, and urge a stop to foreign-controlled Charter Schools.

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