it seems that Gulen’s inflitration into Turkey’s education, politics, media, and military are under investigation especially after a tell all book by a Turkish Police Chief. Next will be an investigation in America on the mismanagement of funds surrounding the 140 US Charter Schools that the Gulen Movement manages.
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100901/FOREIGN/708319894/1002
The National on the Investigation of Gulen in Turkey

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm
USA Today a Look at Gulen and the American Charter schools

this is shocking!

H1-B carrying immigrants getting jobs, while native-born Teachers are getting pink slips?

Where is our superintendent?

(The BayTech operators tried to open a charter school on my side of the bay in San Francisco a few years ago, but even the charter advocates on our Board of Ed voted it down — the Oakland school is segregated and low-performing, and SFUSD hardly needs to welcome a segregated and low-performing school. The Gulen movement was not on anyone’s radar at the time.)

I am not pretending to be informed about the Gulen movement itself, but no publicly funded school should be run as part of a network promoting ANY religious-political movement.

Sharon’s latest post on the Gulen-run schools:

http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/06/us-fethullahci-schools-sometimes.html

Mainstream news coverage of a Gulen-run school in Utah — article in the Salt Lake Tribune:

http://www.sltrib.com/education/ci_12855515

And the families vote with their feet. If they want to join the gang, they can send their kids too. Synnanon had a school I believe (rattlesnakes as the school mascot?), the Black Panther Gang had a school (gun toting Panther as it’s mascot?), I don’t know what the Bakery Gang was waiting on – if they kept sex slaves you’d think they’d start a school too.

Everybody gets what they want. Is this a great country or what?

This Charter Movement is required because we the people decided to destroy the public schools that functioned well in the first half of the 20th century, with the Brown vs Board case. We forced integration with out-the-window standards to make it work they way somebody thought it should. The result is our “quality” urban schools. If Brown had gone differently, allowing for public schools to be segregated by objective standards other than skin color, this wouldn’t be happening at all.

Brave New World!

http://www.youtube.com/user/GulenMovement

And watch this Gülen Movement channel video to see Oakland Bay Area Technology Charter School kids who attend Gülen movement charter schools as they compete against other kids in the network at the Turkish Language Olympics organized by the Pacifica Institute based in California. The clip is from March 2009. These types of events are held for the network’s charter schools across the country. Just google “Turkish Olympiad.”

http://www.youtube.com/user/GulenMovement#p/a/u/0/4QMV_BZwcYc

Charter schools: your unmonitored public tax dollars at work.

These schools have strong connections to the Gülen Movement, the religious, social, and political movement generated by followers of the teachings of Turkish scholar and Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen. The word is getting out about this network and you will be hearing more about it the news.

Here’s an article about one of the network’s schools in Arizona. Ozkur Yildiz, the superintendent interviewed here, used to be Bay Tech’s principal.
http://azstarnet.com/news/science/environment/article_dec199db-be3f-5519-be3d-f6ad970db1f8.html

Excerpt:

While Yildiz denied Sonoran Science Academy is affiliated with the movement, one of Sonoran Science Academy’s founders, Nasuhi Yurt, left Tucson in 2005 for Ebru TV, a Gülen movement network based in New Jersey.

Ali Unver, president of Paragon Education Corp. in Chandler – a Sonoran Science sister school – told a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist “about the noted Turkish preacher and scholar M. Fethullah Gülen,” during a dinner there in November.

When a Sonoran Science student competed in a Turkish competition in California, he recited a poem by Gülen called “Hic,” a piece recommended by his teacher. A video of his performance, and those of other Sonoran Science students, can be viewed on the “Gülen Movement channel” on YouTube, and were recounted in Gülen’s newspapers in Turkey.

And Gülen himself, a powerful political force in Turkey, claimed responsibility for U.S. schools in a 2007 lawsuit against the Homeland Security Department as part of his effort to gain permanent residence.

His argument in that lawsuit was that he was a person of exceptional ability in the field of education. Among Gülen’s accomplishments, his attorneys argued, were that he “has overseen the establishment of a conglomeration of schools throughout the world, in Europe, Central Asia, and the United States.”

Bay Tech, Mr. Yildiz, Principal, the Teachers, the students, the HARD WORKING Parents Club, TOGETHER DO A FANTASTIC JOB!

FUND Bay Tech Charter School. They have made a difference in the childrens life.

Angela Y. King