Working The Refs In Charterworld

Before I continue with tonight's installment of Guleny goodness, let me refer to something over at Schooling and the Ownership Society that completely escaped my attention:

And records show the state charter commission’s Springfield lobbyist is Liz Brown-Reeves  —  a former Madigan aide who accompanied lawmakers on their trip to Turkey in 2012. The Commission also received big funding from Walton and other private, pro-charter foundations.

Mike is talking about the lobbyist for the very same state charter commission that is possibly nearing extinction, relinquishing its chartering authority back to the Illinois State Board of Education. It's not clear to me that the Concept school people will be losing too much ground there; they've got friends in high places. In a recent post, I reported on an exchange I had with ISBE Chair Gery Chico's office:

Incidentally, I asked ISBE Chairman Chico if he's been on any of the Turkey junkets sponsored by the local Gulenist-outreach foundation, Niagara; it seemed likely to me that he had been, given that his wife had received one of their big awards. This was the response from his aide, and I kid you not: 

"Gery has not taken any of these trips since he's been the chair."

These guys have been working the refs for longer than anyone local has been paying attention, so maybe someone with journalist credentials should follow-up on that nicely parsed response for clarification.

Here's another interesting tidbit from the Gulen archipelago. Evidently the EEOC just ruled on a case at one of the Gulen-linked school in Texas, which was apparently engaged in a sort of blatant gender discrimination. Here's the gist of the thing:

The local Gulen-linked school here in Rogers Park had a related kind of situation years ago, so this shouldn't surprise anyone. Nor should it surprise anyone that the people running the schools are archly anti-labor, nor that this attitude is rarely mentioned by our "progressive" alderman.  As for the gender discrimination, well, that's a conservative trait all over the world; it's not just a Gulenist thing.  Although, to be fair, there are several Pearls of Wisdom in which the imam teaches his followers about women.

This poor teacher in Texas might have simply been a victim of the women's rights movement. Here's a Pearl from p. 64.

I could go on with the various and sundry Pearls but there's something much more interesting in the actual Justice Department case against Harmony (the Gulen-linked charter school).  It's this:

If this is true, then the salaries earned by H-1B visa teachers/staff working at these schools everywhere should be posted and available, and someone should FOIA them. Who will do that?

Turns out that five minutes of Googling provides a little clarity; here's the relevant passage from the federal code related to the visa program. The things you learn when you start poking around!

So that list should be there in the office if any of the people at the Concept schools want to see it, and from what I'm hearing, those people exist. But word to the wise: the documents probably aren't there. You'll have to make some waves to get them.

H/t CASILIPS

Breaking Action on Charter Commission Bill

The Charter Commission Bill

HB3754, which essentially gets rid of chartering power of the Illinois State Charter Commission, has passed the Senate. Here's the vote.  You can tell from some of the votes that the bill is watered down, and it is.

It's going back to the House for concurrence, and barring any trouble there, will land on Quinn's desk. I believe there are some bills stacking up on that particular desk. (This is a bill that passed the House previously, then went to the Senate, got watered down, passed the Senate, and is now heading back to the House.)

The charter bill in its new form does abolish the charter commission. Charter operators can still appeal to ISBE, though. And ISBE will be setting up their own Charter appeals board. It isn't clear to me who will be on that board, but my initial understanding is that it will be ISBE members.

It's a bit of improvement because it brings the process closer to voters, and removes it from the hands of charter enthusiasts accountable to nobody. I'll look at the full text more closely later.

I would call this development a tiny, tiny step in the right direction. Mary Shesgreen earlier alerted me to the recent article in the Paper I Normally Won't Link To about Waukegan suing the charter commission, which re-authorized a Waukegan charter. The net effect of the charter operation there is to take the state money that is targeted for at-risk kids and funnel it off to the charter, which serves primarily kids who aren't "at risk." It's an interesting article.

The charter commission is a serious liability and needs to go. If we're going to be diverting dollars meant for kids-at-risk to kids not-at-risk, then that should be done by a group a little bit closer to actual voters and a little less gung-ho to implement an agenda. By the way, this diversion of funds is exactly, precisely the way the system is designed to work; it's a feature, not a bug.

Other districts could and probably should start similar suits, and the most recent commission-authorized charters (Gulen-linked) should be put under review by ISBE. I wonder if ISBE actually has the power to overrule the charter commission..

More later. There are other developments.

Incidentally, I asked ISBE Chairman Chico if he's been on any of the Turkey junkets sponsored by the local Gulenist-outreach foundation, Niagara; it seemed likely to me that he had been, given that his wife had received one of their big awards. This was the response from his aide, and I kid you not:

"Gery has not taken any of these trips since he's been the chair."

Talk about a parsing! Anyway, don't know about you, but I read the response as a yes, but not lately.  So it seems likely that there's been some soft-lobbying there on behalf of a group inextricably linked to charter schools in the state.  Theoretically I could be wrong about the yes, but I doubt it. He could have provided a much cleaner answer if the answer were no. Chico's law firm also appears to represent CMSA, and his wife was on their "Board" for a time.  It's Illinois; nothing is going to be clean.

More later.

H/t to Mary Shesgreen and the Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice group, and all the other partners in the coalition, and also to the indomitable Linda Chapa LaVia.

The Sad Situation At Gale

CTU has released a statement on the predicament Gale Academy finds itself in. Read the whole, sad thing. As a result of per-pupil finding, and the whole choice-for-the-sake-of-choice mania, the kids who need the most will soon be getting even less.

A forward-thinking people would send the most help to the kids who need the most help, but the kids at Gale are going to lose their librarian, technology teacher, and two classroom teachers.

Just as there are two Americas, there are two Rogers Parks. The neighborhood Gale sit in has lately been described as "the killing fields" by a resident whose son was randomly gunned down last year.

I suspect that if you attended a CPS meeting about Gale, you'd be presented with a Powerpoint with graphs about the reading and math scores, rather than the data that gives you an idea of the world those kids are growing up in.

Here's a ten minute research project on mobility, homelessness, and truancy in the neighborhood. Test scores are always rolled out as some kind of indicator of the special magic dance or lack of magic dance that a particular set of teachers exhibited, but anyone who's actually worked in classrooms can tell you that test scores give you a better idea of who you've got, rather than what you did. My own experience tells me that test scores begin to have a marginal relationship to "what you did" when you as a teacher have autonomy, and the things you do stem from your own ideas of what's right for the kids in front of you.

The other way to baffle the relationship between the impact of poverty and test scores is to drill relentlessly in the kinds of activities that appear on tests, which is a behavior that countries like China are trying to get away from because they've been there, done that.

It's hard to know who you've got until you go into schools and homes, but this is a pretty good indicator of where you're likely to find the distressed families living in our community.

I don't delve into IEP or ELL or low-income because I think these data often hide more than they reveal. The recent study at UIC certainly showed us this phenomenon in special education enrollments; I think it holds true for income data and language data as well.

Anyway, if we were looking at a nation-building situation here, we'd be talking about sending more troops to Sullivan and Gale. We wouldn't be taking away a librarian, a technology teacher, and two classroom teachers. Of course, nation building isn't the way we think about things here.

There's much more to be said, obviously. Currently, the policy solution is to disperse the children who need need the most help so that they get lost in the data, and so that someone can claim a miracle for raising scores back at the ranch. With different kids.

Two More Resolutions For Gulen

Ok, the long-promised Gulen update. [For those of you who don't know, the Gulen Movement is a Turkish transnational social/religious/political movement whose leader lives in Pennsylvania, and whose followers run some 150 publicly funded American charter schools: an operation in full harmony and accord with the long-range goals of the Movement. It's all very obfuscated.]

First, the Turquoise Language Festival, in Rosemont. The sponsors have posted this highlight reel; it's lovely. It's quite long. (They've finally learned how to turn off the embedding feature of Youtube videos, as well. Kudos.)  The contestants are almost entirely students at the Gulen-linked charter schools and private religious schools throughout the region, although the school names are not mentioned. We have a pretty good working list here of which groups are from which schools.

(Normally, I'd post the video here, but with embedding turned off, I'm limited to a screenshot.

Yes, that's Elaine Nekritz.

I have written extensively about the nature of these events, and their connection to the religious aspect of the Gulen Movement, so refer to that if you like.  In short, this event, in my analysis, represents the closest, most obvious and visible-from-the-surface connection between the charter schools and the Gulen Movement, a point I make not in alarm, but in the cold review of facts, at length.  There are many other connections; it's just that you have to dig harder to establish them.  Nothing is new in this year's version of the folk arts festival, except the following items:

1. The Turkish Consul is not at the event, obviously. The Turkish Prime minister has basically initiated an extradition process for the Movement's leader, Fethullah Gulen (his former ally), so it seems highly unlikely that the Turkish government is going to send the Turkish Consul of Chicago to support this event, which is one of the crown jewel's of the Gulen Movement's public relations efforts. The Consuls of Venezuela and Pakistan were there, oddly.  I have reached out to the Turkish Consul in Chicago; I don't expect a response, but much more on that later. I'll be talking to the people at the Pakistani and Venezuelan consulates shortly. I've basically tried to ask the questions that I would expect journalists to ask.

2. Several Illinois luminaries were there, as I have previously noted.

     A) Elaine Nekritz, who speaks at about the 7:30 mark. Nekritz was a 2008 guest of the Niagara Foundation and the now defunct but reborn & renamed Chicago Turkish American Chamber of Commerce, so she's really quite invested in the Gulen Movement's version of Turkish-American relations. She tells a silly story and tries to tie it in to what she perceives is the theme of the event.

    B) Michelle Mussman is there, and she also addresses the crowd. She reads aloud the text of HR0954, which is a new praise-be-to-the-(Gulenist)-Turkish American Society Resolution sponsored by Jack Franks, who evidently went to Turkey with the Gulenist groups in both 2011 and 2012 and who can be counted on for repayment. Representative Mussman herself has not been to Turkey, she has graciously informed me. It's weird that they've somehow reeled her in for the purpose of reading Jack Franks' resolution.  Where's Jack?

        The other weird thing is that they stripped all reference to Gulen out of the resolution; too much heat, in my guess.  Here's the text.

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3		Representatives wish to recognize the Second Annual Turquoise
4		Art and Language Contest, organized by the Turkish American
5		Society, to be held at the Rosemont Theater on April 12, 2014;
6		and
7		WHEREAS, The Turquoise Art and Language Contest is held
8		annually to promote intercultural understanding, friendship,
9		and dialogue; and
10		WHEREAS, The contestants will demonstrate diverse talents
11		such as folk dancing, singing, and poetry recitation, in a
12		multitude of languages including English, Spanish, and
13		Turkish; and
14		WHEREAS, The Turkish American Society began operating in
15		2005 in the city of Mount Prospect to facilitate and encourage
16		cross-cultural experiences and interfaith cooperation; and
17		WHEREAS, The Turkish American Society is involved in
18		generous philanthropic ventures and projects that benefit the
19		people of the State of Illinois, such as: addressing the social
20		and cultural needs of the Turkish-American community living in
21		the Chicago area, creating a welcoming environment for new

HR0954 - 2 - LRB098 20715 MST 57579 r
1		immigrants and helping them adapt to life in the United States,
2		providing communities with educational services, introducing
3		Turkish culture to the Chicago area, uniting the
4		Turkish-American community, and establishing dialogue between
5		diverse communities with the goal of leading to global peace;
6		and
7		WHEREAS, The Turkish American Society efforts to forge a
8		stronger bond amongst all Illinoisans and spread the wonders of
9		Turkish culture are worthy of the greatest respect; therefore,
10		be it
11		RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
12		NINETY-EIGHTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
13		we extend our best wishes to the participants of the Turkish
14		American Society's Second Annual Turquoise Art and Language
15		Contest and thank the Turkish American Society for their
16		wonderful work; and be it further
17		RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
18		presented to the Turkish American Society as a symbol of our
19		esteem and respect.

You really have to be a detective to figure out that the people organizing and probably writing these resolutions and handing them off to junketed lawmakers are all the same.

Sorry about the formatting; I'm typing quickly. This resolution is much less obvious than Susana Mendoza's now infamous paeon to Fethullah Gulen in 2011. Strategic ambiguity. It's really a habit they can't shake loose from--- every little thing needs a resolution in a state capitol or the US Capitol. You can shake up the names for the American audience, keep people from seeing the connections, but none of that matters for the real audience.

3. Which brings us to the letter of support written, evidently from the heavily recruited U.S. Representative Robin Kelly, who evidently entered a similarly worded resolution of praise into the United States Congressional Record prior to the April 12 event in Rosemont. I'm not sure who this outreach is aimed at; there's clearly an audience for it back home. And by home I mean Turkey.  The event is a talent show for Turkish folk arts; it needs a Congressional resolution? Evidently Tammy Duckworth sent a letter as well, but I haven't seen it.

4. Other people present include, as I've posted before, include Alderman Mary O'Connor, Dupage County Sheriff John Zaruba, Theresa Mah (from Gov. Quinn's staff), and a bunch of people from Elmhurst College, which appears to be completely in the bag. All of the public-sector people on this list are receiving polite inquiries from us, about whether they've junketed in Turkey with any of the Gulenist groups. I think it's fine if they have; it should just be part of the record because we're talking about a group that has business before the state: a growing network of charter schools.

5. There is some ambiguity about exactly where the Turquoise winners will go, and when. With the internecine war inside Turkey, and with state facilities being cut off, the Gulenists appear to be limiting the normally two-week extravaganza to just three days, as described in this video.

However, the Twitter account for the event's organizers is still showing the original two-week span, at least as of tonight.

Who knows. I would keep my kid home. The prime minister has recently announced that he's going to "boil" and/or "molecularlize" the Gulen Movement, whatever that means. There's been a huge falling out between two factions of a repressive political alliance. It won't end well.

I keep coming back to this beautifully written piece in the NYT Magazine. When I see the history of this thing in Turkey, and I measure the arc it's on here in the States, I have to keep digging. Like I say, the secrecy about what is actually going on--- that doesn't sit well with me. If we're going to connect 150+ charter schools to a secretive religious/nationalist group from overseas, that should be happening in sunlight.

Next up: the Turkey to Texas pipeline in teacher certification.

New to the topic? Please see some of my previous posts.

I Am New To Twitter
Religion on the March in Charter World
Gulenist Soft-Lobbying In Illinois: Add Four More Names
Extradition Request Coming
Meet Your New Board of Education
Gulen On The March In Wisconsin
More Thoughts on Religion (and Politics) In The Gulen-Linked Charter Schools
Taking a Good, Long Look at the Concept Charter Schools
Chicago Charter Schools and the Turkish Elections
Religion and the Gulen Schools
The Gulen Money Train

We Fund Turkish Turmoil With Our Schools

The Grooming of Illinois Policymakers: Toni Berrios

Today's Gulen Charter School News

Gulen 101: Session One, With Sharon Higgins.
The Tribune And The Gulen Movement
When Does This Gulen Mess In Illinois Become A Scandal?
Eyes Wide Shut In Illinois
About That BBC Gulen Interview
Think About This For A Moment
The Tribune Is So Full Of It
About That Unauthorized Invitation
How Does It All Start?
The Movement, As Seen By Our Own Foreign Service
Fellowship Joins With The Movement
The Grooming Of Illinois Policymakers: Susana Mendoza
What Is Going On In These Schools?
The Phone Call That Won't Be Happening Any Time Soon
What This Gulen Mess Is Really All About

I Am New To Twitter

So much Gulen information, so little time. I'm working on a summary of all-things-Gulen, but there's so much, and what with the day job, and all.. I'll work on it.

Anyway, CASILIPS found a humorous series of posts from the Turkish CEO from the Gulen-linked Harmony schools in Texas.

Optical character recognition? Who knows. The whole organization is so sketchy, so DL. I don't know what workshop the guy was at, but good lord. Was there ever anything truer than this?

It's all so timely; the stuff I have about Texas is really unbelievable.

New to the topic? Please see some of my previous posts.

Religion on the March in Charter World
Gulenist Soft-Lobbying In Illinois: Add Four More Names
Extradition Request Coming
Meet Your New Board of Education
Gulen On The March In Wisconsin
More Thoughts on Religion (and Politics) In The Gulen-Linked Charter Schools
Taking a Good, Long Look at the Concept Charter Schools
Chicago Charter Schools and the Turkish Elections
Religion and the Gulen Schools
The Gulen Money Train

We Fund Turkish Turmoil With Our Schools

The Grooming of Illinois Policymakers: Toni Berrios

Today's Gulen Charter School News

Gulen 101: Session One, With Sharon Higgins.
The Tribune And The Gulen Movement
When Does This Gulen Mess In Illinois Become A Scandal?
Eyes Wide Shut In Illinois
About That BBC Gulen Interview
Think About This For A Moment
The Tribune Is So Full Of It
About That Unauthorized Invitation
How Does It All Start?
The Movement, As Seen By Our Own Foreign Service
Fellowship Joins With The Movement
The Grooming Of Illinois Policymakers: Susana Mendoza
What Is Going On In These Schools?
The Phone Call That Won't Be Happening Any Time Soon
What This Gulen Mess Is Really All About

Disenfranchised People Stay Home

Looks like a valiant effort today in Rogers Park to hold a community forum, but it was lightly attended.  Here'e Kyle Hillman's sad tweet:

I recognize the backs of four of the heads in that picture. Great people, all of them. As you have probably surmised, I myself didn't attend, even though one of our great founders and activists was one of the organizers, and we've all worked with the other organizers.  I heard there was going to be a Powerpoint, and well, you know how sunny it was outside today. I just couldn't bring myself to go inside. Maybe I can get the Powerpoint with a voiceover and post it here.

I'm glad that Alderman Moore attempted to do something, and he's reached out to some very good people, but let's face it: the whole governance of the schools is so out of whack that there really isn't any reason for anyone to attend public forums until there's systemic change. In governance. There's no democratic access to ed policy whatsoever in this city. Is the alderman involved? Does City Council have some oversight role? At whom do you even direct your anger?

It would have been nice to have a public forum on the subject of UNO Rogers Park. But that ship has sailed, hasn't it?

Where I work, in Skokie, there isn't an ounce of doubt about who's in charge of the schools: including the curricular issues, the staffing, the buildings, the future plans.  If you wanted to, you could actually run against these people in an election. Here in the city, it's much harder to know. And as for running against someone, well... you know.

There's a common refrain that goes something like this: even if we had an elected school board, nobody would even bother to vote.  Look, here's Mike Flannery saying the very same thing:

(And yes, this entire post is based on Kyle Hillman's Twitter stream. It's like a fount of free content.) Mike Flannery is wrong, again. At some point, the people repeating the conventional wisdom are actually just weaving a narrative on someone's behalf, and that's what Mike Flannery is doing.  A school board election would bring out the city, particularly in these times. You can't look at apathy created by disenfranchisement and suggest that continued disenfranchisement is the solution. The solution is to let people have an actual voice in matters, and then to write election laws that honor fair participation, and limit the influence of money.

There is not a chance in hell that any of the current Board members would prevail in an election.

Anyway, nice try to all for organizing today's forum. I'm sure that momentum will build because of the quality of people leading the charge. But we really need to clear up some basic issues in this city: like, who's in charge of the schools? If we had an alderman leading that charge, you'd see some crowds up here, but we don't have that.

Things could always change, I guess.

An Important New Study On Special Ed Enrollment In Chicago Charters

Hot off the presses at UIC, a tremendously important study of the special education enrollment patterns in Chicago charter schools and neighborhood schools by Federico Waitoller, Josh Radinsky, Agata Trzaska, and Daniel M. Maggin, of the Collaborative For Equity and Justice in Education.

Read the whole thing.

People like me (there's a concept...) are always frustrated by the public data because it seems to hide more than it reveals. We can look up statistic after statistic, but in too many cases, the data is junk. IEP  enrollment data is like this; the only numbers available are the aggregate numbers of kids with IEPS. Talk about a near-to-useless number!

All IEPs are not the same. In fact, they're wildly different, and they require vastly different resources to implement.  That's what this research is about. We know that schools' test scores are impacted mostly by SES, students requiring special education, and English Language Learners (we have excellent local research); this new research is very, very helpful in fleshing out what is happening in special education enrollment patterns.

In the honored tradition of blogging, I'm going to clip a few of the summary statements here, just to encourage you to read the real data.

  I think this conclusion is nice to see, finally, in print, based on research. I live across from Sullivan HS, and I can tell you that some of the kids that Sullivan serves are not really included this "choice for the sake of choice" phenomenon; the charter schools don't want these kids, and that the "choice" phenomenon itself reduces the resources available for meeting these kids' needs. As well as everyone else's needs, when you think about it.

This observation, I hadn't even thought of. I work in a school where the extraordinarily impacted kids get to spend time with their typically developing peers. It's good for everyone.

There's no doubt in my mind about this phenomenon. I blame the poor quality of the data, in part.  The charter operators know that the data available to the public measures the presence of aggregate numbers of IEPs. So why wouldn't they go after the less intensive ones?

Again, read the whole thing. I need to read it again. And probably a third time. It's one of the benefits of being older; you can re-read endlessly without feeling like you're missing out on something fun going on somewhere. 

Two observations: First, during Byron Sigcho's series on the UNO schools,  we had real concerns about whether or not these kids with IEPs were actually being served. It's one thing to accept kids with IEPs, it's another to provide the services called for in those IEPs. Who watches that? It may be time to review the whole situation. Today's report doesn't deal with the question.

And this. This IEP enrollment study is critical and eye-opening. But is there a similar body of research in SES? The only data publicly available is the almost useless designation "low income," a term that doesn't come anywhere near what we need in a country with rampant poverty. We undoubtedly have all kinds of poverty; in fact, I'm pretty sure I can map it block-by-block in Rogers Park just from walking around.  Who are the experts in this field and why haven't I met them? In short, we need a smarter set of metrics for poverty beyond "low income" because it's more complicated than that.

I'm posting the whole study here if you want to flip through it. Give it a moment to load. If you want to download it, find it here, at the Collaborative.