Texas Opens Probe Into Gulen Connection to Charter Schools - WSJ

Texas Opens Probe Into Gulen Connection to Charter Schools - WSJ:

Texas Opens Probe Into Gulen Connection to Charter Schools

State Education Agency was prompted by a series of complaints filed on behalf of the Turkish government

DALLAS—The state of Texas has launched an investigation into alleged fiscal improprieties at the state’s largest chain of charter schools.

Behind the probe: charges by the president of Turkey that the schools are part of a $500 million a year front to fund the revolutionary aspirations of a Turkish cleric he claims backed a recent failed coup.

The probe by the Texas Education Agency was prompted by a series of complaints filed by a Washington-based law firm hired late last year by the Turkish government to lead its case against Fethullah Gulen, a political enemy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr. Gulen, who lives in rural Pennsylvania, is on trial in absentia in Turkey on charges related to overthrowing the government. Thousands of Mr. Gulen’s followers in Turkey have been arrested or detained by Mr. Erdogan following the failed coup earlier this month.

Last week, a spokesman for Mr. Gulen denied any connection to the coup and said his goal is nonviolent reform in Turkey.

In a statement Friday, an attorney for Harmony Public Schools—the charter school chain being investigated—denied any wrongdoing.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Robert Schulman. “Registered foreign agents are using the TEA’s complaint mechanisms to malign the largest charter school system in the state of Texas.”

Mr. Erdogan’s lawyers believe there are around 160 charter schools with ties to Mr. Gulen. The attorneys have filed complaints against charter school chains in several states, alleging they funnel money—through tithes by Turkish employees—back to the cleric.

The complaint filed in Texas alleges that Harmony hired Turkish contractors in violation of competitive bidding requirements and have misused bond money guaranteed by the state of Texas to operate charter schools in Arkansas. The complaint also alleges Mr. Gulen is connected to Harmony schools through a vast network of Turkish men who enter the U.S. on H-1B visas and then move between the different charter-school networks, the companies set up to serve them and other organizations with direct affiliations with Mr. Gulen.

In a letter dated Thursday, the Texas Education Agency asked the superintendent of Harmony Public Schools for documents connected to their contracts for the last two years as well as an explanation of whether they spent any bond money in Arkansas.

A spokesman for Harmony schools called the claims preposterous and said the chain “has no affiliation of any kind with any religious or social organizations or movements.”

Harmony educated 31,000 students in Texas across 48 schools and has been in business for almost 20 years, Mr. Schulman said.Texas Opens Probe Into Gulen Connection to Charter Schools - WSJ:

TEA to launch probe of Harmony charter schools - Houston Chronicle - http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/TEA-launches-probe-of-Harmony-charter-schools-8624564.php 

Corrections & Amplifications: 
Fethullah Gulen is the name of a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania. An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled his first name. Mr. Gulen is on trial in Turkey on charges related to overthrowing the government. An earlier version of the article incorrectly stated he had been found guilty.

AUSTIN – The Texas Education Agency wants to dig into records of Harmony Public Schools following complaints the state's largest charter school operator has funneled contracts to Turkish-owned vendors who have ties to the organization's leadership.

The state agency also wants to explore whether the 31,000-student charter school system has misused federal and state funds after Harmony allegedly guaranteed a $1.9 million bond debt of a Turkish charter school network in Arkansas.

Officials with the Houston-based charter operator contend the allegations are baseless and are part of a political move by the Turkish government to discredit the school system.

"I've never seen anything like this" said attorney Robert Schulman, who represents Harmony Public Schools. "Registered foreign agents are using the TEA's complaint mechanisms to malign the largest charter school system in the state of Texas and the largest and one of the most successful STEM schools in the nation."

The TEA probe into the inner workings of Harmony stems from a complaint filed by agents of the Republic of Turkey who argue the charter school network has ties to Fethullah Gülen, an expatriate Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania who the Turkish government believes masterminded the recent failed coup to take over that country. Turkish leaders have asked the United States to turn over Gulen.

Explore Harmony charter schools in Texas

A group hired by the Republic of Turkey to probe operations of Texas' largest charter school network is urging the state to investigate its claims of employment discrimination, self-dealing and misuse of public funds at Harmony Public Schools.Below, see where Harmony schools are located in Texas.

The 38-page complaint was filed in May by Amsterdam & Partners LLP, a law firm hired by the Republic of Turkey at a cost of at least $50,000 a month to investigate the school system.

The complaint, which was amended this month to include accusations about how the school system issues bonds, accused Harmony of an illegal hiring scheme, which the state is not investigating at this time. The complaint also accuses the school of supporting Gülen and using state and federal dollars to support what is referred to as the "Gulen movement" seeking social change in Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeatedly has accused Gülen of trying to overthrow the Turkish government.

TEA officials asked the school system for copies of documents pertaining to contracts, bonds, purchasing agreements, vendors and a list of employees involved in purchasing from July of 2014 to July of 2016. Harmony has until Aug. 11 to respond. The department will use the information to decide whether to launch a special accreditation investigation of the network, a spokesperson said.
"We've received a complaint and so we're asking them for more information to see if there's any substance to the complaint," spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson said.

State Rep. Dan Flynn, R-Cantor, steered attention to the embattled charter school earlier this month, asking the attorney general to begin its own investigation into Harmony's hiring practices and use of taxpayer funds. The attorney general's office on Friday declined to comment on whether it would investigate the school.

The charter network, which claims a 98 percent graduation rate, has attempted to bat away criticism from Amsterdam & Partners since the firm first filed a 90-part open records request of Harmony last year. Harmony officials say they welcome the opportunity to "repudiate the preposterous claims" and clear its name.

"Harmony Public Schools looks forward to laying the charges to rest and returning to its successful mission of educating young Texans," Dr. Soner Tarim, CEO of Harmony Public Schools, said in a Friday statement.

"For almost two decades, Texas families have entrusted their children with us. So, let me reiterate: Harmony Public Schools has no affiliation of any kind with any religious or social organizations or movements."TEA to launch probe of Harmony charter schools - Houston Chronicle - http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/TEA-launches-probe-of-Harmony-charter-schools-8624564.php 

Big Education Ape: KILLING ED: 120 American Charter Schools and One Secretive Turkish Cleric -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/01/killing-ed-120-american-charter-schools.html

Big Education Ape: TBF: Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas - The New York Times - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/tbf-charter-schools-tied-to-turkeys.html

Big Education Ape: Fethullah Gulen: Moderniser or Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing? « CSS Blog Network - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/fethullah-gulen-moderniser-or-wolf-in.html

Big Education Ape: Coup-attempting Gülenist group operates near 140 charter schools in US - Daily Sabah - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/coup-attempting-gulenist-group-operates.html

Big Education Ape: The Gulen Movement’s Collision Course With The Turkish State -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-gulen-movements-collision-course.html

Big Education Ape: US Commander Campbell: The man behind the failed coup in Turkey -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/us-commander-campbell-man-behind-failed.html

Big Education Ape: Turkey’s Failed Coup Puts Spotlight on a Rural Pennsylvanian Town - WSJ - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/turkeys-failed-coup-puts-spotlight-on.html

Big Education Ape: TBFURMAN: Who's Running These Schools? Part 3 -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/tbfurman-whos-running-these-schools_24.html

Big Education Ape: Turkish rivalry comes to San Jose amid allegations about Magnolia charter schools - Mercury News - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/turkish-rivalry-comes-to-san-jose-amid.html

Big Education Ape: Apple Education Services Posts Its Privacy Policy… in Latin | deutsch29 -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/apple-education-services-posts-its.html

Big Education Ape: What Would it Take for US to Extradite Muslim Cleric to Turkey? -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/what-would-it-take-for-us-to-extradite.html

Big Education Ape: Yo Campbell Brown Cat got your tongue? I Guess There is NO Talking Turkey w/ YOU! -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/yo-campbell-brown-cat-got-your-tongue-i.html

Big Education Ape: TBFURMAN: Who's Running These Schools? -http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/tbfurman-whos-running-these-schools.html

Big Education Ape: Video shows Gülen urging followers to secretly infiltrate Turkish state institutions - Daily Sabah - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/07/video-shows-gulen-urging-followers-to.html

Stand for Children Has $725,100 Ready to Unseat Charter-unfriendly Judge | deutsch29

Stand for Children Has $725,100 Ready to Unseat Charter-unfriendly Judge | deutsch29:

Stand for Children Has $725,100 Ready to Unseat Charter-unfriendly Judge

On September 4, 2015, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the state’s law regarding charter schools was unconstitutional because it depended upon funding meant for the state’s common schools.

The Court upheld its opinion in November 2015.

The author of the ruling is WA Supreme Court Justice Barbara Madsen, who happens to be up for reelection in 2016.

Of course, those who support charter schools would like to see her gone.

Her opponent, Greg Zempel, is an apparent supporter of charter schools– and it is Greg Zempel who has the backing of Stand for Children WA PAC as an independent expenditure committee led by Stand’s national finance director, Dan Soltesz.

According to Ballotpedia, Zempel is running because the WA Supreme Court is “unpredictable”:

Greg Zempel is the prosecutor in Kittitas County, Washington, and a 2016candidate for the Washington State Supreme Court. He is running against incumbent Chief Justice Barbara Madsen.^[1]

Zempel stated that he is running because the state supreme court is “unpredictable.”^[2] He said, “[The court is] highly politicized and they are not deferential to other branches of the government or citizens.”^[2] Zempel said that he had decided to challenge Chief Justice Madsen rather than a justice who had been on the court for less time because the chief justice is “more responsible” for the tone of the court.^[2]

Another contender for Madsen’s seat, John Scannell, has no funding. A primary is Stand for Children Has $725,100 Ready to Unseat Charter-unfriendly Judge | deutsch29:

You Have Until Monday To Submit Public Comment On Damaging Corporate Education Dictator John King – Exceptional Delaware

You Have Until Monday To Submit Public Comment On Damaging Regulations Put Out By Corporate Education Dictator John King – Exceptional Delaware:

You Have Until Monday To Submit Public Comment On Damaging Regulations Put Out By Corporate Education Dictator John King

 You have until Monday, August 1st to submit public comment on the proposed regulations and rule-making put out by U.S. Secretary of Education John King on May 29th.  After that, no more public comment will be accepted.  You need to go to the Federal Register website, which can be found here.  Read through the regulations.  It is in-depth and monstrous.  But the future of the children of America is at stake here.  If you have been a big fan of the high-stakes testing anti-parental rights shame and label schools, teachers, and students era of education, then sit at home and watch the future of America crumble before your very eyes.  If you want to prevent John King from furthering the bad policies and agendas, first laid out by No Child Left Behind and then magnified a hundred fold under Race To The Top, then please leave public comment.

This was my public comment:

I do not agree with most of these proposed regulations. It is a further attempt to exert federal control over state decisions. Furthermore, many of those in power at the state level have eroded local control to the point of absurdity. It is a parent’s fundamental and constitutional right to opt their child out of the state assessment. Any regulation proposing to punish schools for a parent’s decision is illegal. The ESEA regulations state that all schools must make sure children take the assessment, not that all students MUST participate in the state assessment. That regulation has been perverted over the years to take away parental rights. No state should have to follow regulations formed to serve testing companies and their profits more than the rights of parents, students, teachers, and schools. Education has become You Have Until Monday To Submit Public Comment On Damaging Regulations Put Out By Corporate Education Dictator John King – Exceptional Delaware:

Are Charter Schools Neither Civil or Right? Assessing the Intersection of Voting Rights and Educational Equity – Cloaking Inequity

Are Charter Schools Neither Civil or Right? Assessing the Intersection of Voting Rights and Educational Equity – Cloaking Inequity:
Are Charter Schools Neither Civil or Right? Assessing the Intersection of Voting Rights and Educational Equity
data supports that some measure of political accountability through the electoral process may provide enhanced accountability

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Legislature – to the objection of many in the delegation that represented New Orleans – took control of nearly all of New Orleans’ public schools. The legislature targeted New Orleans – a predominately Black jurisdiction – for public school takeover and vested power and control of the lion’s share of the city’s public schools in the Recovery School District (RSD). The RSD was to be a statewide special school district with governance vested in non-elected officials. On these facts alone, one should question the argument that school choice in New Orleans was designed to enhance civil rights. Even assuming that a state takeover of New Orleans’ public schools would result in a world-class education for public school students in New Orleans, it is concerning that the state takeover of public schools would also replace almost all of the power that the popularly elected and predominately Black school board in New Orleans held with a new, predominately White and non-politically accountable power structure. No politician in this country would ever demand that White, middle-class parents exchange political power for the HOPE of better schools.

Recently, the Hastings Race & Poverty Law Journal published a piece that I wrote addressing the intersection of the school choice movement and civil rights. The piece is titled, “Killing Two Achievements with One Stone: The Intersectional Impacts of Shelby County on the Rights to Vote and Access High Performing Schools.” The paper recounts the inseparable linkage between the right to vote and equitable access to quality educational opportunities for racial and ethnic minorities. The paper sought to evaluate the role of the Supreme Court’s most recent watershed Voting Rights Act case on educational equity. Using the states of Florida and Louisiana as case studies, the paper uncovers a troubling intersection between state takeover districts that remove electoral power from racial and ethnic minorities and the decreased likelihood that governing bodies (state takeover versus popularly elected local districts) will close charter schools. At least in the case of New Orleans, the results of this research indicate that the school choice movement may jeopardize movements towards civil rights and appears to run counter to Are Charter Schools Neither Civil or Right? Assessing the Intersection of Voting Rights and Educational Equity – Cloaking Inequity:

Big Education Ape: New Orleans tries to mix charter schools with democracy: Is this the district of the future? - The Washington Post - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/05/new-orleans-tries-to-mix-charter.html

TBF: Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas - The New York Times

Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas - The New York Times:

TBF: Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas 
By STEPHANIE SAUL JUNE 6, 2011

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 Charter Schools Tied to Turkey’s Gulen Movement Grow in Texas - The New York Times:

Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen Nabs George Bush PR Queen - http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/04/05/turkish-imam-fethullah-gulen-nabs-george-bush-pr-queen/ 

 

Six More Officials Are Charged in the Flint Water Crisis - The Atlantic

Six More Officials Are Charged in the Flint Water Crisis - The Atlantic:

More Charges in the Flint Water Crisis

Six officials were charged Friday in connection with the scandal in the city in Michigan.

 Six more Michigan state employees were charged Friday in connection with the Flint water crisis.

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A.G. Bill Schuette @SchuetteOnDuty

Announcing our third legal action of the Flint Water Investigation right now.

8:40 AM - 29 Jul 2016

 
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State Attorney General Schuette announced the six additional charges at a news conference. Nancy Peeler, Corinne Miller, and Robert Scott, all officials with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, will be charged with misconduct in office, conspiracy, and willful neglect of duty.

Liane Shekter-Smith, Adam Rosenthal, and Patrick Cook, who were with the Department of Environmental Quality, will also be charged. Shekter-Smith will be charged with misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty; Cook with misconduct in office, conspiracy, and willful neglect of duty; and Rosenthal with misconduct in office, tampering with evidence, conspiracy, and willful neglect of duty.

“Each of these individuals attempted to bury or cover up, to downplay or to hide information that contradicted their own narrative, their story … these individuals concealed the truth and they were criminally wrong to do so,” Shuette saSix More Officials Are Charged in the Flint Water Crisis - The Atlantic:

CURMUDGUCATION: Free Marketing Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: Free Marketing Schools:

Free Marketing Schools

Free market fans envision a story something like this:

Finding themselves in a world where the power of the free market is unleashed, charters, private, and public schools all become transparent, competing with each other to be able to publish the finest student outcomes. Empowered consumers/parents study up on the student outcomes published by each school so that they can weigh the merits of each school and make the best selection for their children.

If this fairy tale ever came to pass, education would be the first sector of the free market to ever function in this fashion. Go turn on your television right now and wait for an advertisement that is a factual, data-based account of the effectiveness of the product. Wait for an advertisement that does not try to imbue the product with a personality or identity, even if products corn flakes and cleaning fluids do not naturally display any personality traits. Okay-- you shouldn't actually wait for any of that, because you will get old and die before you actually succeed.

Let me repeat what is perhaps my most-repeated observation on this blog.

The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.

Now we have an academic study from the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Perceptions of Prestige: A Comparative Analysis of School Online Media Marketing," by Sarah Butler Jessen (Bowdoin College) and Catherine DiMartino (Hofstra University) is a working paper that looks at how marketing plays out in a couple of education markets.

The paper is about setting up a framework for comparing branding and marketing practices, comparing the practices of different types of schools in "choice settings." 

Jessen and DiMartino draw on lots of literature studying the use and practices of branding and CURMUDGUCATION: Free Marketing Schools:

A Teacher’s Case For Hillary Clinton | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.

A Teacher’s Case For Hillary Clinton | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

A Teacher’s Case For Hillary Clinton

I suppose I ought to front load this:  In the Democratic Party Primary in New York State, I voted for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.  My reasons for the doing so were various, but they focused heavily upon how well Senator Sanders articulated what I consider to be a genuine crisis in our time: the out of control growth in income inequality and the consequent damage to opportunity and justice that comes with it.  Senator Sanders’ ability to make a genuinely competitive campaign outside of the system of large donor politics was also inspiring, and it pointed to another vital issue – how our campaign finance system grants large donors more access and more voice to the point ofcommanding far more attention than the voters.

In contrast, former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton, while acknowledging such issues, has spent the last quarter century at or near the very highest offices of political power in the country.  While I did not doubt that she recognizes these as problems, I did question her ability to give full critique to them while running a campaign that is fully enmeshed in big donor politics, especially when given the choice of Senator Sanders’ avoidance of typical large donors.  Further, as an advocate for public education and full-throated critic of the current reform environment, Secretary Clinton’s long standing connections to education reform was, and remains, a real difficulty for me.  Secretary Clinton has been supported by Eli Broad, whose education “philanthropy” has been consistently aimed at aggressively favoring charter schools over fully public schools.  Secretary Clinton’s PAC received a massive donation from Alice Walton, and the Clinton Foundation has been a financial beneficiary of the Walton Family Foundation whose education efforts are geared towards privatization and hostility to teachers’ unions.  “Democrats” for Education Reform, anorganization founded largely by Whitney Tilson in a effort to convince Democrats to support anti-union and pro-privatization policies that are  more typical of Republicans, greeted Secretary Clinton’s campaign with enthusiasm.  Secretary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair is John Podesta who is President Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff and the founder of the Center for American Progress (CAP).  CAP, while often progressive and innovative on a range of issue, is reliably on the wrong side of education reform. If there is a bad idea being A Teacher’s Case For Hillary Clinton | Daniel Katz, Ph.D.:

Schools Matter: THE MIND TRUST SPIN-OFF IN CINCY AND BEYOND

Schools Matter: THE MIND TRUST SPIN-OFF IN CINCY AND BEYOND:

THE MIND TRUST SPIN-OFF IN CINCY AND BEYOND

In my book Hoosier School Heist, I expose the Mind Trust, formed by once Democratic mayor of Indianapolis Bart Peterson and his charter school director David Harris.  I have also written on the Mind Trust spin-offformerly known as CEE-Trust (and its ties to Bill Gates, George Bush, and Joe Klein), which now goes by the name Education Cities and is operating in at least 24 cities. 

Before doing a recent NAACP Indy panel on ALEC, the Mind Trust, and school privatization a few days ago, I decided to peek into what Education Cities has been up to. Here are just a few things I found. 

Besides having the Mind Trust’s David Harris and Earl Martin Phalen and corporate school grandfather Howard Fuller (BAEO/Edison connected) as board members, the Mind Trust spin-off Education Cities is being funded by well-known school privatization billionaire organizations like the Walton Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, and the foundation started by Eli Broad, the Broad Foundation. 

The Broad Foundation is noteworthy because of recent events. 

Started by Obama supporter Eli Broad, the Broad Foundation placed its members in Arne Duncan’s Dept. of Schools Matter: THE MIND TRUST SPIN-OFF IN CINCY AND BEYOND:

Hoosier School Heist TV is Doug Martin's channel featuring videos of his book tour across Indiana speaking on the corporate takeover of public education. Order Hoosier School Heist at http://hoosierschoolheist.com/.

Follow Hoosier School Heist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HoosierSchoolHeist

Tweet with Doug Martin at: https://twitter.com/DougMartinED

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Moral 'defibrillators' battle for the soul of the party.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Moral 'defibrillators' battle for the soul of the party.:

Moral 'defibrillators' battle for the soul of the party.

"In this season, when some want to harden and stop the heart of our democracy, we are being called like our foremothers and fathers to be the moral defibrillators of our time." --Rev. William Barber

The two most important speeches at the DNC last night were barely covered in this morning's reportage. They came from Rev. William Barber and Gen. John Allen and represented for me, at least, the poles in the struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party and the nation.

Rev. Barber is the head of the N.A.A.C.P and leader of the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina. MMM is a multi-racial movement which has mobilized tens of thousands in this important swing state, to fight form civil rights, public education and social justice. It could hold the key to a Clinton victory in November.

Barber took to the moral high ground, bringing down the house with his call for shocking the system.

“When we fight to reinstate the power of the Voting Rights Act, and we break the interposition and nullification of the current Congress, we in the South especially Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Moral 'defibrillators' battle for the soul of the party.: