The Gulen Movement in Azerbaijan & a quid pro quo?

It requires an ongoing effort to even minimally understand the Gulen movement, the secretive and controversial religious group which operates the largest charter school network in the United States. Details about this group's structure, recruitment and control of members, were recently presented by Fuad Aliyev in “The Gulen Movement in Azerbaijan” (12/27/2012). His article appeared in Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, a publication of the Hudson Institute’s Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. Aliyev is a Fulbright Scholar at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Arne Duncan issues a public statement about the Gulen movement's charter schools! Not.

I fully expect that my comment left at Town Hall: 140 Characters at a Time, a Twitter town hall with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, will not be published, and will be quite surprised if it is. In either case, I've decided to make it into a blog post here.

Sharon says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

November 17, 2011 at 5:22 pm

I would like Secretary Duncan to issue a public statement explaining his views on the 131 charter schools being operated by the Gulen movement. Each year, since 1999, members of this extremely controversial, cult-like religious group out of Turkey have opened several new charter schools. The enrollment of these schools currently exceeds 35,000 students.

Why does the U.S. Department of Education continuously permit these schools to conceal their religious affiliation from parents, school board members, and authorizing agencies?

Arne Duncan has to go

Thousands came to DC from all across the country on behalf of our nation’s public school system. Arne Duncan has to go.

Tourists sitting atop double-decker buses hollered with thumbs up as we walked from Metro stations to the event. Arne Duncan has to go.

The near record-breaking heat was close to overwhelming, even dangerous for some, but still they came, and still they marched. Arne Duncan has to go.

Tons of drivers honked horns to show their support. Arne Duncan has to go.

Never has our public school system been so betrayed by its very own leader. Arne Duncan has to go.

People are sick of his doubletalk, his bribes and manipulation. Arne Duncan has to go.

Power to the People. Bless them with much strength and the numbers to rise up against these sick, misguided policies. Arne Duncan has to go.

Expect next year’s event to be bigger and louder and angrier. More and more people are catching on. Arne Duncan has to go.

Save Our Schools: The March to the White House on July 30, 2011.

The rebellion against Chile’s privatized education: Estimates of up to 60,000 people on the streets in Chile protesting to demand an end to privatized education. The system has placed generations of students deep in debt.*

*Read Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” (first edition published Sept. 2007) to learn how what happened in Chile is well underway here. The book’s introduction explains the privatizers' grab of New Orleans’ public schools. Things don't bode well. Arne Duncan has to go.

WikiLeaks and Gulen charter schools

Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer took the lead on exposing the Gulen movement’s involvement in US charter schools by publishing a second article by Martha Woodall and Claudio Gatti, “WikiLeaks files detail U.S. unease over Turks and charter schools.”

Classified documents recently released by WikiLeaks recount U.S. officials' growing concern over large numbers of Turkish men seeking visas to work at American charter schools founded by followers of Fethullah Gulen, a powerful Turkish Muslim political figure who lives in the Poconos.

"Gulen supporters account for an increasing proportion of [the] . . . nonimmigrant visa applicant pool," a consular official in Istanbul, Turkey, wrote in 2006, according to one of the documents posted by WikiLeaks two weeks ago.

"Consular officials have noticed that most of these applicants share a common characteristic: They are generally evasive about their purpose of travel to the United States."...

An analysis of H1-B visas conducted for The Inquirer showed that the number granted for Gulen charter schools has grown substantially since that 2006 report. More than 2,500 have been issued since 2007...

As The Inquirer has reported, several federal agencies - including the FBI and the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education - are investigating whether charter employees working in this country on H1-B visas are kicking back part of their salaries to a Muslim movement Gulen founded known as Hizmet, or "Service," according to sources...

Many scholars consider Gulen's movement a peaceable, moderate strain of Islam, and the federal inquiries have nothing to do with terrorism...

In Turkey, however, Gulen's followers have been accused of pushing for an authoritarian Islamic state.

Last month, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan - the pro-Islamic prime minister - detained Turkish journalists who had alleged that Gulen followers were infiltrating security agencies.

One of the detained journalists, Ahmet Sik, wrote an unpublished book about Gulen, The Imam's Army. A criminal court in Istanbul recently banned it and confiscated copies of the manuscript. A draft was leaked online a few days ago...

Other U.S. documents released by WikiLeaks detail diplomats' efforts to follow the Gulen movement in Turkey and their growing unease as they observed an increase in its followers heading to the United States to teach...

The embassy report questioned Gulen's ultimate aims and said the embassy had evidence the movement pressured Turkish businessmen to give money to Gulenist schools and activities.

"We have multiple reliable reports that the Gulenists use their school network (including dozens of schools in the U.S.) to cherry-pick students they think are susceptible to being molded as proselytizers and we have steadily heard reports about how the schools indoctrinate boarding students," the report said.

Many Gulen-sponsored high schools in Turkey are boarding schools. Scholars who have studied the Gulen movement in Turkey have found that many of those students wind up teaching in U.S. charter schools after earning degrees from Turkish universities with Gulen's support.

One of the most detailed reports in the WikiLeaks cache is titled "Fethullah Gulen: Why Are His Followers Traveling?"

Written from Istanbul in 2006, it describes Gulen as "at the apex of a growing global network of organizations that profess a peace-loving, ecumenical vision of Islam."

The writer continued: "Gulen's activities first piqued consular officers' interest several years ago when applicants began to appear seeking to visit a number of charter schools in the U.S. with which consular officers were unfamiliar."

After interviewing "thousands" of Turks seeking permission to travel to the United States, the consular office in Istanbul compiled "a substantial list of organizations that seem in some way affiliated with Gulen." The roster included the Zaman newspaper in Turkey and 30 charter schools the consular office had identified as of May 2006.

The report said that after U.S. authorities in Istanbul and Ankara denied many of the applicants permission to enter the United States on other types of visas, many returned in 2004 seeking H1-B visas "sponsored by Gulen-affiliated science academies."...

The former teacher also provided a document called a tuzuk, which resembles a contract and prescribes how much money teachers employed on H1-B visas are supposed to return to Hizmet.

But parents and American teachers complain that the Turks employed on H1-B visas - often as math and science teachers - have limited English skills and are paid more than their American counterparts who are certified.

Some have described how uncertified Turkish teachers are moved from one charter school to another when their "emergency" teaching credentials expire. Others recount a pattern of sudden turnovers of Turkish business managers, administrators, and board members...

Last July, I posted some of my findings on the schools' use of H1-B visas, “Gulen schools and their booming H1B visa applications.” 

The Gulen charter school network is larger than any other network in the US (KIPP, Imagine Schools, etc.) Some of the Gulen charter schools earn high test scores, and it is standard practice for the schools to heavily promote themselves. But with the Gulen movement engaging in deceptive practices, their schools' success may also be questionable. One might ask if this is "Success in Education or Success in Marketing?"

Last summer, students from one of Ohio's Gulen charter schools provided entertainment in Chicago at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools-sponsored National Charter Schools Conference. Naturally, Bill Gates and Arne Duncan were speakers at that event.

Turkified students from the Gulenist Horizon Science Academy-Cleveland dancing for charter school supporters.

The Gates Foundation donated millions of dollars ($10,550,000) to the Cosmos Foundation, the Gulen charter school network in Texas, via the Texas High School Project.

Also, it's very strange that, in the midst of a federal investigation about the practices at the Gulen charter schools, Arne Duncan’s Senior Advisor Kenneth Bedell accepted an award on Duncan's behalf from the Rumi Forum (on October 26, 2010), perhaps the premier Gulenist organization in the U.S. Bedell even quotes Fethullah Gulen as he does so! 

The Rumi Forum’s “Honorary President” is Fethullah Gulen “regarded as the founder and inspirer of the global social movement known as the Hizmet (Service) Movement, more popularly known as the Gulen Movement.” 

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Added on April 6, 2011: From "Objectives of charter schools with Turkish ties questioned" in USA Today (August 17, 2010):  

"Nelson Smith, former president of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, sees no evidence of an "active network. What I do see is a really impressive group of educators."

“…our schoolchildren should not be mixed up in geopolitical games.”

ISLAMIC GROUP IS CIA FRONT, EX-TURKISH INTEL CHIEF SAYS; January 5, 2011; Washington Post

A memoir by a top former Turkish intelligence official claims that a worldwide moderate Islamic movement based in Pennsylvania has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s.

The memoir, roughly rendered in English as “Witness to Revolution and Near Anarchy,” by retired Turkish intelligence official Osman Nuri Gundes, says the religious-tolerance movement, led by an influential former Turkish imam by the name of Fethullah Gulen, has 600 schools and 4 million followers around the world. [This would include a network of 122 U.S. charter schools.]

In the 1990s, Gundes alleges, the movement "sheltered 130 CIA agents" at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone, according to a report on his memoir Wednesday by the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter…

Former CIA operative Robert Baer, chief of the agency’s Central Asia and Caucasus operations from 1995 through 1997, called the allegations bogus. "The CIA didn't have any ‘agents’ in Central Asia during my tenure,” he said.

It’s possible, Baer granted, that the CIA “turned around this ship after I left,” but only the spy agency could say for sure, and the CIA does not comment on operational sources and methods…

Likewise, Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul and author of “The Future of Political Islam,” threw cold water on Gundes’s allegations about Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan… [The Rumi Forum, a Gulenist organization, helps Fuller promote his new book.] 

“I should hasten to add that I left CIA in 1987 -- nearly 25 years ago -- and I have absolutely no concrete personal knowledge whatsoever about this…

The imam left Turkey in 1998 and settled in Saylorsburg, Pa., where the movement is headquartered. According to Intelligence Online, he obtained a residence permit only in 2008 with the help of Fuller and George Fidas, whom it described as head of the agency’s outreach to universities…

Fidas could not be reached for comment, nor would the CIA answer questions about him…

And Sibel Edmonds’ response to the WaPo article, “TURKISH INTEL CHIEF EXPOSES CIA OPERATIONS VIA ISLAMIC GROUP IN CENTRAL ASIA”; January 6, 2011; Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs blog

Yesterday Washington Post’s Jeff Stein published a very interesting but incomplete story regarding a recently published memoir by former Turkish Intelligence Chief Osman Nuri Gundes…

...The only background provided on Gulen is the following with only one link which takes you to Gulen’s marketing site…

There is no mention of Gulen’s decade-long ‘wanted’ status in Turkey (until recently), no mention of the ban on Gulen and his Madrasas in several Central Asian countries, no mention of various investigations of Gulen by other western countries, no mention of the unknown sources of his billions of dollars…As we all know except for a very few, and by that I mean a number in 100s if that, no one in this country has ever heard of this guy with his billions, with his castle in Pennsylvania, his hundreds of Madrasas, now hundreds of US charter schools, his dubious businesses….Yet, for an article as serious as this (Madrasas and mosques as CIA operation centers in Central Asia), the central figure in the story has been given one sentence; no history, no relevant facts…

…below is a list of a few Gulen related facts totally (mysteriously?) absent from Washington Post piece:

-In 1999 Gulen defected to the US shortly before his scandalous speech, where he is heard calling on his supporters to “work patiently and to creep silently into the institutions in order to seize power in the state”, became public. Turkish prosecutors demanded a ten-year sentence for Gülen for having “founded an organization that sought to destroy the secular apparatus of state and establish a theocratic state”. Mr. Gulen has not left the United States since.

-The Netherlands has taken major steps to cut funding to all Gülen associated organizations and is investigating his operations. The Turkish Fethullah Gülen movement is really an Islamic fundamentalist group, claims Rotterdam council member Anita Fähmel (Leefbaar Rotterdam) on the basis of her own study of the Turkish movement.

-The Russian government has banned all Gülen schools and the activities of the Nur sect in Russia. Over 20 Turkish followers of Gulen were deported from Russia in 2002-2004.

-In 1999 Uzbekistan closed all Gulen’s Madrasas and shortly afterward arrested eight journalists who were graduates of Gulen schools, and found them guilty of setting up an illegal religious group and of involvement in an extremist organization.

-In Turkmenistan, government authorities have placed Gulen’s schools under close scrutiny and have ordered them to scrap the history of religion from curriculums.

[Read Edmonds' entire post HERE.]

Then there was this interesting comment under the WaPo article posted by someone using the name “CASILIPS.”

Mr. Stein is to be commended for finally raising this issue in the mainstream US media. It is correct that the Turkish media portrayed Gundes' book as a shock:

http://www.radyoakdeniz.com/haber_detay.asp?haberID=4266

However, allegations of a Gulen-CIA are hardly anything new. It is surprising that Stein makes no mention of other prominent Turks who brought up this issue years ago, for example, the late Ankara University professor Necip Hablemitoglu

http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/msnbc-turkish-affiliate-news-article-ankara-university-professor-claimed-cia-gulen-connection.html

and journalist/authors Hikmet Cetinkaya (of the Turkish national newspaper Cumhuriyet) and Merdan Yanardag. A translation of an excerpt from Yanardag's book can be read here

http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/harmony-science-academy-denials-and-evidence.html

Many people in Turkey and other countries such as Russia have believed for years in a CIA-Gulen connection. The interesting question here is why the American media was never willing to investigate, especially given Gulen's already significant and rapidly growing influence on US society through his nonprofit "dialog" and political lobbying organizations, and even more importantly, through his network of over 130 charter schools in 25 US states.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm

http://azstarnet.com/news/blogs/senor-reporter/article_78c5b71e-0e01-11e0-9e51-001cc4c03286.html

We oppose the involvement of the Gulen Movement in the US charter school system. We feel that our schoolchildren should not be mixed up in geopolitical games. Our public education system should not be a forum for special interest groups such as the Gulen Movement to advance their agenda and raise funds.

The Gulen Movement has gone to great lengths to portray itself here in the US as a benign force for good. In fact, it is nothing but a machine that works relentlessly to acquire money and power. In every part of the world, it tells the people and leaders what they want to hear. This gives the movement access to markets, including the educational market. Consider prominent Gulenist Muhammed Cetin, former president of the Texas-based Institute of Interfaith Dialog, a Gulenist non-profit that supposedly works for "peace," "social justice" and "positive social change." Yet he served as advisor to the repressive dictator Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan, and translated Niyazov's book "Ruhnama." This book was the instrument for the destruction of public education in Turkmenistan. [View the film “Shadow of the Holy Book in YouTube segments HERE] The Gulen Movement was not troubled at all by this, as long as it facilitated their ability to run their own private schools in Turkmenistan. Is this a group that should be running our public schools?

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Watch Kenneth Bedell, one of Duncan’s Senior Advisors, praise Fethullah Gulen (@2:00 min.) as he accepts Arne Duncan's award from the Gulenist Rumi Forum on October 26, 2010. The Rumi Forum’s “Honorary President” is Fethullah Gulen “regarded as the founder and inspirer of the global social movement known as the Hizmet (Service) Movement, more popularly known as the Gulen Movement.” When you visit the website, underneath Gulen’s photo in the right-hand bar are links to more promotional information on Fethullah Gulen, “The Gulen Movement” and “Gulen Inspired Schools.”

So a direct connection exists between the Gulen Movement and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who also happens to be a strong advocate of charter school expansion. Very strange things are going on indeed. And as the comment board entry so correctly stated, “…our schoolchildren should not be mixed up in geopolitical games.” This is all public information I've culled from easily accessible online sources. As far as I see it, my choices are to sit and say nothing, or to let you know.

ADDED on Jan. 8th: The Gulenists are also Creationists. Read "Turkey's survival of the fittest: The Islamic anti-Darwinism movement in Turkey is being helped by an unlikely source - US Christian conservatives"; March 12, 2008; ISN Security Watch

War makes strange bed fellows, especially in Turkey, where a dispute over creationism vs Darwinism has created an unusual alliance between the country's Islamists and conservative Christians in the US…

The Gulen Movement, along with other creationist advocates, has been lobbying with increasing success for school textbooks to put creationism on equal footing with Darwinism...

 

Grannan: In The Village, no one can hear you scream

Guest post by Caroline Grannan

People like me – regular parents with regular kids in regular schools, along with many other non-headline names -- are having trouble fathoming how the Obama administration could so eagerly embrace the Bush administration’s education policies and push them forward. Obama’s policies even add more emphasis on high-stakes testing, on blaming teachers, and on exalting privatization.

The forces that created and promote those policies pointedly fail to consult with or listen to educators, parents, or anyone else who spends time in actual classrooms with real live kids.

Obama’s wrongheaded tack was already dismaying. But it was even more astonishing when Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary, told the New York Times that he had encountered no opposition to the administration’s education policy. “Zero,” Duncan added, for emphasis.

“Hey Arne! Over here!” responded blogger Mike Klonsky.

Here on Planet Earth, dissenting voices have been raising an outcry in every way we can think of. We have a new spokesperson in Diane Ravitch, former Bush administration education official and onetime supporter of the Bush/Obama policies who took a hard look, saw those policies not just failing but doing harm, and now speaks out publicly to oppose them. Ravitch (an NYU education historian and author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”) has personally met with Duncan to discuss all this.

How is he not hearing? How is he unaware of the critics? How is none of this getting through to Obama?

“It’s The Village,” my 19-year-old son, a poli-sci wonk, explains patiently. The Village, he tells me, is a concept widely referred to by bloggers and other commentators to define the members and the mindset of the Washington establishment – the insiders who listen only to themselves. As one blogger puts it, “[T]he term ‘Villagers’ denotes a kind of small-minded refusal to think outside an ‘acceptable’ center-right consensus … [T]he ‘Villagers’ include, in part, Democratic elected officials and consultants who insist that their party can’t succeed unless they ally their party with that center-right consensus; think-tankers who churn out position papers designed to prop up this elite consensus view; and elite pundits.” That quote comes from Greg Sargent’s blog The Plum Line, which, ironically for a commentary critical of The Village, is carried on washingtonpost.com.

Since my son – who reads a wide variety of political thought – introduced me to the term, I asked him to write a further explanation for me. Here’s his elaboration: “The foundation of The Village is ethos rather than logos, trust in who's saying something rather than what they're actually saying. To gain The Village's trust, one must submit to The Village consensus on an array of issues. Ideas that take their place in The Village consensus don't come from some sort of rational thought process; like head coverings and prayer shawls in Anatevka, where they come from is unclear. But once the consensus is formed, the primary means a Villager uses to judge any idea is how closely the person or people articulating the idea adheres to the overall Village mindset.”

Washington Post fixture Sally Quinn is credited with defining the concept in a long, earnest 1998 essay explaining why the Monica Lewinsky scandal left the Washington insider community scandalized, outraged, aghast and betrayed -- even though the rest of the country, while fleetingly grossed out, otherwise just didn’t much care. A quote from Quinn’s piece: “ ‘We have our own set of village rules,’ says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House.” Quinn, portraying The Village as a nurturing extended circle with deeply shared values, defined it as both “Washington insiders” and “the Washington Establishment.”

When I went looking for more discussion of The Village, I found lots of material, mostly not related to education issues. The blog Down with Tyranny referred aptly to the “seemingly instinctive collusion between the Village's permanently right-of-center political establishment and its faithful media collaborators.” Down with Tyranny was writing about The Village’s horror when Cheney aide Scooter Libby was indicted in connection with the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

But blogger Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler blames The Village mentality for the parroting of anti-public-education and anti-teacher scripts by media insiders such Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, a serial public-school basher. Somerby groused: “[C]ould we offer a thought about Cohen and public education? Cohen knows nothing about vouchers, and nothing about charters. He has no idea what goes on in low-income schools, or why low-income kids fail to prosper. He doesn’t have the slightest idea how we could improve our schools. But so what? He has memorized one famous scripted line, the line his colleagues all know to recite. (Democrats won’t stand up to the [teachers’] unions!) Within his Village, this counts as erudition.”

And The Village mindset explains Newsweek’s now-notorious cover story mindlessly blaming teachers for the challenges of public education; the oblivion of liberals like the late, iconic Teddy Kennedy and California Rep. George Miller (co-sponsors of the bill known as No Child Left Behind) to the real-life issues facing schools and teachers – and Arne Duncan and Barack Obama’s intractable deafness.

As blogger Skippy the Bush Kangaroo observed: “In the Village, you can be wrong about everything, but once you're in, you're in for life.”

Speaking truth to power

Last Friday, in person, I told Arne Duncan just what I think... at least a tiny bit of it, anyway.

Duncan was in the Bay Area for three events: as the guest of U.S. Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey for a discussion on education reform, and to give commencement speeches at two community colleges, Foothill College and DeAnza College.

I attended the first event in Marin County which was held at an extremely affluent Mill Valley high school in the middle of the day.

Even though I’m a parent, not a teacher, I joined the smallish group of teacher protesters who showed up and were permitted inside to stand at the back (sans signs). The event was basically a Q & A for educators of constituency districts.

Representative Woolsey moderated and invited questions from audience members: two from superintendents, two from principals, two from school board members, and two from teachers. As could be expected, Duncan’s responses were pretty much the usual canned ed deform logic and rhetoric that we’ve all heard before.

With time running out, the Congresswoman asked if a student was in the audience who would like to ask a question. Since teenagers are out having their summer fun – and not the least bit interested in sitting in a room with a bunch of adults at a 1:00 PM Ed Sec event – in the silence of the response, I hollered out “What about a parent?” Woolsey took the bait. “Oh yes, let’s hear from a parent,” she said. I've noticed that it's not unusual for officials to forget about the parents.

Well, I’m a pathetic public speaker and it was hard to watch that microphone shake in my hands, but I had put some thought into what I would most like to tell Arne Duncan if I was given the chance. I had some prepared notes to read from.

I told Duncan that I had been an Oakland public school parent for the past seventeen years, that I had attended public schools myself, and I had a deep love and respect for public education (three things, none of which he can claim; but I didn't say that). Then I went on to tell Duncan that it is NOT the public schools, nor their teachers, which are failing our children. Rather, the issue is that this country has failed its children with its decades-old incarceration and economic policies, and other unhealthy social values. Not only have these things harmed children, but they have absolutely devastated families and communities.

I told Arne Duncan that public school teachers have been coping with the consequences of those things the very best they can. Then I cited the following statistics:

-African American unemployment has been approximately twice as high as white unemployment at least since the 1950s.

-The number of incarcerated African Americans has increased 800% since the 1950s. I added that the climb of incarcerations coincides with the way problems have increased in urban public schools.

-The teen birth rate in the U.S. 52.1%, Canada's is 20%, Finland's is 9.2%. I told Duncan that I mention Finland because we often use it as a model of a country with high test scores.

At this point, the Congresswoman interrupted me, saying there wasn't time for much more. I told her I only had a couple more things to add, and that it wouldn’t take long. I continued:

-The U.S. child poverty rate is 22.4%; Finland's is 4.3%. The African American child poverty rate is in the 30’s; the White child poverty rate is about 13%.

-The U.S. is #1 in the world, in prisoners/capita at 715. Russia is #2 at 584 and Finland is 71.

So, my message was delivered and I was done. I heard some applause and then it was time for Duncan's response.

His first point was to tell me that the two of us have similar points of view (oh great…now we're BFFs). Then he spent the rest of the time elaborating, with the usual blather, on how he believes that education – by way of scaling up of the “good” schools he has visited – is essentially going to fix it all.

The most interesting part of Duncan's reaction was that, at one point, I was clearly getting the sense that he was staring me down (later, the word that came to my mind was “glaring”). Once this dawned on me, I made it a point to stare directly back at him and I started to shake my head back and forth "no" (as in "sorry, but I'm not buying it."). He definitely saw what I was doing. "Good," I thought.

Well, Duncan finished his comment and the event was over. Several teachers approached and thanked me. My response was, "I keep trying." I located a staff member standing at a side door (his secretary in a pinkish, tweedy-plaid suit) and handed her an envelope which I had prepared asked her to give it to Mr. Duncan. It contained a personal note and the statistics cited (printouts of A Real Crisis and A very important collection of other-statistics).

I’m not going to claim my single encounter with Arne Duncan is going to be enough to make a difference, but at least I gave it a good try. Such is the life of an activist.

By the way, here are photos of the anti-Arne Duncan protesters at Foothill College.

How to find out if Duncan is coming your way

You, too, can track Duncan’s public appearances and make an effort to make him hear what you have to say. Use your email account’s calendar feature which can remind you to check on his upcoming destinations every week. This was helpful for notifying one of my resistance associates in North Carolina a few months ago; she took an appropriate action. You can also check on the public events attended by Ed Dept. staff members. And if you like to use Facebook, you can write on Arne Duncan’s wall.

Duncan goes around the country claiming that people are unopposed to his policies. His listening and learning tours have been a total farce.

Obama has given Duncan an unprecedented amount of money to spend without getting congressional approval. He is using it to inflict communities with more and more charter schools and to destroy teachers unions.

As with the Houston (or Texas) Miracle claimed by GW Bush's EdSec Rod Paige, Duncan's claim of success during his time as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools has turned out to be a lie, but nothing seems to be stopping him from doing the same across the U.S. See Jim Horn's piece Duncan's Chicago Failure With Corporate Charter Schools Slated to Become National Model.

The billionaire and millionaire-funded privatization-of-public-education train is barreling hard down the tracks, and Duncan’s in the driver’s seat. Unless the resistance ratchets up some major action soon, the landscape will be permanently transformed and there will be nothing left to lose.

I am constantly astounded by the obliviousness and passivity of teachers to all of this. I guess the ed deformers have either already succeeded in beating their morale down to a pulp and/or they're too drained from taking care of our kids all day.

My final message to those of you who are reading this who place value on U.S. public education and don’t want it to be privatized: NOW IS THE TIME TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND DO WHAT YOU CAN TO RESIST.

“Listening and Learning” = feigned interest + intentional shut out

Separate, but very similar, experiences of a set of public school teachers, members of the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), students in Philadelphia, and Alexander Russo, inform us of the Department of Education’s modus operandi.

Earlier this week, nationally certified science teacher-coach Anthony Cody (of Teacher Magazine’s “Living in Dialogue”) reported on his recent “meeting” with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Cody initiated a campaign to provide a way for teachers to hopefully share their ideas with the administration. After six months of working on the project, he and 11 other teachers obtained what they had been seeking: an opportunity to talk to Duncan.

Here's Cody’s account of the meeting, “Talking into a Tin Can on a string 3000 miles long: Our Talk with Duncan”:

So we twelve finally had our thirty minutes to speak with Secretary Duncan. We spent weeks preparing what we would say. We polled the 2000 members of Teachers' Letters to Obama and got more than 270 teachers to take time to share their ideas of what we should say. We knew we would not have much time, so we paired up, and wrote short statements carrying our experiences and insights. We wanted to be critical but constructive.

I want to find positive things to take from what unfolded, but it is challenging. Here is what happened. We were given a magic phone number to call in. There were about six Dept of Ed people back in DC in a room with Arne Duncan, who introduced themselves one by one. Then Secretary Duncan took the mic and talked very fast. He talked about how wonderful teachers are, and how much they had learned about the problems associated with NCLB, and how they were looking forward to making many changes…

Then, about halfway through our thirty minutes, it was our chance to talk…

…In a conversation after the call, Alaska Teacher of the Year Bob Williams, who also missed his chance to speak, said that perhaps the whole experience was a metaphor. Secretary Duncan and his staff could hear one another very well, but teachers' voices had a very hard time getting through…

…The funny thing about the conversation was that the whole time, they seemed to think we had questions, and their job was to answer them. We had actually approached the conversation from a different place. We thought perhaps they might want to ask US questions, or hear our ideas about how to improve schools.

The day after the above post, Cody received a personal phone call from Duncan who is obviously trying to smooth things over to maintain the appearance of being a good guy.

But here's what Chicagoan Julie Woestehoff of P.U.R.E. had to say in a comment to Cody's post about the phone call from A.D.:

Anthony- As someone who dealt with Mr. Duncan for over eight years in Chicago, I support your degree of skepticism about any positive outcome of this phone call.

Duncan is where he is because he sounds very sincere when he lies, prevaricates, and covers up the truth. His role has been to pour oil on troubled waters, not to improve schools or educate children. He is the "aw shucks" face of the school privatizers, period.

However, the fact that you did get him to respond is definitely a sign that you're now perceived as a threat. You have brought together and made public so many powerful, compelling statements from teachers. Your strategic approach to the forum was just the kind of careful preparation and follow up work that devastates Duncan and his gang.

You can tell from his vague, pandering comments that he means to assuage you and your allies, not change direction.

But you don't have to roll over for such an obvious ploy. Keep doing what you are doing -- crank it up! lots of us will help! -- and pretty soon Arne's act won't be enough. They may have to actually do something different.

Stephen Krashen, as a member of the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), took part in a different "conversation" with people at the Ed Department. He, too, reported being shut out. You think he’ll get a phone call, too?

From Krashen’s entry at Schools Matter: Are we participants or just an audience?

I just participated in the "conversation" between members of the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) and the US Dept of Education. It was supposed to be a conversation, and we had interactive software set up.

It wasn't a conversation. Even though only a few people were involved, maybe a dozen or so (not counting staff members), there was apparently no time for any interaction. The feds wasted a half hour telling us what we already knew, that is, what was in the Blueprint, then discussed (at length) a few of the questions that were sent in that they had selected. They even took time to discuss a question that wasn't sent in that a staff member thought was interesting.

I send in my questions in advance, as requested. None were answered.

I resent them during the session, as requested. None were answered.

I "raised my hand" electronically three times and got no response. Each time, my "raised hand" was electronically shut off.

None of my questions significantly overlapped with those chosen.

I asked how the feds could justify so much testing, more than we have ever had before.

I asked if they were aware of the evidence showing that the real problem in American education is poverty, not a lack of standards and tests.

I asked why there was such a push for STEM when we clearly have a surplus in these fields and are doing quite well in technology and science.

I asked why there was so much focus on college, why a high-school diploma will soon be a certificate of qualification for college when college is not for everybody: people have different interests, different talents.

Krashen only had four reasonable, clearly-stated questions to which he was seeking a response. Read more about them here.

Last fall, members of the Philadelphia Student Union were subjected to something similar. Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited their city as part of the “Listening and Learning Tour.”

Students, parents, teachers, and community organizations were left wondering who the group was really listening to, since none of us were included in the tour’s agenda. We were only able to speak with them through a locked and guarded wrought-iron fence...

The tour stopped at one of the Mastery Charter Schools located in West Philadelphia and also McDaniel Elementary School in the Point Breeze section of the city. There were no stops in any comprehensive neighborhood high schools, arguably the schools in most need of attention here in the city. We had been told that a press conference was to be held in the parking lot of McDaniel Elementary at 2:15 p.m., an impossible time for students, and an inconvenient one for parents. Nevertheless, and on extremely short notice, PSU and YUC mobilized a group of 30 students, parents and allies from among our stakeholder groups to attend the press conference. We arrived to find an empty parking lot with a lonely podium and a multitude of police and security agents on hand to deny us entry to the building. The press conference had been moved inside…

Two student organizers, one from PSU (Koby's first hand reaction to the encounter) [A must read] and one from YUC requested that Mr. Duncan and Reverend Sharpton return to Philadelphia to meet with grassroots stakeholders and those who are most impacted by educational reform policies. The students were surprised to be told that they were “meeting right now”. The pair did eventually commit to setting up a meeting on substantive issues such as teacher quality and transforming low performing schools.

Here's the footage of Duncan and Sharpton promising a future meeting, but there is no evidence that it has ever taken place. I wonder when the students of the P.S.U. will get their phone call?

In an effort to dutifully inform the public, Alexander Russo used to post Duncan’s weekly media schedule. Over the past year he has become increasingly irritated by the Department of Ed's information stonewalling and procrastination (classic passive-aggressive tactics).

March 3, 2009: "When, I wonder, will some journalist with access -- they won't give me an interview -- pin Duncan down on some of these mistruths and changed tunes? It's OK that he's thinking about things differently now, but it's not that OK that he gets to make things up or ignore his own record.”

March 12, 2009: "Think maybe John Merrow can get something besides canned talking points and that grimace of a smile out of the EdSec?"

July 23, 2009 in “DUNCAN: What Does That Guy Do All Day?:

A few days ago, I asked the nice people at the USDE press office for a copy of the Secretary's schedule, hoping to find out a little more about what that guy does all day in between press events (In Search Of The Secretary's Schedule). Some of you thought that was a good idea. Some of you probably thought it was ridiculous. After thinking it over for a little while, the word came back: No. I was politely directed to the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] site.

Now, I really didn't want to FOIA anyone. I'm really lazy and I wasn't even sure why I wanted to see the Secretary's schedule. But I felt like I had no other choice. My other request, which was to spend an "all-access" day with the Secretary, was also rebuffed.

Plus, I was curious about whether the Department -- bastion of transparency and accountability -- would do something amusing like invoking executive privilege or citing national security concerns.

So now I've done it. What happens next, I have no idea. But it's probably not good. My FOIA request is below. Duncan is doing some sort of RttT event with the White House on Friday and playing basketball in Louisville this weekend.

September 24, 2009: “Still no word on if and when we get to see the schedule and visitor logs for Arne Duncan, though the White House recently decided to release visitor information for the President.”

October 5, 2009: “But by now we're used to having things omitted from this highly selected list of media photo ops.”

October 20, 2009: "...here's the official media schedule for the USDE for this week. In a word: Speeches, speeches, speeches, speeches. As always, education reporters, do remember to report these events as if they contained real news. References to "dog and pony show" and use of the words "spin," "propaganda," "more hot air" and wishful thinking" are generally frowned upon.”

November 2, 2009: "Of all the Secretary's news-free media events this week, I pick the Wednesday event with the President in Wisconsin as the biggest, emptiest, most gloriously rhetorical of the lot.”

November 30, 2009: Re Duncan's upcoming schedule of media events and photo ops: “Be assured there will be the usual mix of fear-mongering, repetition of talking points, and exhortation.”

January 4, 2010: Russo is becoming profoundly disenchanted, “The White House gives out monthly logs of visitors and lets pool reporters track nearly everything the President does. We get this measly schedule of photo opportunities (below). It tells us what is newsworthy and we believe it."

January 5, 2010: Frustrated by the ongoing lack of transparency, Russo compares the communication from the Department of Education to the communication from the White House. “The White House is releasing monthly visitor logs so we can see who's stopping by to see the President or his senior staff, but there's no such transparency (yet) from the Education Department. No, I can't give it a rest. No, I don't have anything better to do."

January 26, 2010: “Better late than never, the USDE released the Duncan media schedule for the week at noon Monday. However, as you'll see below, there's nothing on it."

April 23, 2010: Russo is now calling for heckling. "Nothing much to get excited about in Duncan's weekly media schedule for next week, though there's always hope that the teachers of the year will get brave and and heckle him. One year not too long ago the teachers got together and weighed in with policy recommendations, which was pretty cool. But mostly they just act meek and obedient, which is a shame. Maybe a couple will Twitter heckle him during the event, at least?"

Think Russo will ever get the information he's been seeking?

In early May, when asked to respond a survey by the Pew Research Center which found the department of education’s approval rating had fallen most sharply of all federal agencies (to 40 percent from 61 percent in 1998), Duncan said he encounters no public opposition,"Zero," he said. "There's just an outpouring of support..." to the "changes" and "investments," he added. It's not likely that Duncan is oblivious to the widespread opposition to his policies. So flat-out denial is how he has decided to spin the truth.

Duncan cheerfully markets the idea that he is listening, when in fact he does not. This is because his main goal is to implement the predetermined agenda set by the functionaries of the ed deform crowd. His purpose is to advance the privatization of public education.

These people are after a "politics free zone." "Politics free zone" (= absence of democracy) was a phrase DFER’s Joe Williams once used in his 2007 Center for Education Reform report about the history of the reform attempts in Oakland under a newly installed, Broad-trained state administration (read my entry here).

In the report, Williams explains that a group of "small school creators, activists, technocrats, and philanthropists" [no identifying names, naturally] had been waiting for an opportunity to make their major changes. When State Superintendent Jack O’Connell (recipient of large campaign contributions from Broad and pals) implemented a state takeover of Oakland Unified, their wish came true for a "politics free zone" where "the conditions were indeed ripe to try something big," and the local voice was rendered mute.

So don’t be fooled by Duncan's smiles and cheerful talk. Calling it "reform," ed deformers are now running things at the Department of Education. They are pursuing a specific plan and have zero interest in considering the views of people from outside their extremely tight DFER/NewSchools Venture Fund/Eli Broad/Bill Gates-type circle.

Who’s right: Arne or Michelle [Alexander]?

Arne Duncan: “I believe education is THE civil rights issue of our generation, the only sure pathway out of poverty, and the only way to achieve a more equal and just society.” (Facebook, Info page on May 20, 2010)

Michelle Alexander: “I believe that the mass incarceration of people of color in the United States is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time. And that it is a tragedy of as great proportions as Jim Crow was in its time.” (Bill Moyers Journal interview, April 2, 2010) [SEE THE CHART BELOW!]

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BIOs

Arne Duncan (b. 1964) earned a bachelors degree in sociology from Harvard then played professional basketball in Australia for four years. He returned to the U.S. where investment manager John Rogers employed Duncan to run Rogers' new non-profit education foundation (Ariel Education Initiative). Duncan eventually also sat on a number of non-profit boards and was also “on a team that later started a new public [charter] elementary school.” John Rogers and Duncan had attended the same private school in Chicago and were longtime basketball buddies. Duncan started working for Chicago Public Schools in 1999 – first as Deputy Chief of Staff for CEO Paul Vallas, then as its CEO. He became U.S. Secretary of Education in 2009. Duncan credits his childhood experience of spending afternoons in his mother's inner-city tutoring program “with shaping his understanding of the challenges of urban education.”

Michelle Alexander (b. 1968 approx.) is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the United States Supreme Court, and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was a member of the Stanford Law School faculty, where she served as Director of the Civil Rights Clinic. She joined the Ohio State University faculty in 2005 and now holds a joint appointment with the Moritz College of Law and the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Her recently released book is “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Which mind has processed the issues more, Arne's or Michelle's? For my money, I’m going with Michelle Alexander, whose message is absolutely chilling, and totally correct. Arne Duncan is an intellectual lightweight who has embraced repetition of the favored mantras of the ed deform crowd.

Consider the following facts:

1. Since 1957, the proportion of the African American population with a high school degree has increased by 300% (18.4% to 79.2%) and the proportion of the African American population with a 4-year college degree increased by almost 500% (2.9% to 17.2%). Data is from the April 2004 Kirwan Institute PowerPoint report “Social/Economic Indicators by Race: Disparity 1954 and Today.”

2. Even with the significant increase in educational attainment mentioned above, African American unemployment has consistently been about twice as high as white unemployment, at least since the 1950s. What gives with that!? [See the chart below]

3. What's worse is that the number of incarcerated African Americans has increased 800% since the 1950s! Despite only small fluctuations in the violent crime rate in the past 35 years, we’ve gone from 300,000 people in jails and prisons in 1972 -- to 2.3 million today, with an additional 5 million on probation and parole. A grossly disproportionate number of the incarcerated have been people of color. Families and communities have been devastated.

4. We are the worldwide incarceration champions. The U.S. is #1 in the number of prisoners per capita at 715 people per 100,000. To put this in perspective, Russia is #2 at 584, Canada is #73 at 116, and Japan is #126 at 54.

So that's what Michelle Alexander is talking about.

What is problematic for the United States of America is not our public schools and school teachers. THE problem is that our national character has some major flaws.

And now that the men are in jail and/or unemployed and families are in continual chaos, and now that neighborhood schools have been utterly neglected for years, are popularly called "failures," and are being 'innovatively disrupted' by the ed deformers, the state is going after the mothers and grandmothers: 

Calif. bill could jail parents if kids miss school (Fresno Bee, May 13, 2010)*

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- The state of California would hold parents responsible if their children are chronically truant under a bill the state Senate approved Thursday.

The bill would let prosecutors charge parents with misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine if their kids miss too much school. Judges could delay the punishment to parents as an incentive to get their children to class.

It applies only to parents or guardians of children age 6 or older in kindergarten through eighth grade. Prosecutors would have to prove the parents failed to reasonably supervise and encourage the student to attend school...

This tough love idea will be sure to affect low-income African American women disproportionately, but given our compulsion to incarcerate people of color, it makes perfect sense.

These are other things to consider:

• People in this country chose to disinvest in urban public education long ago.
• They/we chose to tolerate high and chronic unemployment in urban minority communities.
• They/we chose to corner inner-city residents into needing to resort to an underground economy.
• They/we chose to adopt policies that would incarcerate huge numbers of African American men.
• They/we chose to turn the other way when the tradition of marriages and two-parent families in these communities started heading to extinction.

So any failures of the schools are BECAUSE of the consequences of these other things. Our domestic problems were never caused by the schools, and our schools never be able to fix them.

*If they can lock up the moms for this offense, shouldn't they also be locking up some of the crooks from Goldman Sachs?

ADDED ON JANUARY 27, 2010: PLEASE SEE THESE RELATED PERIMETER PRIMATE POSTS

• Where Sociology, Criminology, and Charter Schools Converge
• Last night’s stunning Bill Moyers Journal : Part One featured Bill Moyers’ interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander. Part Two was Moyers’ essay on the growing income inequality.
• A Real Crisis

When looking at the "Prison Admissions by Race" graph below, please note that the figures indicate in numbers, not percentages. And be aware that the African American population in 1930 was about one tenth (1/10) the size of the White population. In 1997 it was about one sixth (1/6).