Free Republic

We keep hearing that "black lives matter," but they seem to matter only when that helps politicians to get votes, or when that slogan helps demagogues demonize the police. The other 99 percent of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media. What about black success? Does that matter? Apparently not so much. We have heard a lot about black students failing to meet academic standards. So you might think that it would be front-page news when some whole ghetto schools not only meet, but exceed, the...

Wednesday afternoon the story broke in Baton Rouge media that the Kenilworth Science & Technology School had been raided by the FBI. The FBI indicated that the raid, which evidently was conducted to gather material evidence in the form of documents and computers, was not a matter of public safety. As a result, it probably was not related to a report earlier this year that a teacher at the school was accused of having inappropriate pictures of children on his cell phone. Had those charges stuck, that would have been the second scandal of a sexual nature involving a Gulenist...

WORLD’S “MOST DANGEROUS ISLAMIST” ALIVE, WELL, AND LIVING IN PENNSYLVANIA FEDS TURN BLIND EYE TO MOUNTING HOMELAND SECURITY THREAT by Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. The most dangerous Islamist in the world is neither Afghani nor Arab. He comes from neither Sudan nor Somalia. And he resides in neither the mountains of Pakistan nor the deserts of the Palestinian territories. This individual has toppled the secular government of Turkey and established madrassahs throughout the world. His schools indoctrinate children in the tenets of radical Islam and prepare adolescents for the Islamization of the world. More than 90 of these madrassahs have...

A newly-released email and lobbying documents filed with Congress reveals new ties between Clintonworld and members of a network operated by a mysterious Islamic cleric from Turkey. Connections between Clinton and acolytes of the imam, Fethullah Gulen, could muddle the complex relationship between the U.S. and Turkey, a key NATO ally, if the former secretary of state wins the White House. TurkeyÂ’s president, Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, has mounted an aggressive crackdown against Gulen and his followers, known as Gulenists. ErdoÄŸan, who was once allied with Gulen, has even personally asked President Obama to extradite the 74-year-old guru, who has lived...

Urban school districts from Los Angeles to Philadelphia are experiencing declining enrollment in traditional public schools as more parents enroll their children in charters, depleting millions in per-pupil funding from district budgets. In states experiencing population growth, such as Arizona, charter schools help relieve overcrowding. But for districts that are struggling financially, the student flight is costly. …

At the heart of the current debate over the future of public schooling in Detroit is a proposed entity called the Detroit Education Commission, various forms of which appear in different proposals. The most recent version is included in a Detroit Public Schools bailout bill passed by the state Senate. Half the Republicans and all but three of the Democrats in the Michigan Senate voted to approve a seven-member commission appointed by the Detroit mayor. Among its powers, the commission would be able to veto any new public school from opening in the city. Critics say the veto would apply...

A secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted toward children of American service personnel. That charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but it is real and it is happening right now. The most immediate threat is in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall. What is not widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization...

Aside from defrauding American taxpayers, the Gülen organization has an even more ominous objective in the United States. The organization is one of the country’s largest recipients of H1-B “specialty occupation” visas, which it uses to import Turkish teachers into its charter schools, supposedly because local U.S. talent is not available to fill math and science teaching positions in its charter schools. The Gülen organization illegally threatens to revoke these visas unless the Turkish teachers agree to kick back part of their salary to the organization. More importantly, the Turkish teachers in Gülen organization charter schools are evaluated not on...

At least one form of very productive education disruption is growing exponentially. "Parents can choose public schools for their children in 55 percent of the nation's largest school districts, more than double the percent of such districts that offered school choice 15 years ago," Grover (Russ) Whitehurst writes in the Education Choice and Competition Index for 2015 compiled by the Brookings Institution, for which he toils. "In addition, programs that allow students to enroll in public schools outside their home district are available in about 20 percent of the states. Additions to the menu of school choice in many locales...

Members of a secretive Turkish Islamic movement that is at the center of a congressional ethics committee investigation have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and to her family’s charity, a Daily Caller investigation has found.The largest donation from a leader of the Gulen movement, which is operated from Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains by a moderate Muslim cleric named Fethullah Gulen, came from Recep Ozkan. A former president of the Gulen-linked Turkish Cultural Center, Ozkan gave between $500,001 and $1,000,000 to the Clinton Foundation in recent months, the charity’s website shows. He also served as a national...

Muhammad Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Islamist, writer and preacher with a secret plan for bringing Shariah law to America. Arguably Turkey's most influential spiritual leader of the past 50 years, Gulen left that country in the late 1990s and now directs his cult-like Islamic movement from a guarded compound in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Part of his empire consists of a thriving network of more than 140 charter schools in 26 states that sell themselves to parents as a secular and more academically rigorous alternative to public schools. As the second largest chain of charter schools in the...

Can you name the most contentious issue in American politics? Here's a hint. It's being fought at the federal, state and local levels. And it doesn't go away. The struggle is persistent, ongoing, unending. Here is a second hint. The issue is not gay marriage, or gun control, or police brutality and or immigration. Those issues are either settled, largely settled, isolated or completely out of the control of local and state governments. Here is a third hint. The issue divides Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. But it is especially divisive among Democrats and among people who call themselves...

A recent, widely publicized incident in which a policeman was called to a school classroom to deal with a disruptive student has provoked all sorts of comments on whether the policeman used "excessive force." What has received far less attention, though it is a far larger question, with more sweeping implications, is the role of disruptive students in schools. Critics of charter schools have often pointed to those schools' ability to expel uncooperative and disruptive students, far more readily than regular public schools can, as a reason for some charter schools' far better educational outcomes, as shown on many tests....

In Washington, Mr. Jeffries, a second-term congressman, is best known as a collegial, next-generation Democrat with a keen interest in criminal justice reform. In New York, however, he has positioned himself at a nexus of powerful interests that have grown frustrated during Mr. de Blasio’s tenure.... Where Mr. de Blasio has opposed charter schools, Mr. Jeffries has firmly defended them; in April, he addressed a fund-raising gala for the Success Academy organization, a fast-growing charter network heavily backed by wealthy critics of the mayor. When Mr. de Blasio sought to limit expansion of the ride-hailing company Uber, Mr. Jeffries spoke...

Amid the rubble and rebuilding efforts, unseen by most Americans was a profound rebuilding of a major American city’s education system. Tragically, it took a hurricane to do this. But out of Katrina’s death and destruction rose one of the greatest transformations ever witnessed in American public education. A decade later, education reformers highlight the “Katrina effect” in education innovation and reform. Katrina left most New Orleans schools literally underwater. Most schools remained officially closed for months. Many New Orleans families fled the city to escape the floods and rebuild lives; some never returned. Many students who remained missed months...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has more than the White House on his mind–he’s also taking a shot at Gracie Mansion. The conservative Republican, a probable presidential contender in 2016, blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, for his educational views in a speech he gave yesterday at the Heritage Action Conservative Policy Summit in Washington, D.C. Mr. Cruz, a supporter of charter schools, said Mr. de Blasio’s opposition to Eva Moskowitz’s charter network amounted to throwing “young African-American kids” out of school. “In my view school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. And I gotta say...

Who's afraid of Mayor Bill de Blasio in Albany? Not state Senate Republicans, who denied his request for permanent mayoral control of New York City schools, granting him one year instead. Not Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who didn't deny he and his team were the unnamed officials in news reports who belittled the mayor as "incompetent" and clueless on influencing the legislative process. Not advocates for charter schools, who won a lifting of a cap for new schools over de Blasio's opposition in the three-way agreement last week among Cuomo, state Senate Republicans and the Democrat-led state Assembly. "There isn't...

It’s lottery season. "Lottery," to you, might bring to mind ping-pong balls bouncing around in a glass tube, as millions anxiously wait to see if they'll win millions of dollars. But nationwide, millions of parents must anxiously wait out a different kind of lottery: to see if their children will be selected to have a chance at a better opportunity. The expansion of charter school programs in some of the nation’s biggest metropolitan areas have given more parents and students access to a different educational track and an alternative option to an underperforming public school system. But despite expansions in...

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) recently proposed the Parental Choice in Education Act as a way to provide more opportunity for parents in choosing which schools would be the best fit for their children. The legislation would use $70 million in taxpayer money to create an education tax credit for families making $60,000 or less. Parents who qualify could receive up to $500 in a tax credit or refund for each student attending a private school. Among other benefits, it would also encourage more private school scholarships. "This is about fairness and this is about parents choosing the school that is...

The state Education Department has rejected all 15 applications for new charter schools, including 12 in New York City, claiming they failed to meet academic standards. “We always look for quality and these applications didn’t measure up,” Education Department spokesman Dennis Tompkins said Wednesday. “We invited several of the applicants to reapply in June and we gave them suggestions on how to improve their applications.” But charter-school advocates weren’t buying it, saying the rejection of all the applicants reeked of pro-teacher-union politics. “The timing and nature of these blanket rejections should raise serious concerns for New Yorkers ... Mayor de...