Fr si1) I recently read the book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316044695/tilsoncapitalpar) and also attended a dinner with a member of Seal Team 6. I am in awe of these brave men and the sacrifices they make for our country. I am also in awe of how they are trained, motivated, managed and led, which raises the question: Is Seal Team 6 as great as it is primarily because of the superstar individuals that comprise it, or does the greatness lie mainly in the whole: the structure, training, leadership, etc.?
The reason I'm thinking about this is because for the 22% of the children in this country who live in poverty (and, in many cases, also suffer from poor diet/health, few books in the house, a single, poorly educated parent who may not even speak English, etc.), to have any chance in life, they don't need average schools, or even good schools – they need the educational equivalent of Seal Team 6.
That may seem like an impossibly high bar, but it's not: I've personally visited dozens of schools – part of the KIPP, Uncommon, AF, Success, Uplift, YES Prep, etc. networks – that are the educational equivalents of Seal Team 6. Obviously we should be trying to replicate these schools as quickly as possible (obvious to any unconflicted person with a brain and a heart anyway – I realize that excludes large numbers of people), so one key question is: should we be focusing our efforts on superstar teachers (classroom level) or at the school level? For years, I thought the former, focusing on teachers like Jaime Escalante, Rafe Esquith, and Harriett Ball, but now I think the latter, for four primary reasons:
A) There aren't enough superstar teachers and we'll never be able to find/train enough;
B) A superstar teacher can move a kid a long way in a year, but rarely is a child's overall life trajectory changed by one year with even the greatest teacher;
C) Superstar teachers burn out at a high rate; and
D) As Neerav Kingsland (who is one of the panelists after the showing of The Experiment on Monday) points out, the same person can be a dud in one school environment and a superstar in another:
Let's take two lawyers – Top-Third Tina (went to Harvard Law) and Bottom-Third Barry (went to lower tier law school) both pass the bar exam. Due to magical forces, they do not get to choose where they work (sound familiar?). Interestingly enough, they are assigned to the same law firm. It happens to be a mediocre firm and here's what happens:
· Neither Tina nor Barry gets trained. Since law school doesn't really teach you anything about day-to-day practice of law, both struggle. Tina works harder, attempts to train herself, and starts improving – but at the end of the day her efforts are marginal. She outperforms Barry but not by much. Neither really knows how to practice law. At the end of their second year, each gets a "below average" on the state's law practitioner value-added system.
Now let's re-run the scenario. This time, Tina and Barry both get placed at an excellent law firm. Here's what happens:
· Both Tina and Barry get superb on-the-job training. They each attend intensive summer training and for their first year they are assigned to a top-notch lawyer for mentorship. They are consistently coached, given feedback, and evaluated. Their second year, each is allowed to handle cases on their own. By the end of her second year, Tina is on the partner track. She's impressed everyone. Barry struggles with the high expectations, but learns a lot and improves. At the end of their second year, each gets their value-added score. Tina scores an "above average" and Barry scores "average."
Now let's apply this to education – here's what we might see:
· In average to poorly managed schools, the impact of the institution itself will drown out a lot of potential variance in effectiveness. Nobody gets trained or supported. Few people excel.
· However, in a well-run school, two things will happen: (1) all teachers will improve and (2) the "talented" teachers will show a significant effect that was not picked up in the poorly run school.
This is my theory, at least. Why? Well, it seems logical. Institutions matter.
2) Re. the charter schools contribute to segregation nonsense I addressed in my last email, here's more from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools:
Charter opponents sometimes conduct studies asking whether the racial and economic composition of charter schools is perfectly reflective of the sending traditional school district (see Miron et. al., February 2010). The unsurprising result is, no, most charters do not look exactly like the nearby school districts and the authors then draw conclusions suggesting problematic racial segregation in charters. The obvious flaw here, however, is the comparison between a charter school and a traditional district; if we want to criticize charters for not being perfectly reflective of a broader area, we should also ask the same question of traditional schools. That is, how well do the traditional school campuses reflect the broader district's racial composition? When we ask this question, we generally find that neither charters nor traditional schools are reflective of the broader district or community.
A report with data from many large cities comparing charter school populations to the rest of the school system is at: http://www.publiccharters.org/data/files/Publication_docs/Geographic%20Location%20Details%20from%20the%20Dashboard%20Report_20120224T143955.pdf
3) Great news from an ed reformer friend in Dallas:
I wanted to share with you very meaningful progress and strategies going on in Dallas, TX, the 14th largest school district in the country with 160,000 students (95% non-Anglo, 87% socio-economic disadvantaged). Due to the work of a dedicated group of reformers, the following key strategic initiatives have been accomplished in just the last 12 months: (i) created Leadership DISD, an non-profit organization formed to train/educate 50-100 passionate citizens annually regarding what they need to know to play a leadership in our school district and serving as a great pipeline to identify new school board trustees; (ii) EducateDallas
, a PAC originated by the local business chamber to raise money to support reformist candidates; and (iii) Dallas Kids First, a grassroots PAC with 500+ members (parents, teachers, etc.) and growing fast that is focused on electioneering/canvassing/get out the vote efforts. Together, these efforts have created a robust pipeline of identified future trustees and in this cycle raised five times the amount of money historically raised for a school board election and almost doubled the turnout in the three board elections that occurred this last Saturday, with the PAC-endorsed reformist candidate winning EVERY election.
We now have a solid reformist board which will build upon the recent policy successes enacted in just the last year including (i) performance over seniority in all reassignment/termination decisions; (ii) elimination of the forced placement of ineffective teachers on unwilling principals; (iii) authorization of a new teacher evaluation system meaningfully incorporating student outcomes and (iv) execution of a five-year contract with Teach for America, reportedly the longest contract that TFA has ever signed with an urban school district in its history. On top of those efforts, we recently hired Mike Miles from Colorado Springs as our new superintendent, a former West Point/Army Ranger and Broad Fellow who announced in the last week a very student-focused mission focused on substantially improving teacher and leadership quality. He has announced that he will be conducting a national search to hire a new chief of schools, a new chief academic officer and 50 new principal candidates who will be trained to assume school leadership in the Fall of 2013 (see link to opportunities below).
Finally, in the last year we formed (i) Commit!, a backbone infrastructure organization (similar to the Strive effort within Cincinnati) serving all of Dallas County (2.5 million people and 800,000 children ages 0-22) and focused on scaling best practices across the region and helping coordinate state and local funding towards those efforts proven by data to be most effective and (ii) the Teaching Trust, an urban school leadership masters program housed on the campus of SMU and founded in part by the founder of Uplift Education, the region's largest public school network. Uplift now has 25 schools that will stabilize at over 13,000 students and has 10,000+ students on its wait list; in addition, the local KIPP network will be adding two more schools in Fall 2013. With a new mayor (Mike Rawlings) elected in June, 2011 on a platform to raise up and strongly support our public schools (and the knowledge that change is made easier with Texas being a right-to-work state), all of us are excited about the accelerated progress and prospects for our children and want people nationally to know about the significant leadership opportunities available within our public school systems today.
Applications within Dallas ISD: http://www.applitrack.com/dallasisd/onlineapp/default.aspx?Category=Central+Staff&
New Superintendent's Strategic Plan (Destination 2020): http://www.scribd.com/doc/93175971/Destination-2020-10-May-2012
4) Great to see:
www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/school-leaders-hope-tensions-ease-district-charter-schools-collaboration-launched-bronx-article-1.1079252#ixzz1vDs94MbL
The city Department of Education hopes to ease long-existing tensions between district and charter schools with a new collaboration set to kick off in the Bronx.
The District-Charter Compact is made up of public district schools and 85 charter schools across the city, and will start with a "Bronx Study Tour Program" for educators to share their best practices.
"I think, up until now, charters and districts haven't had a lot of communication," said Ken Baum, principal of one of the participating schools, the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science. "It's a wonderful opportunity to get people talking and share things we do well."
The initiative, launched with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will officially start in June with panels and meetings. Other model Bronx schools that have put out the welcome mat include Eagle Academy for Young Men, KIPP Academy Middle School and Bronx Charter School for Excellence. In each school, educators can observe classes, participate in professional development sessions and discuss common techniques.
"I'm looking forward to really begin sharing ideas, regardless of what our models are," said Charlene Reid, head of the Bronx Charter School for Excellence. "We all have the same goals. We're all NYC educators. We're excited to open up our doors for all educators who want to inquire and begin to work together, because these are all the same students in the Bronx and we want to deliver for them."
Parent activist Mona Davids, who has a daughter at Equality Charter School in the Bronx, said she hopes participants include the ones who need this initiative most - struggling schools and schools on the chopping block.
"They need to go and partner with the schools already on the hit list, and the schools that have received consecutive Cs, Ds and Fs, and give them the support that they need," said Davids, president of NYC Parents Union. "Since charters are supposed to be labs for innovation, I think they should be partnering with failing district schools."
5) The WSJ's Lisa Fleisher with more on the strong steps Bloomberg and Walcott are taking (with a great quote at the end about terrible teachers):
After years of trying to oust ineffective teachers by reforming the system, the Bloomberg administration is turning to options it already has available to try to prune the weakest educators from its ranks.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said Thursday the district would move to fire teachers who receive low ratings due to incompetence in two consecutive years if a new teacher-evaluation system isn't in place by the time school starts this fall.
He also proposed offering buyouts to teachers who have been floating in the system for more than a year without permanent classroom positions. The value of the buyouts would have to be negotiated with the teachers union.
Ridding schools of poorly performing teachers has been one of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's highest priorities, but his attempts to make sweeping institutional changes haven't always succeeded against union resistance. He lost a fight last year to end seniority protections during layoffs, and efforts to fire teachers for incompetence have been slow.
…Joanne Pezzolo, a high-school English teacher from Staten Island, said she would jump at the chance to take a buyout. But at age 53, she said she can't afford one unless it's about half her $79,000 annual salary. Ms. Pezzolo, who was cut from a school that had declining enrollment, said she sees both sides of the argument. She hated traveling among schools and believed there was a stigma attached to teachers in the ATR pool.
But when she found a longer-term spot at a school in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill, she said she saw some atrocious teachers. One man came in, put his coat over his head, dragged a few chairs together and went to sleep, she recalled. Other teachers refused to leave their drivers' licenses at the front desk in exchange for a bathroom key.
"They shouldn't get a buyout," she said. "They shouldn't even get a paycheck. They should just be fired."
6) Speaking of terrible teachers, Ravitch denies their existence:
I thought and thought but I couldn't remember a single teacher in my own experience, or that of my children or grandchildren, who was a drunk-on-the-job teacher. I went to ordinary public schools in Houston, and I had my share of ordinary teachers. I remember someone told me once that if you have even one great teacher in your lifetime, you are blessed. I was doubly blessed, as I had at least two.
But I must say, I never came across any of the horrible men or women who seem to give the reformers sleepless nights.
If they exist, and I suppose they must, then they should be fired in their first year on the job. If not, then their principal is not doing his or her job.
Note how she talks about how she went to "ordinary public schools in Houston" (in an era long before unions made it impossible to get rid of terrible teachers" and then mentions her own children, leaving the reader with the clear impression that they, too, went to public schools. NOT! This is typical Ravitch disingenuousness, which is much more common that outright lies (though she tells plenty of those too). In fact, Ravitch sent her children to the private, super elite, super expensive (tuition this year is $38,710; see: http://www.dalton.org/podium/default.aspx?t=153746) Dalton School on the Upper East Side, smack in the middle of the wealthiest Census tract in the U.S.:
Diane Ravitch Sent Her Sons To Private School. According to the Washington Post, "Assistant Secretary Diane S. Ravitch, who lived in New York City before moving to Washington last year, sent her now-grown sons to private schools." [Washington Post, 5/5/92]
Note: This was reprinted in The Houston Chronicle
Ravitch's Two Sons Went To Dalton, A "Selective Manhattan Prep School". According to a New York Times article titled "SCHOOL CHOICE; Where They Send Their Own", "DIANE RAVITCH. Research professor of education at New York University. Where: Two sons -- an investment banker and a writer -- went to the selective Manhattan prep school Dalton. Why: In the mid- and late 60's, "public schools in the city were wracked with political and racial strife," Dr. Ravitch says. She has never regretted choosing Dalton. "Both studied classical languages -- Greek and Latin -- lots of history, Shakespeare, science and mathematics. They were extremely well prepared for college." [New York Times, 8/3/03]
Ravitch "Wishes All Children Had The Education Hers Received At A Progressive Private School". According to a review of one of Ravitch's books in Radical Teacher, "Ravitch does say she wishes all children had the education hers received at a progressive private school in New York City, Dalton, with its curriculum history and literature, and with great teachers who made ideas come alive." [Radical Teacher, 3/22/04]
An Article About Diane Ravitch's Ex-Husband Mentions That Their Two Sons Went The Private Dalton School. According to the New York Times, "Most distressing of all, state and city school officials say, is that Mr. Ravitch's hands-on experience in elementary and secondary education is almost nonexistent, limited to a brief stint as chairman of the board of the Dalton School, the elite private academy on the Upper East Side that his two sons attended in the 1970's." [New York Times, 9/17/95]
To be clear, I live in that very Census tract and send my three daughters to a similarly elite, expensive private school – but there's one difference: I DON'T TRY TO HIDE THIS FACT! Union hacks have tried to make hay of this, but my answer is simple: "I've seen the difference a high-quality education has made in my life and the lives of my children, so all I'm fighting for is for EVERY child to have the same opportunity!"
7) RiShawn Biddle takes on Ravitch and other education traditionalists:
One of the most-amazing aspects of the battle over the reform of American public education is that the lack of thoughtfulness among education traditionalists in their defense of failed policies and practices that have done little more than condemn 1.2 million children a year to poverty and prison. This is especially true when it comes to how teaching and curricula should be provided to kids, and whether the families that love them should be able to choose and shape the conditions in which their kids should learn. From where they sit, public education can't possibly include public charter schools, publicly-financed school voucher programs, or even online providers paid by states (and chosen by families) because these are operations that aren't run by traditional districts with elected (or mayor-appointed) school boards and executives. This is why they constantly try to argue that charters – which are run by nonprofit and corporate entities — aren't "public schools", even when they are clearly defined as such under state and federal law, and why they argue that the very existence of charters is an affront to "local control" by school districts. And it is why folks such as once-respectable (and now largely-discredited) educational historian Diane Ravitch constantly proclaim as she does today that moves such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's successful effort to expand the state's voucher program to serve as many as 300,000 more students is "dismantling public education".
Reformers know this collective line of argument is one of the most-tiresome (and infantile) education traditionalists make, and one that is the most-circular. This is because traditionalists base their notions not on facts or data, but on mistaken interpretations of the very laws that govern public education in this country. Yet it is important to constantly point out this faulty anti-intellectual thinking. Why? Because challenging the illogic posed in traditionalist arguments is key to advancing reform.
8) Case study 5,347,341 of the unions defending ANY teacher, no matter how bad (from EAG):
Wisconsin union defends former teacher imprisoned for molesting student
The strange case of Kurt Kostelecky has cost taxpayers at least $64,000
WAUSAUKEE, Wis. - To more fully understand the destructive influence Big Labor has on public schools, consider the case of a former Wisconsin teacher, Kurt Kostelecky.
Kostelecky was convicted last summer for having sexual contact with a freshman female student during the 2008-09 school year, and is currently serving a 10-year prison term. (He claims the student came on to him, and he " couldn't say no.")
But that doesn't mean Kostelecky's former employer, the Wausaukee school district, can wash its hands of him. The convicted child molester was a member of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, which is still waging a legal fight on his behalf.
WEAC is suing the district over allegations it improperly reduced Kostelecky's teaching load as retribution because he "challenged district policies" back in 2009, reports Fox11online.com.
An Internet search indicates that Kostelecky taught shop class for the district, and had his teaching load reduced from five-eighths of a full-time teaching position to three-eighths in 2009. The district was facing a budget deficit, and claims the reduction in hours was an effort to save money. The union says it was an effort to convince a trouble-making teacher to resign, the news outlet reports.
The fact that Kostelecky is now a convicted child molester, and was only a part-time teacher who should've thought twice about shooting his mouth off, hasn't stopped the union from continuing its lawsuit, which has dragged on for three years and cost taxpayers at least $64,000.
Not only is the union wasting taxpayers' money – probably enough to pay the salary and benefits of a beginning teacher – it's also frittering away WEAC members' dues dollars on a pointless lawsuit.
The Kostelecky case is a perfect example of how teacher unions cause dissension within a community and waste school dollars on issues that don't benefit children in the least.
WEAC has been on quite a losing streak lately, as Kathleen Falk's defeat in last week's recall primary election demonstrates. By lawyering up on behalf of a convicted child molester, it seems the union wants to prove that it's still relevant.
Regardless, Wausaukee taxpayers can't be too impressed with the union's wasteful behavior, and we suspect rank-and-file WEAC members aren't impressed, either.
9) 60 Minutes did a segment on a network of charter schools run by a Turkish imam, trying to make it seem like there was something nefarious going on, but I checked with some friends and learned that these are excellent schools, so this smacks of xenophobia to me. The video is at: www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7408418n and the transcript is below:
(CBS News) Fethullah Gulen is the Turkish Islamic cleric at the center of a popular and growing movement, with millions of disciples who follow his teachings of tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and education. Some have even started a chain of successful charter schools here in the U.S., with an emphasis on math and science. Yet Gulen himself remains shrouded in mystery. Lesley Stahl travels from Turkey to Texas to report on how the movement is spreading, and on the man behind it all.
The following script is from "The Gulen Movement" which aired on May 13, 2012. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On, producer.
Over the past decade scores of charter schools have popped up all over the U.S., all sharing some common features. Most of them are high-achieving academically, they stress math and science, and one more thing: they're founded and largely run by immigrants from Turkey who are carrying out the teachings of a Turkish Islamic cleric: Fethullah Gulen.
He's the spiritual leader of a growing and increasingly influential force in the Muslim world -- known as "The Gulen Movement" -- with millions upon millions of disciples who compare him to Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Gulen promotes tolerance, interfaith dialog, and above-all: he promotes education. And yet he's a mystery man -- he's never seen or heard in public -- and the more power he gains, the more questions are raised about his motives and the schools.
10) Harlem Village Academies got Hugh Jackman to tape a funny teacher recruiting video for them: www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=314744511933633 (2:48)
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April 26, 2012 – 2:56 pm | By Neerav Kingsland | 1 comment
http://titleonederland.blogs.thompson.com/2012/04/26/top-third-tina-bottom-third-barry
There's been some good blogging lately on how to interpret the studies on Teach For America (TFA) teacher effectiveness – see Matthew Di Carlo and Adam Ozimek. But neither addresses the research from a Relinquisher standpoint. Here's what they say:
Matt's takeaway: TFA teachers are by most standards "talented" – i.e., they went to selective universities, graduated at the top of their class, are motivated, and work hard. But they don't dramatically outperform traditional teachers. So perhaps that link between recruiting "talented" teachers and increasing test scores isn't as tight as it might seem.
Adam's takeaway: TFA teachers get five weeks of training and achieve roughly the same results as teachers who go through much longer university-based training programs. So imagine what "talented" TFA-type folks could do if they actually had more training.
Both interesting points, and well worth thinking more about. And newer research coming out may show even stronger TFA effects. But there seems to be a limit to what we can extrapolate from these studies, as the TFA studies only tell us how well TFA teachers compare to other teachers when everyone is teaching in generally mediocre schools that operate in a government monopoly. In the studies, the system is a given.
Now, if you're a Relinquisher who believes government should regulate but not operate schools, immediate questions arise – primary amongst them: Do these studies tell us anything about how different teachers achieve in different environments? Not really.
Here's an analogy:
Let's take two lawyers – Top-Third Tina (went to Harvard Law) and Bottom-Third Barry (went to lower tier law school) both pass the bar exam. Due to magical forces, they do not get to choose where they work (sound familiar?). Interestingly enough, they are assigned to the same law firm. It happens to be a mediocre firm and here's what happens:
Now let's re-run the scenario. This time, Tina and Barry both get placed at an excellent law firm. Here's what happens:
Now let's apply this to education – here's what we might see:
This is my theory, at least. Why? Well, it seems logical. Institutions matter. Also, many high-performing charter schools recruit heavily from TFA, which leads me to believe that in high-performing environments TFA teachers add a lot of value, especially when they are trained correctly and given increasing responsibility as they develop – and, of course, they are most likely cost effective as well.
The takeaway: in some schools, Top-Third Tina and Bottom-Third Barry will perform roughly the same after two years. In others they will not.
That's my hunch at least. But, unfortunately, we have no idea if this is true because the TFA studies only measure how well TFA teachers perform in mediocre schools.
So, here's me bowing out of the TFA research debate. Until someone does further research, that is.
Tom Kane? Linda Darling Hammond? Roland Fryer? Eric Hanushek? Doug Harris?
We await your work.
Neerav Kingsland is Chief Strategy Officer of New Schools for New Orleans.
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Friday, May 18, 2012
Earlier this week, NAPCS published a report on public charter schools meeting the diverse demands of their communities. This question of diversity (particularly, racial and socioeconomic diversity) is important to all public schools, including public charter schools. Groups such as UCLA's Civil Rights Project pay close attention to racial segregation in all public schools and continue to find, for example, that "the children in United States schools are much poorer than they were decades ago and more separated in highly unequal schools."
Unfortunately, many charter school opponents have seized this very real issue and misused it as an opportunity to bash charter schools. Just do a simple Google search on "segregation and charter schools" and you will find numerous hits in which news outlets or websites uncritically repeat the allegations of fervent charter bashers.
These claims reappear every so often and the problems are many. Let me name a few.
1. Shotgun reports. "Analyses" that take this shotgun approach present tables upon tables of data aiming to show (somehow) that charter schools are simultaneously schools of white flight that "cream" only the best students and miserable places in which poor children are trapped each day. Each of these conflicting claims is then backed up with an isolated example or two of a heavily white or heavily minority charter school. Of course, such reports make no mention of the numerous heavily white or heavily minority traditional schools surrounding the charter schools in question.
2. Data-free studies. Some reports make almost no attempt to gather data. These reports often include phrases like, "charter schools are among the most segregated in the district." For example, the NEA Today website points to a March newspaper article and claims that "Some of the nation's most segregated schools are charter schools, where students are often isolated by race, income, language and special education status". While this blanket claim may be true (depending upon how segregation is defined), it is also true that the other segregated schools, indeed most of the segregated schools, are traditional schools. This is often the case in districts that are heavily segregated by neighborhoods where the traditional schools are also segregated.
3. Compared to perfection. Charter opponents sometimes conduct studies asking whether the racial and economic composition of charter schools is perfectly reflective of the sending traditional school district (see Miron et. al., February 2010). The unsurprising result is, no, most charters do not look exactly like the nearby school districts and the authors then draw conclusions suggesting problematic racial segregation in charters. The obvious flaw here, however, is the comparison between a charter school and a traditional district; if we want to criticize charters for not being perfectly reflective of a broader area, we should also ask the same question of traditional schools. That is, how well do the traditional school campuses reflect the broader district's racial composition? When we ask this question, we generally find that neither charters nor traditional schools are reflective of the broader district or community. Check out the graph below showing data for a large southern district; the Y-axis represents the number of schools within the bands represented on the X-axis. For example, two of the schools in the district had minority student percentages between 20.0 percent and 24.9 percent while 13 schools had minority student percentages between 95 percent and 100 percent and so on. The take-away point here is that most of the traditional public schools do not reflect the overall district. In a district with 78 percent minority students, half of the schools are heavily minority schools (90 percent or more minority students) and one-quarter of the schools are disproportionately white.
[green bars show the only diverse schools in the district]
Consequently, the relevant question is not whether charter schools reflect the broader district; the question is whether charter schools are more or less reflective of the district than the traditional public schools in the broader community.
4. Studies at the state or national level. A perfect example of this type of analysis is a February 2010 study by the aforementioned Civil Rights Project (CRP) titled "Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards." The key flaw in this oft-referenced study is that the CRP authors focus on the fraction of students in highly segregated minority schools, and compare the figure for all charter schools to that of all traditional public schools. This is clearly an inappropriate analytic strategy because the geographic placement of public charter schools practically ensures that they will enroll higher percentages of minorities than will the average traditional school. As we show in our 2010 Education Next article (with the data attached so that anyone can choose to review or re-analyze it), our more appropriate analytic strategy clearly demonstrates how the CRP authors overstated their findings.
These are simply examples of the numerous ways to unfairly attack charter schools based on the demographic characteristics of the students that they serve. There are many others; indeed, some reports use no data at all but simply make reference to other flawed studies and yet the conclusions drawn by these reports are treated as new by those eager to bash charter schools. See, for example, the recent report called Chartering Equity that was used by charter critics to "show" that segregation is fostered by public charter schools.
* * * *
We have worked on this a great deal and have tried to figure out the best way to assess the relative racial integration and segregation at charter schools. It is complicated and requires that the researchers make several decisions (which can be debated) about how to define integration or segregation. Nevertheless, in recent years, some studies have done a good job of attacking this question. See, for example, the thorough analysis by the RAND Corporation in 2009. Good studies such as this generally compare the relative integration or the racial compositions of charter schools to that of nearby traditional public schools.
Thoughtful analyses find that students who move into charter schools mostly choose schools with racial compositions similar to those of the traditional public schools they exited. These results are not uniform; they vary state by state (for example, we find in Florida that charter schools and traditional public schools are similar in their "reflectiveness" of the broader community; in Delaware, however, charters are not as reflective of the community as are traditional public schools.) Results also vary by metropolitan area (in Philadelphia, 65 percent of the students in both charters and traditional schools attend highly segregated schools; in Atlanta, only 25 percent of charter students attend highly segregated schools while 70 percent of traditional public schools students attend such segregated schools).
Of course, schools (charters or traditional) that are the most "segregated" sit in geographic areas with high concentrations of poor and minority students. These families have the fewest choices; when they are dissatisfied with the schooling options they have, charters often open to serve these disadvantaged students. These are issues related to poverty and residential segregation — these are not charter problems!
In short, the claims that charter schools enhance segregation across the board are most certainly false and more than likely a thinly-veiled attempt of charter opponents to slow the charter movement and limit choices options. And, to cast these attacks as a defense of racial integration is simply disingenuous. For example, the majority of students in center cities, in both the public charter sector and in the traditional public sector, attend intensely segregated minority schools. We know this, any casual observer of urban schools knows this, and the critics of charter schools know this.
Thus, anyone truly interested in racial integration for students (and not simply interested in attacking charter schools) is looking in the wrong direction by focusing on the failings of charter schools. Charters serve fewer than three percent of US public school children; the remaining 97 percent are compelled to attend traditional public schools. Anyone genuinely concerned with enhancing racial integration should be channeling their energy toward reducing segregation in the traditional sector.
Finally, when critics use the term segregation to malign charter schools, it might be viewed as disrespectful to those who have suffered from formalized segregation in the past or to those who currently suffer from residential segregation. It does not seem to be the right term to use when referring to the results of active choices made by families of minority students. Segregation connotes a lack of freedom; this situation feels like the opposite. The fact that some poor students are free to flee segregated traditional public schools for similarly segregated charters cannot be viewed as an indictment of charters. Indeed, leaders of charter organizations are quick to state that they are honored to serve minority families who choose the charter schools after a search for attractive schooling options. It is simply wrong to compare these active parental choices to the forced segregation of our nation's past.
Gary W. Ritter, Professor of Education and Public Policy, University of Arkansas
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After years of trying to oust ineffective teachers by reforming the system, the Bloomberg administration is turning to options it already has available to try to prune the weakest educators from its ranks.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said Thursday the district would move to fire teachers who receive low ratings due to incompetence in two consecutive years if a new teacher-evaluation system isn't in place by the time school starts this fall.
He also proposed offering buyouts to teachers who have been floating in the system for more than a year without permanent classroom positions. The value of the buyouts would have to be negotiated with the teachers union.
Ridding schools of poorly performing teachers has been one of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's highest priorities, but his attempts to make sweeping institutional changes haven't always succeeded against union resistance. He lost a fight last year to end seniority protections during layoffs, and efforts to fire teachers for incompetence have been slow.
The buyouts are intended to put a dent in a group of about 830 teachers who have been unable to find jobs in the city's public schools but have tenure protection. About 475 currently would be eligible for a buyout, and most of the group would be eligible by autumn.
Some teachers in the so-called Absent Teacher Reserve pool were let go by their principals, while others were in schools that were closed by the city. A few were previously in the infamous "rubber rooms," where teachers facing disciplinary procedures did little work while collecting paychecks.
"Every dollar we save, we can use to benefit our students instead of wasting it on teachers who probably chose the wrong profession," Mr. Walcott said during an address at the Sheraton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
The average salary for teachers in the pool is $82,420, but the city saved about $5 million this year by using them as substitutes throughout the system.
Similar buyouts have been used in Washington, D.C., Dallas and Houston, with offers of, for instance, $20,000 for the most senior teachers. Mr. Walcott said New York's would be "more attractive than any we've seen across the nation—for teachers, and for the taxpayers of New York City."
He didn't, however, provide an estimated cost of the proposal. In his speech, Mr. Walcott said the city was spending $100 million on the salaries for teachers in the pool, but his office later said the figure was $68.5 million for salaries, a number that jumped to $93 million when benefits costs were included.
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said the union has approached both Mr. Walcott and his predecessor to propose buyouts but were brushed back. He called the plan a "nice change of heart."
"It would have been easier if [Mr. Walcott] called me first," he said. "He might have been able to do a speech about how it's already done and negotiated."
He questioned why Mr. Bloomberg has waited so long to try to fire teachers with two straight years of an "unsatisfactory" rating, a power the administration has always had but left up to principals' discretion. Of the roughly 75,000 city teachers, 235 have been rated "unsatisfactory" for incompetence for two consecutive years.
Like districts throughout New York state, the city has been negotiating with its teachers' union over a new evaluation system that makes it easier to fire teachers. Under state law, the city must have a new, four-tiered job-performance review in place by January or lose a small amount of state funding.
The Absent Teacher Reserve pool was established in the 2005 teachers' contract, when forced job-placement within the school system ended. Both teachers and principals had to accept each other, or teachers would be on the payroll without a permanent position, often serving as long-term substitutes.
This year, teachers without permanent positions have been assigned to schools as substitutes for a week at a time. After the week is up, they rotate to another school.
The Department of Education said this was intended as a sort of speed-dating: introduce as many teachers and principals as possible, and hope they find a match. But critics called the procedure a hardship intended to push out teachers by forcing them to commute to different locations across the city.
Joanne Pezzolo, a high-school English teacher from Staten Island, said she would jump at the chance to take a buyout. But at age 53, she said she can't afford one unless it's about half her $79,000 annual salary. Ms. Pezzolo, who was cut from a school that had declining enrollment, said she sees both sides of the argument. She hated traveling among schools and believed there was a stigma attached to teachers in the ATR pool.
But when she found a longer-term spot at a school in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill, she said she saw some atrocious teachers. One man came in, put his coat over his head, dragged a few chairs together and went to sleep, she recalled. Other teachers refused to leave their drivers' licenses at the front desk in exchange for a bathroom key.
"They shouldn't get a buyout," she said. "They shouldn't even get a paycheck. They should just be fired."
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May 10, 2012 //
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/05/10/what-about-all-those-bad-teachers/
Marc Tucker has an interesting blog today in Education Week (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2012/05/teacher_quality_and_teacher_accountability.html) about teachers. He recounts his many encounters with incompetent, drunk-on-the-job teachers. But he uses this beginning to say that we really need to give more thought to helping teachers, encouraging the best teachers, and improving the conditions of teachers so as to attract excellent candidates in the future.
I thought and thought but I couldn't remember a single teacher in my own experience, or that of my children or grandchildren, who was a drunk-on-the-job teacher. I went to ordinary public schools in Houston, and I had my share of ordinary teachers. I remember someone told me once that if you have even one great teacher in your lifetime, you are blessed. I was doubly blessed, as I had at least two.
But I must say, I never came across any of the horrible men or women who seem to give the reformers sleepless nights.
If they exist, and I suppose they must, then they should be fired in their first year on the job. If not, then their principal is not doing his or her job.
From all I have seen of the research, the multiple-choice standardized tests that are now in common use will not reveal who those "bad" teachers are. Who knows, the "bad" teachers might be extra good at drilling kids on test questions. And we might end up giving bonuses to "bad" teachers.
When I spoke in Missouri a couple of years ago, I met hundreds of teachers after the event, as I usually do. So many told me that their father or mother had been a teacher before them. I realized that these are the teachers we have now, in the towns, villages, and cities of America. And in the future we will have their sons and daughters in the classrooms. We owe them a good start. We owe them respect for the hard work they do for all of us. We owe them good leadership. We owe them the autonomy to make decisions in their classrooms, rather than to be treated as automatons or robots. And we owe it to them and their colleagues to treat teaching as a true profession, not as a temp job meant for young college graduates who will be gone in two or three years.
Diane
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May 8, 2012 by RiShawn Biddle
http://dropoutnation.net/2012/05/08/diane-ravitch-and-other-education-traditionalists-dont-know-what-public-education-is/
One of the most-amazing aspects of the battle over the reform of American public education is that the lack of thoughtfulness among education traditionalists in their defense of failed policies and practices that have done little more than condemn 1.2 million children a year to poverty and prison. This is especially true when it comes to how teaching and curricula should be provided to kids, and whether the families that love them should be able to choose and shape the conditions in which their kids should learn. From where they sit, public education can't possibly include public charter schools, publicly-financed school voucher programs, or even online providers paid by states (and chosen by families) because these are operations that aren't run by traditional districts with elected (or mayor-appointed) school boards and executives. This is why they constantly try to argue that charters – which are run by nonprofit and corporate entities — aren't "public schools", even when they are clearly defined as such under state and federal law, and why they argue that the very existence of charters is an affront to "local control" by school districts. And it is why folks such as once-respectable (and now largely-discredited) educational historian Diane Ravitch constantly proclaim as she does today that moves such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's successful effort to expand the state's voucher program to serve as many as 300,000 more students is "dismantling public education".
Reformers know this collective line of argument is one of the most-tiresome (and infantile) education traditionalists make, and one that is the most-circular. This is because traditionalists base their notions not on facts or data, but on mistaken interpretations of the very laws that govern public education in this country. Yet it is important to constantly point out this faulty anti-intellectual thinking. Why? Because challenging the illogic posed in traditionalist arguments is key to advancing reform.
Reformers must constantly point to education traditionalists that public education is ultimately a state government function. All state constitutions charge state governments with the role of providing "free public education" in one form or another, from deciding how education should be financed to how it should be delivered to children and families. So states can shape public education in any way it wants so long as it is allowed in their respective constitutions; if vouchers are allowed to be used as a means for providing public education in a respective state, than the state can do it; same if the state wants to allow for (and finance) public charter schools, blended and virtual learning providers, even homeschooling and DIY education efforts by collections of families and communities.
It must also be pointed out that districts, like other municipal governments within states, are merely recognized as arms of state governments as defined under those constitutions (as well as by the federal government through the No Child Left Behind Act). The U.S. Supreme Court said as much a century ago in the Hunter v. Pittsburgh ruling. This means that districts have no ability for independent action outside of what state governments decide. If a state decides that it wants to allow nonprofit and for-profit organizations to provide education alongside districts, this can be done and the district has no say in it. It also means that districts have no ability to decide whether the financing for education provided by local taxpayers and the state can remain with them even if the children and families no longer use the district schools that once served them.
Reformers need to remind traditionalists that their opposition to the expansion of vouchers and other forms of school choice is merely a legacy of the 19th-century religious (and ethnic) bigotry of Know-Nothings and Unitarian Protestants toward Catholics, all but some Protestant denominations, and even American Indians. The Blaine laws that ban school vouchers and other public school dollars for educating kids in parochial settings, for example, were crafted specifically to force the children of Irish Catholic immigrants to become good Americans who followed the Unitarian-inspired civic religion pushed earlier in the century by Horace Mann and his allies. Before that, Protestants, fearful of the influx of Irish Catholics entering the nation (and that they may attempt to put the nation under the control of the Pope), did all they could to effectively squelch Catholicism; in fact, it was this bigotry that led to the mass formation of Catholic diocesan schools that still remain the nation's second-largest collection of education providers. And let's not forget the federal government's effort to "kill the Indian, save the man" through Bureau of Indian Education-operated boarding schools that forced kids off reservations and subjected them to educational, physical, and emotional abuse.
Then there is the argument that private-sector involvement in education, be it through companies or nonprofits, is somehow evil. This is a traditionalist argument reformers must also shut down because it is based on a senseless belief that somehow free enterprise and the operations involved in it are somehow evil while government is naturally good and virtuous. Anyone who has lived through Watergate, the Iran-Contra scandal, and even the recent financial meltdown knows that there is nothing true about it. There's nothing inherently virtuous about government-run district schools or anything evil in utero about corporations providing schools. The tax status of the organizations providing education don't matter.
More importantly, in posing these arguments, traditionalists fail to remember that companies and nonprofits are already critical players in how districts provide public education, from publishing textbooks to providing accounting services. Whether or not those private operators always do a good job in those aspects (or, more importantly, if districts do a good enough job of managing their contractors) is a different discussion. But the reality is that public education is quite dependent on the private sector in order to provide some of the most-critical aspects of educating kids (and especially dependent on companies for the taxes that fund their operations in the first place). This fact should be pointed out ad nauseam.
And finally, reformers must point out to traditionalists that public education is not about the kind of organization that provides instruction and curricula, but how it is financed and regulated. Charter schools, private schools, online schools, DIY operations, and even teachers working together or on their own, are as capable to provide high-quality education (and even promote good citizenship) as a traditional district. Based on the track record of late for traditional districts these days, one can even say that the bureaucratic model is outdated and obsolete for this purpose. What matters more is not whether the school operators are government or private, but whether they provide our children with good-to-great teachers, strong, comprehensive college-preparatory curricula, and cultures of genius that nurture the genius inherent in all kids. Those school operators that don't provide this (or behave illegally and unethically), be they traditional, charter, or private, should be shut down and not get public funding, while those that do the job deserve praise and support.
The warped, anti-intellectual thinking of education traditionalists deserves to be tossed into history's paper shredder. And as reformers, it is our job to battle faulty thinking from whoever poses it.
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May 13, 2012 7:04 PM
Over the past decade, followers of the mysterious Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen have opened scores of charter schools in the U.S., inspired by a man who is as powerful as he is reclusive. Lesley Stahl reports.
(CBS News) Fethullah Gulen is the Turkish Islamic cleric at the center of a popular and growing movement, with millions of disciples who follow his teachings of tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and education. Some have even started a chain of successful charter schools here in the U.S., with an emphasis on math and science. Yet Gulen himself remains shrouded in mystery. Lesley Stahl travels from Turkey to Texas to report on how the movement is spreading, and on the man behind it all.
The following script is from "The Gulen Movement" which aired on May 13, 2012. Lesley Stahl is the correspondent. Shachar Bar-On, producer.
Over the past decade scores of charter schools have popped up all over the U.S., all sharing some common features. Most of them are high-achieving academically, they stress math and science, and one more thing: they're founded and largely run by immigrants from Turkey who are carrying out the teachings of a Turkish Islamic cleric: Fethullah Gulen.
He's the spiritual leader of a growing and increasingly influential force in the Muslim world -- known as "The Gulen Movement" -- with millions upon millions of disciples who compare him to Ghandi and Martin Luther King. Gulen promotes tolerance, interfaith dialog, and above-all: he promotes education. And yet he's a mystery man -- he's never seen or heard in public -- and the more power he gains, the more questions are raised about his motives and the schools.
[Lesley Stahl: Hi everyone.
Students: Hi.]
This is the Harmony School in Houston, part of a rapidly expanding chain of 36 charter schools in Texas. They serve mostly underprivileged students and they all emphasize math and science.
[Student: Inside there is an elastic collision between the gas particles.
Student: What this is is a static electricity generator?]
Class work stresses hands-on experiments and competitiveness. Students made this hovercraft out of leaf-blowers for a science contest.
[Lesley Stahl: It's great!]
Being a charter chain means these are public schools, costing tax payers nearly $150 million a year.
[Lesley Stahl: So you don't even have a drivers' license yet?
Student: But I have a robotics license!]
Julie Norton is an administrator with the Harmony chain of schools.
Julie Norton: So we have about 20,000 students.
Lesley Stahl: Is there a waiting list?
Julie Norton: Yes, we have a waiting list. We have approximately 30,000 students on our waiting list. We have more students on the waiting list than we have enrolled in the schools.
The education here gets high marks, as students get state-of-the-art technology and extensive one-on-one tutoring.
[Lesley Stahl: Do you get excited to come to school?
Student: Yea I wake up like whooo.]
The enthusiasm is hard to miss, as is the fact that many of the teachers are Turkish, some just recently arrived and hard to understand.
[Lesley Stahl: When did you get here, to the United States?
Teacher: (unintelligible)]
There are a total of about 130 charter schools like Harmony in 26 states. Together they form the largest collection of charter schools in the country. Here's what's curious: they're founded and run by immigrant businessmen and academics from Turkey. Why are they building public schools here?
Well, the answer seems to lie with this mystery man: the Turkish imam Fethullah Gulen who tells his followers that to be devout Muslims they shouldn't build mosques - they should build schools; and not to teach religion, but science. In sermons on the web, he actually says: "Studying physics, mathematics, and chemistry is worshipping God." So Gulen's followers have gone out and built over 1,000 schools around the globe - from Turkey to Togo; from Taiwan to Texas.
Alp Aslandogan: His message is that if you want to solve any social problem for the longer term, the solution has to go through education.
Businessman Alp Aslandogan chairs a foundation in Houston that advances Gulen's teachings.
Lesley Stahl: It's so counterintuitive that people from Turkey would come here to get involved here in education.
Alp Aslandogan: People do go to other countries, including Africa. The United States, especially in math and science, is not really good. And many parents complain about that. So there is a need for skilled teachers in the United States in that fields.
We went to Turkey to learn more and found Gulen's schools are everywhere and considered the best. They're often multi-million dollar hi-tech facilities where girls are equal to boys and English is taught starting in first grade.
Gulen didn't only influence education. Starting in the late 60s, as a young imam, he urged crowds of middle class Turks to learn from the West and embrace its values - including an unexpected one: making money. In this Internet sermon, he even told followers: "If you don't seek ways to be wealthy...that is a sin in the eyes of God." So his disciples in Turkey became successful businessmen and built a multi-billion dollar Gulen empire that beyond the schools, includes TV stations, a major bank, Turkey's largest trade association, and biggest newspaper.
Andrew Finkel: They love capitalism. It really is very much a business network as much as a religion in many ways.
Andrew Finkel, who's been a freelance reporter in Turkey for 25 years, says Gulen tells his followers to reach out to people of other faiths.
Andrew Finkel: Tolerance is a very key, key part of their message. And you know, it's not about, the use of force.
Lesley Stahl: It's as far away from Osama bin Laden, as you can get within the religion?
Andrew Finkel: Very, very different. Yes.
Lesley Stahl: So I guess one of the big questions is what kind of an Islamic leader is Gulen?
Andrew Finkel: He leads by his own charismatic personality.
Lesley Stahl: Would you call it a personality cult?
Andrew Finkel: Yes.
To his followers, Gulen's like a living prophet, and he used his influence to change the course of Turkey's politics; helping to make it a functioning moderate Islamic democracy.
One thing we couldn't find in Turkey was Gulen. Actually, very few people ever see him in person. He preaches via webcasts from a prayer room in an isolated and unlikely location. For over a decade, Gulen has been living in self-imposed exile and seclusion in, of all places, the Poconos - in this gated Pennsylvania retreat.
Lesley Stahl: So does Mr. Gulen live in this building?
Bekir Aksoy: Yes, in this building.
To our surprise Bekir Aksoy, who heads the retreat, invited us in even though Gulen had turned us down for an interview.
Lesley Stahl: So this is the prayer room. Oh, is that Mr. Gulen's seat? His chair?
Bekir Aksoy: Right. Whenever he comes out of his room he sits there and he speaks from there.
Lesley Stahl: And that's where he lives? Behind the door?
Bekir Aksoy: That is the door behind which Mr. Gulen lives. That is his private room.
Gulen lives there alone -- he's never married. The pile of medicine bottles are a reminder that at 70 plus, he's diabetic with heart and kidney problems.
Lesley Stahl: Will he come out? Will we get to see him?
Bekir Aksoy: Ah... for the last five, six months he's very, very ill really. When he is ill, he does not accept visitors.
When Gulen came to the U.S. in 1999, it was for medical treatment. But then this video surfaced in which he seems to order his flock to surreptitiously take over key government positions in Turkey in a stealth Islamic coup. Accused of treason by the government at the time, Gulen decided to stay in the Poconos -- even after he was cleared in 2008 in Abstenia.
Lesley Stahl: Why is he still in America?
Andrew Finkel: Well, I think if he were to come back, then there would be such a brouhaha and it would-- I think-- he would be afraid of being seen as being too powerful.
Too powerful because it seems his followers have taken over key positions in the Turkish government and the police.
Andrew Finkel: You know, if he says "jump," people jump. There's no doubt about that.
Lesley Stahl: You know we have confronted real fear about this movement, particularly when we've tried to get critics to give us an interview. What are they afraid of?
Andrew Finkel: There's a fear of reprisal. I mean, it is the case that two or three people who've written books highly critical of the Gulen movement are now in jail.
Seeming to have such power, this "Wizard of Oz" recluse invites conspiracy theories that he's running Turkey from the Poconos and is bent on global Muslim domination. His movement does lack transparency: its funding, hierarchy, and ambitions remain hidden -- leading our State Department to wonder in cables between Ankara and Washington if Gulen has an "insidious political agenda."
And now some of the suspicion revolves around the U.S. schools. Do they serve a function other than educating our kids? One accusation involves immigration fraud: that the schools are providing work visas for hundreds of Gulen followers from Turkey.
Lesley Stahl: And that the whole idea is just to get Turks to come into the United States and this is an easy avenue for them.
David Dunn: Which is just categorically not true.
David Dunn of the Texas Charter Schools Association says that because of a deficit of qualified Americans, the schools bring in math and science teachers from Turkey, as this list of visa applications indicates. Problem is -
Lesley Stahl: We've seen that some of these visas for Turkish teachers to come here are for English - for them to teach English. How does that make any sense?
David Dunn: I'm not aware of that. I don't-- I can't, I can't comment on that. I don't know. I have not looked intimately into the visas they bring in.
Lesley Stahl: We have English teachers in this country.
David Dunn: English teachers are typically not part of the critical -- or the deficit.
Mary Addi: Our tax dollars are paying for them to come over here and take our jobs.
Mary Addi was fired as a teacher from a school in Cleveland, Ohio -- part of a Gulen-inspired chain of 27 charter schools in the Midwest.
Mary Addi: They want to give you the impression that they're just hard-workin' guys over here to try to educate our kids because American teachers are just too stupid.
Lesley Stahl: As far as you know, why is an Islamic imam, which Gulen is, interested in setting up schools in the United States?
Mary Addi: Because it's a great money-making operation.
Gulen's followers can make money thru contracts to build and maintain the schools, but Addi has gone to law enforcement with charges that the schools also make money by bringing in foreign teachers in order to take a cut of their salaries. She says she learned this after marrying a Turkish teacher.
Mary Addi: And that's when he told me that every pay period, he would have to cash his check and give-- he had to give 40 percent of his check back because--
Lesley Stahl: Forty percent of his salary--
Mary Addi: --40 percent in cash. Yes.
Lesley Stahl: And you've turned documents over to various federal agencies that you say proves this on paper?
Mary Addi: Yes.
The schools dismiss Addi's claims, calling her a disgruntled employee. But federal authorities told us they take her seriously and are looking into allegations of immigration fraud and misuse of taxpayer money in various states, and whether it's somehow being funneled to the Gulen movement.
Then - there's the Internet, where there are incendiary blogs accusing the schools of secretly promoting "an Islamic agenda."
Lesley Stahl: You know there are various blogs that have accused these schools of being backdoor Madrassas.
David Dunn: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: So do you think there's a little bit Islamophobia involved?
David Dunn: I think there's clearly some anti-Islam bias involved in these blogs.
Actually, we looked into this and Islam is not taught at all. That would be illegal since these are public schools that go out of their way to distance themselves from any religious affiliation - even denying a connection to the Gulen movement.
David Dunn: I think what matters is the results in the classrooms. Are kids learning math, science, reading, writing at a superior level? And clearly in these schools that's happening.
It is happening: Newsweek voted two Harmony schools among America's top 10. More of these schools open every year across the country, and waiting lists just keep getting longer. Gulenists tell us the schools are about reading, writing, and arithmetic, not religion.
And Bekir Aksoy in the Poconos says the man behind the door has no hidden agenda: Fethullah Gulen hasn't even visited any of the schools.
Bekir Aksoy: He does not want to see the fruits of his work. He just speaks and encourages people to be good human beings.
Lesley Stahl: That's interesting because there are schools in Pennsylvania. I mean, not that far.
Bekir Aksoy: He has not seen any of them, believe me. He does not leave that room.
