Vakkas Dogantekin
13 April 2019•Update: 14 April 2019
ANKARA
A veteran U.S. education leader has blasted a for-profit school project run by the FETO terror group in the rural south.
After its 2016 attempted coup in Turkey was defeated, the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) has depended more heavily on its for-profit schools worldwide, even as the media and education professionals have sharply questioned the schools’ purposes and finances.
Commenting on a new FETO school in Alabama, Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education, said: "The Gulenists must think that people in Alabama are easy marks. They proposed to open a charter school in a rural county with good schools that didn’t want a charter school."
"Everyone warned Alabama officials to reject the proposal, even the National Association of Charter School Authorizers," Ravitch, now a professor of education at New York University, wrote on her blog late Friday.
Under the heading “Alabama: Why Did a Rural County Get a Gulen Charter with a Pricey CEO?” Ravitch also questioned the high salaries of the Gulen-affiliated administration at the Woodland Prep charter school, located in a poverty-stricken area.
She wrote that the school’s head “will have a base salary of $300,000 in one of the poorest states in the nation.”
Raising further questions about the school, Ravitch quoted in a report by the Alabama Political Reporter website: “Its land is owned by a shady Utah holding company. Its building is owned by a for-profit Arizona company. It will be managed by a for-profit Texas company that doesn’t employ a single Alabamian. … Its application was rejected by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which Alabama pays a hefty sum to review and approve charter applications.
"Woodland also is not welcome in Washington County, where residents turned up at a 10-1 ratio to speak out against it last year during community meetings.”
Ravitch, the author of many books on education, is a strong advocate of the public school system and a vocal critic of the Gulen charter schools in the U.S.
FETO and its U.S.-based leader, Fetullah Gulen, orchestrated the July 15, 2016 defeated coup which left 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured in Turkey.
FETO has a considerable presence outside Turkey, including private schools that serve as a revenue stream for the terror group. FETO runs some 150 charter schools in several states of the U.S.
