A True Sciolist: Donna Garner - 2

By Divya Mangwani
May 30, 2011 - Gulen and Charter Schools

I will continue to give my personal answers to Donna Garner’s groundless claims. In my last article, I briefly mentioned the superficial and mostly wrong perceptions and knowledge coming from Donna Garner, who even lacks the basic information despite continuously labeling some charter schools as “Gulen Charter Schools”. 

Claim: “I received this note from a local pastor:

Hi Donna,

The local Harmony Science Academy is obviously one of these schools.  One of our church families had a daughter there, but the Muslim influence and foundation of beliefs and practices led them to remove her.

Thanks for bringing attention to this.

R.” (Taken from her article on ISD Initiative website)

Answer: What a dubious and obscure claim! First of all, there is no name mentioned here. No name of the pastor or Harmony School, who has 33 campuses in Texas, is given. Why are you scared Ms. Garner? Do you think people will bug the pastor? Or you are just making up stories?

Looks like she is just making up brand-new stories. Secondly, I can also write similar things about any school or any other organization. “Hi Donna… The local elementary school here is one of these schools where you find child abuse. One of our church families had a son there, but the abusive manners of the teachers led me to remove my son.” Looks familiar right? I could have put a famous elementary school name and defamed their name.

Besides, if there were to be such influence, brainwashing or similar practices, some other parents would definitely pull out their kids and that would also hit the local and national headlines. Since it is illegal to teach religion in public schools, any contrary practice will put that school into trouble.

Before making an ambiguous claim, people should think twice, because these kinds of claims, without any backing factual data, could leave a permanent negative spot on the mentioned organizations.

Claim: Students in the Gulen (charter) schools celebrate various Turkish Muslim holidays (taken from her Education News article).

Answer: Superficial claims are abound. This was another one I came up while reading Donna Garner’s stories.

According to my research, there is no such Muslim celebration at Harmony Schools. Moreover, Donna Garner displays her ignorance again. The term “Turkish Muslim holidays”, if two Muslim religious festivals are meant (Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha) by this, is something non-existent and somewhat ridiculous concept. Muslims have two major religious holidays and you do not have to bring the adjective “Turkish” in front of the Muslim Holidays. On the other hand, such a celebration requires the witness of a couple of hundred students and some parents, administrators and other community members. At the end of the day, one would leak this “mysterious” and “secret” event to the media, wouldn’t s/he?

All these things point to one fact: Donna Garner is a couple of miles away from the facts. She just makes up the stories and throws mud on people. I would expect her to closely investigate the issue she is working on.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Source : http://gulenandcharterschools.blogspot.com/2011/05/true-sciolist-donna-garner-2.html

A True Sciolist: Donna Garner-1

By Dr. Kurt
May 24, 2011 - Gulen and Charter Schools

The charter school controversy is going on full throttle and some charter schools, infamously called Gulen Charter Schools, have recently become a scapegoat in this process.  After finding some information Peggy Littleton, I have turned my attention to other attackers. Recently, Donna Garner has made some buzz on Harmony Schools in Texas. She has some accusations on so-called Gulen Charter Schools at different internet sources and as a scholar, I made my own investigation with those schools and refuted Garner’s groundless accusations. Her knowledge in those issues is just superficial and she doesn’t even know  he simplest facts on neither charter schools nor Harmony Schools. That is why, henceforth, I will start calling her a sciolist (meaning “a person with superficial knowledge”).

Let us take a look at some of her accusations along with my findings consequent refutations. I will not provide the links for her accusations, but I will give the resources that she “contributes”. I will use claim-answer format to expose her sciolism:

Claim: "I imagine that many of these people (U. S. Congressmen Gene Green, Sheila Jackson Lee, Kofi Annan, Mayor Tom Leppert, Dr. Terri Grier, Texas Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth A. Jones, Bill White, Dr. Akbar S. Ahmed (Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University), and James Baker) help to fund the Turkish charter schools where Islam is the predominant religion." (taken from her article onisdinitiative.org)

Answer: What an imagination (!), I should say. The names are so irrelevant that it is hard to find any logical relationship among each other. Besides, Dr. Grier is the Superintendent of Houston Independent School District (HISD). How come an ISD superintendent helps the funding of a charter school?  That is ridiculous. She has also no proof of such funding other than her wild imagination. Moreover, if a person shows up at the Gulen Institute, does it mean that s/he helps the funding of charter schools? What kind of correlation you establish here? Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary, has nothing to do with charter schools. He works for a Speakers Bureau giving keynote speeches around the world. This is pure ill intention to find such a relationship. I don’t want to go over the names separately, but two examples should suffice.

Claim: How would Turkish teachers (many here on visas) teach our American children about such historical events as the Holocaust? (taken from ramparts360.com) How could those Turkish teachers teach American children about the Constitution, Civil War and American History? (taken from the talk on City on a Hill radio)

Answer: Let me start with a question and a simple stat as an answer that I took from Harmony Schools officials: how many Turkish teachers are there at Harmony Schools teaching Social Studies? ZERO. Ms. Garner is so ignorant that she is not aware of the simple easy facts. Yet, interestingly, she does not bother to ask school officials before she comes up with a conclusion. Please do not worry Ms. Garner. Our American History is told by local American teachers.

Addendum: On the Ghostfighters page, where you can find the same article that I got from ramparts360.com, on top of the headline, this sentence reads: “we are funding charter schools that teach the kids to kill us.” Another bold and reckless claim... Imagine a school where you teach your kids how to kill their parents. None of the students react this! None of the parents, fellow teachers or community members show any reaction to this! Is it possible? If there were such things at these schools, we would have heard this somehow and some way, right? Or at least we would have heard some attempts from elementary and middle school kids (!) to kill their parents. I am ashamed to talk about those baseless claims, but attacking innocent schools with a partisanship attitude is what people like Donna Garner do. I wish we could dwell on more sensible things. By the way, I found that I was not alone. More things could be found on Donna Garner on the internet.

Donna Garner is a rich resource in terms of superficial and false information. She is the embodiment of sciolist approach. I am planning to write more about her false claims and their answers.

Source : http://gulenandcharterschools.blogspot.com/p/donna-garner-true-sciolist-1.html

Charter school eyes second role

By CHARLES LUSSIER
Advocate staff writer
Published: Jun 16, 2011 - Page: 1B

A new career-oriented charter school set to open in August may be joining forces with the Louisiana Department of Education to rescue the troubled Capitol High Academy.

The details are still emerging, but Nancy Roberts, executive director of the nonprofit group behind the new Career Academy, said the two sides plan to meet Thursday. “We’ve agreed in concept to a partnership,” she said.

Dennis Blunt, a member of the board of 100 Black Men of Baton Rouge, which won the charter to take over Capitol High in spring 2008, said 100 Black Men was formally alerted to the proposal late last week and would likely “wholeheartedly” support it.

The East Baton Rouge Parish school system, however, is not yet on board.

School Board President Barbara Freiberg said she’s concerned about having two schools run simultaneously by Career Academy, which the board granted a Type 1 charter to in May 2010.