Islamic Schools in Texas

[Nevada]

I went to Starbucks awhile ago and glanced at the front page of today's "New York Times". It has a cover story about taxpayer funding of schools affiliated with a Turkish Islamic group:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/education/07charter.html

 

[Scarlett O.]

It's a charter school.

Charter schools are a wonderful way of members of a community receiving public funds to improve education in their area. It is very difficult to receive a charter. You have to prove what you can do before you do it. And once a charter is granted - it's under the microscope. If you don't put forth the academic results that you claim you can or if you mismanage the funds in anyway - you lose the charter and the funds - immediately!!

They rely heavily on grant money and are a school district unto themselves and have to provide everything from the janitor's salary - to building the physical building itself - to contracting with a business to provide lunches. It's not easy to run a quality charter school.

There may very well be a group of individuals of the same religious beliefs or a community of same beliefs that start a charter school, but religious beliefs cannot be taught in a charter school like they can in a Christian School. They can be addressed, but not as part of the curriculum.

I co-wrote the charter for a school in Louisiana and I personally signed my name to the form for the National Charter Convention and the state of Louisiana that we were not trying to create a private Christian school and that children would not be forced to learn and embrace a religious doctrine as part of the curriculum. The Bible as literature can be taught as an elective, but no more.

These businesses that have started this school may very well be Turkish business people. But is isn't a "Muslim" school.

Charter schools are a tremendous and wonderful way of getting the community involved and getting the children's education back into the hands of the community and out of the hands of the bureaucrats.