Introduction
C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. (Citizens Against Special Interest Lobbying in Public Schools) is investigating the use (and abuse) of the public school system to advance the agendas of business, political and religious special interest groups.
C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. objects to the following problems, and investigates some of them:
Other C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. websites:
https://sites.google.com/site/casilips/
On the Gulen Movement and its charter schools:
Gulen charter schools http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/
A Guide to the Gulen Movement's Activities in the US http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/
Gulen in the International Press http://gulenforeignmedia.weebly.com/
CASILIPS on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CASILIPS
CASILIPS on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/CASILIPS
C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. objects to the following problems, and investigates some of them:
- Insider deals, no-bid contracts and other methods used to profit unethically off public schools;
- Abuse of publicly-funded schools to gain political influence;
- Public officials accepting political contributions, free trips, awards, or other favors from operators of schools they are charged with authorizing or regulating, or from groups connected to and acting in the interests of these operators;
- Infiltration of academia by private groups seeking to produce pseudo-academic biased "studies" supporting education policies that they have a vested financial interest in;
- Abuse of the publicly-funded school system to gain access to students for advertisement, recruitment, or indoctrination;
- Legislation designed to make charter school oversight and authorization excessively lax;
- Biased, inaccurate, or deliberately misleading media coverage of education issues and education reform;
- The use of school vouchers or tax credits to divert public money to private schools, especially when they have minimal or no accountability regarding curriculum and finances.
- Abuse of education reform or charter schools in ways that promote re-segregation of the student body, or that lead to a separate-and-unequal system;
- The use of excessively harsh disciplinary policies (such as excessive suspensions) in public schools;
- The use of excessive academic and other demands as a tool to create a selective student body in a public school;
- Balkanization of the public school system through founding of schools aimed primarily at serving student bodies of a particular ethnicity, national origin, linguistic group, or religion;
- Abuse of public schools to promote nationalism of other countries;
- Education reform policies that result in marginalizing special needs students or failing to provide the services they are legally entitled to;
- Inflated claims about successes of publicly-funded schools (misleading graduation rates, inflated charter school waiting lists, etc);
- Inaccurate or misleading reporting of school demographics designed to make a school appear to perform better than it actually does;
- Illegal or unethical practices used by schools to bias admissions and engineer the student body;
- Excessive fees required from students in what legally should be free public schools;
- Tactics used by schools to obtain goods and services from parents in exchange for enrollment (such as mandatory "volunteer" hours or "voluntary" donations) in what legally should be free public schools;
- Infringement on students' and parents' free speech rights in public schools;
- Corruption in science fairs and other academic competitions, especially when used to inflate school performance for financial gain;
- Cheating on standardized tests.
Other C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. websites:
https://sites.google.com/site/casilips/
On the Gulen Movement and its charter schools:
Gulen charter schools http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/
A Guide to the Gulen Movement's Activities in the US http://turkishinvitations.weebly.com/
Gulen in the International Press http://gulenforeignmedia.weebly.com/
CASILIPS on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CASILIPS
CASILIPS on Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/CASILIPS