TUSD accepts grant from group with ties to Muslim Brotherhood (updated)

On May 5, the Qatar Foundation International (QFI), a group associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, announced the awardees of QFI’s Curriculum Grants, which include Tucson Unified School District. QFI’s Curriculum Grants are awarded to schools to develop “innovative curricula and teaching materials to be used in any Arabic language classroom.”

The award will be used in TUSD’s Safford Magnet School. According to the district, “the purpose of this project is for the Arabic teachers with the help of an International Baccalaureate (IB) coordinator to develop, teach, and evaluate four IB Arabic units.”

The district’s grant was brought to the attention of Lewis by a concerned Tucsonan, Pat Sexton. “It is unacceptable to a majority of Tucson citizens that Safford K-8 Magnet School, whose school children are predominantly Hispanic, would agree to receive any funding from a group such as QFI,” said Sexton. “This is an Arabic/Islamist group that seeks to promote Sharia culture and has undeniable ties to two terrorist organizations whose mission is to destroy America, Western ideology and anyone who does not agree with their extremisms.”

QFI is a nonprofit group financed by the government of Qatar. The Washington D.C. based organization is the U.S. branch of the Qatar Foundation, which was founded in 1995 by Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani, according to various news reports. Thani is also the founder of Al Jazeera.

The Qatar foundation launched the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics in January. The Center’s director Tariq Ramadan. Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, who was banned from the U.S. until 2010 when the Obama administration issued him a visa to give a lecture at a New York school, according to various news reports cited by Lewis.

The Qatar Foundation has also named several institutions after a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi has proclaimed himself “Mufti of martyrdom operations.”

While Al-Qaradawi’s claims to promote moderation, “he has openly permitted the killing of American troops in Iraq and praised the “heroic deeds” from “Hamas, Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades, and others,” according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

The London newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, reported Israeli claims that Al-Qaradawi was funding “the heart of Hamas,” the Al-Islam Charity, through his Welfare Coalition. He has also pledged to fight the United States if it attacked Iran, stating: “When America threatened it [Iran], I said I am against America. Iran has the right to possess peaceful nuclear power, and if America fights it, we would stand up against it [America],” according to IPT. IPT also claims that “Al-Qaradawi is known for advocating the overthrow of Western capitalism.”

Al-Qaradawi is reported to have said, “We have our own economic philosophy and system which others do not have. The collapse of the capitalist system, which is based on usury and securities rather than commodities in markets, shows us that it is undergoing a crisis and that our integrated Islamic philosophy, if properly understood and applied, can replace Western capitalism.”

Last year the Muslim Brotherhood and its association with MEChA became an issue in TUSD during the appeal of the finding by Superintendent of Public Instruction (SOPI) that TUSD’s Mexican American Studies classes violate state law. The district’s superintendent testified at the appeal hearing as to an email he received from Assistant Superintendent Dr. Lupita Cavazos-Garcia. In the email, Dr. Garcia expressed her concerns regarding MEChA’s efforts to recruit primarily the district’s Mexican American Studies students for an occupied peoples’ conference at which Palestinian and TUSD students would be sharing their experiences living in occupied territories.

Dr. Garcia wrote that she was concerned about the organization’s “anti-Semitic tone and tenor on our campuses.” She went on to state that the some of the district’s students have little emotional support and “our Raza students are ripe for this kind of influence.” Concerns arose about the conference in the district when word went out that Homeland Security would be in attendance. Some of the more responsible adults in the district questioned the wisdom of allowing TUSD students to be put in a situation in which they might innocently come under scrutiny, suspicion, or harm.

Dr. Garcia and other educators expressed concerned about the un-American leanings of MEChA, the well documented anti-Semitism exercised and expressed by its associates, including the Muslim Brotherhood which has partnered with MEChA in forums on university campuses across the country.

In 2010, Congressman Raul Grijalva, former TUSD Governing Board member and current Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, called pushed the IB program. He said, “This is a great opportunity for Tucson schools to lead the way in modernizing their curriculums and meeting the needs of the modern economy,” Grijalva said. “Arabic language and culture are a major global phenomenon, and helping students understand and study it at an early age is both wise and necessary.”

Sexton disagrees with Grijalva’s assessment, “As a proud and grateful Naturalized American Citizen, I was horrified to learn about this grant,”said Sexton. “I am President of ALRA-Tucson (Arizona Latino Republican Association Tucson Chapter) and therefore am always concerned about issues affecting our community at large, especially our Latino children. I am passionate about the United States of America because of its exceptionalism due to its freedoms and rule of law derived from Judeo-Christian foundations and I will continue to speak out and educate the Latino community about issues that affect us all.”

Last year, TUSD’s International Baccalaureate program also came under fire for its expense and its emphasis on the political philosophy of social justice. Those concerns were ignored.

The following story was originally published in the TucsonCitizen.com in November 2011.

Tucson school district spends millions to market social justice and create change agents

“At the core of an IB education, starting with our youngest students is the aim to develop caring young people with a commitment to action and service…It is also essential in developing in them the drive to become an agent of social change in our ever evolving societies where there is still so much to do to reach an ideal of social justice,” Monique Seefried, president of the IB Council of Foundations.

TUSD won a $6.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help increase school choice programs and maintain diversity. Unfortunately the grant does not require the district to offer successful programs, just those with which they might attract kids. To that end, the Arizona Daily Star reported this past summer that the Governing Board voted to spend $92,000 on a marketing campaign to, “attract non-minority students to three of its magnet schools.”

In TUSD tradition, they district opted to establish new and very expensive magnet school programs such as International Baccalaureate, or the absurd Reggio Emilia programs rather than expand those existing magnet programs, such as the highly successful “Back to Basics” program at schools like Dodge, which enjoys a waiting list for admission.

International Baccalaureate sounds glamorous and who wouldn’t want something like that for their kids? It sounds like the Cadillac of curriculum. No, the Mercedes of curriculum. However it is a lemon, and across “the pond” the Brits are tossing it into the scrap heap of clunkers.

Due to economic conditions, the Great Britain government is cutting education funding and the extremely expensive, highly political and academically unproven program is the first to go. In keeping with TUSD’s counter-intuitive choices, it only makes sense that TUSD is signing a long term lease.

TUSD has introduced International Baccalaureate programs into Cholla High School, and both Safford and Robison are awaiting IB authorization. According to IB researchers, this authorization process is expensive and risky. “To start, a schools pay application process fess that involve three stages that must be successfully completed: a feasibility study (where teachers and administrators undertake IB-approved professional development); a trial implementation period of at least 12 months, during which the school will be visited and supported by an IB representative; and an authorization visit, where a judgment is made about the extent to which the school is suitably prepared to offer the programme.”

Once that is done there is no evidence that the program works to reduce the achievement gap. According to Rob Stein, a well-respected educator in Colorado, “There is no available evidence that the IB will increase student achievement in DPS schools or that the IB has had a positive effect on student achievement in similar districts or schools. A thorough search of the literature has netted no empirical studies on the effects of IB on student achievement.”

“Schools with IB programs tend to have higher test scores than average, but this can be explained as a function of student selection rather than student learning. In cases such as the Academy School District, a high-income, highly educated community has schools with high test scores. In Denver’s two IB or IB-like programs, students are pre-selected for the programs based on their prior test scores and academic achievement; therefore, it is no surprise that they score high once they are admitted into the program. There seem to be no available examples of IB schools where high student achievement can be explained by anything other than demographics or student selectivity.”

“In sum, there are doubtless many potential benefits of the IB model, but the model is not proven to improve student achievement in schools with low-income populations, to narrow the achievement gap, or to bring low-achieving students up to proficiency in reading, writing or mathematics.”

In a district that is constantly laying off teachers and counselors, closing schools, and crying poor, the travel costs alone associated with teacher training should have been enough to prevent adoption of the curriculum. For the past two quarters, travel costs to the district have totaled a whopping $45,500 plus.

According to Tucsonans United 4 Sound Districts website, on “July 30, 2009, a TUSD administrator gave a presentation to the school board that included a rough estimate to implement an International Baccalaureate program in one high school. The figure was $100 – $300 thousand annually for 1 to (possibly) 3 years. Thereafter, “recurring costs” were estimated at $100 thousand per year.” Below is what has transpired since IB was implemented:

International Baccalaureate “Diploma Program” costs for just Cholla High Magnet School.

FY 2008-2009: $302,487* (first year of IB program implementation; student participation: 42 juniors; no seniors)

FY 2009-2010: $619,259* (second year of IB program implementation; student participation: 32 seniors; juniors ?)

Total expenditures are likely higher — the amount shown here represents only the total of what was contained in the TUSD Budget Books (from Desegregation/OCR monies).

The TUSD employee assigned to “recruit” students to the IB program is paid $55,715 a year. According to the TUSD website, “the salary schedule for the 2011-2012 school year is effective July 1 with a starting salary of $33,948.80 (includes a base salary of $31,727.85 and a supplemental amount for classroom site funding, contingent upon funding from the State of Arizona).”

But who needs one more quality inexpensive classroom teacher when you can hire a salesman for more money?