Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy was an elementary school in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota named after Tarek ibn Ziyad, the Berber general of medieval Algeria who entered Gibraltar in 711 CE on behalf of the Umayyad Caliphate and defeated the Visigoths. The school is sponsored by Islamic Relief USA. The school has a primarily Muslim student body and has been embroiled in a number of controversies regarding the separation of church and state. The school has a waiting list of 1,500 students. Around 80% of students are English language learners. Despite this, the school has one of the highest reading scores on standardized tests in the state. As of July 2011 TiZA has been shut down by order of the Minnesota Education Department, due to lack of an approved charter school sponsor.FoundingTarek ibn Ziyad Academy opened in the fall of 2003 for the 2003–2004 school year. The school was founded by its current principal, Asad Zaman and Hesham Hussein, both local imams and leaders of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota (MAS-MN). The school opened with an enrollment of 215 students in grades K-5. The school was very popular and had 765 applicants in the first year.StudentsAs of the 2006–2007 school year, 302 students attended TIZA. The majority were Black (83%), with Asian (14%) and White (2%) being the other major ethnic groups. Seventy-seven percent of students qualify for Free and Reduced Price Lunch, an indicator of poverty, and the majority (81%) have had limited English proficiency. Four percent of students qualify for special education. The school's math proficiency was 23 percentage points higher than the state average and the school's reading proficiency was 3 percentage points higher than the state average, at 67 percent. Principal Asad Zaman estimates that 80 to 90 percent of students are Muslim.