Looking back on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge

The Annenberg Foundation funds one of the popular liberal Fact Checkers. But back in the mid-19 90s, it funded a huge program to improve the Chicago Public Schools. "The funding, which had also been provided to cities such as New York and San Francisco, was part of a large-scale local school reform philosophy that intended to improve student achievement and other social and psychological outcomes. In Chicago, the Annenberg Challenge reflected a democratic localism that placed great faith in the ability of local schools, in partnership with parents and their communities, to develop their own strategies to achieve professional development and instructional goals." I was a liberal in the 90s, and if I'd known about it then, I would have been supportive. . . especially the part about "local," and "partnerships."

It was an impressive amount with lofty goals for 200+ elementary schools (Annenberg gave half a billion to be matched by others to 3 city school systems). Barack Obama, a rising young, handsome star on the Chicago public scene, and Bill Ayers, the 1970s terrorist, and meddler in education through the University of Illinois, worked together in the Annenberg Challenge (Ayers wrote the original grant), as it was called. By 2001 a research arm of the University of Chicago did a thorough evaluation at all levels, and pretty much found no improvement in academic scores (compared to those schools which received no funding). It's the same discouraging results that came from Head Start after a 50 year evaluation.

So maybe Obama thought it wasn't enough money and went for higher stakes? And Bill Ayers hasn't changed much either.

https://consortium.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/p62.pdf

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-run-foundation-gave-millions-liberal-groups-including-one-run-bill-ayers

Connecting the dots, Ayers and Duncan

American Princess does research like the rest of us, she Googles it. And it's just not that hard to find out who will really be running education from Washington.

My favorite subject in all of this Chicago mess is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the project on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together. I love this project because right up the street from me, I have an Annenberg Challenge school, which I think is known in the community as the “Peace School,” and is very interactive with residents of my little neighborhood. They hold peace studies rallies, drum circles, indoctrinate children in what appear to be Marxist values and hold the weekly farmers market (who said communism couldn’t taste fresh?). . . Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools.

I mean, we're really not that surprised, are we? We knew Bill Ayers wasn't going away. Blagojevich is just a smoke screen for all the other gunk in the engine of the new administration.

Why Obama never mentions the Annenberg Challenge

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, $49 million recruited by Bill Ayers, another $98 million added by the city, "(CAC) was an abject failure - their own research, which [Ken] Rolling recently tried to prevent the public from seeing - concluded the effort had "no effect" on student outcomes; and, of course, while sharing a fox hole with the unapologetic former terrorist Bill Ayers in the Chicago School Wars is harmless if one is planning, as Obama was at the time, on stepping into the shoes of the late black Mayor, Harold Washington, it is altogether a different matter when one is running for President of the United States." Global Labor and Politics

Chicago received $49 million from a $500 million endowment by Walter H. Annenberg, the billionaire publisher, for school reform efforts nationwide, and the city added $98 million in matching funds for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a philanthropic campaign that financed enrichment projects at a third of the city’s 600 schools.

Mr. Obama was nominated to the Challenge board and was elected chairman in 1995, said Ken Rolling, executive director of the group, which operated through 2001. Mr. Obama continued to teach law during his five-year unpaid tenure as board chairman, and he was twice elected to the Illinois Senate. NYT

I'm not sure why earlier in the NYT article the writer claims there's been a turn around, because I checked the annual reports and data sets of Catalyst Chicago, and although there were some improved teachers salaries, and some interesting things in non-red tape schools, I didn't see much else to write home about blog about.

What happened to the $160 million Annenberg challenge?

Through Bill Ayers, Obama got a piece and had the opportunity to “spread the good(s)” in the 90s and launch his career in politics. Peggy Noonan doesn't get it. Do You? Do you really want Democrats controlling all three branches of the government with their Just-Us radical, anti-American social plans?

“[Bill Ayers‘] hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational "reform" efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn't going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country's politics and public schools.”

Ayers is no education reformer

Show me the Chicago child

who benefited from Obama's management of the $100 million dollar Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Did they learn to be better readers, thinkers, writer, communicators? Did they go on to a community college or university and study math or science? Or did they just get more political and radical nonsense that won't help them with life skills. Obama had the benefit of a very good education--he learned his politics on the side. Couldn't other children? When asked in 2000 about his experience to run for Illinois Senate, he cited this experience. So, where are those children? I'd like to see the results.

Obama replied: "Well, I'm in my second term, but it's true that certainly both Senator Trotter and Congressman Rush have been in elected office longer than I have. I can't deny that.

"I would argue, though, that my experience previous to elected office equips me for the job. You know, I have a background as an attorney. I've represented affordable housing organizations to build affordable housing, something that is a major issue in the district. I've chaired major philanthropic efforts in the city, like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that gave $50 million to prop school reform efforts throughout the city."

The economy and the current mess with government bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is big news today. How did he do with smaller amounts? Like $100 million? Obama and Ayers

What some people say

Some say Sarah Palin doesn’t have enough experience to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. Others say Obama has no experience to be the heartbeat of the presidency. She at least probably won’t make this mistake, having been in the executive office of our largest state. This was mentioned by Paul Feldman, a WSJ reader.

In his speech last week “he listed lots of “I will” statements but most of those things are prerogatives of the Congress, not the president.”

Maybe if he’d spent more time in the Senate and less on the road running to leave that job, he’d know that?

An Ohio Democrat, Kathy Dunn, says there’s no comparison between Hillary and Sarah. Agreed! Governor Palin got where she is without riding her husband’s coat tails, she’s not a lawyer, didn’t go to a private girl’s school, and wouldn’t have carpetbagged her way into office, as Hillary did in 2000 looking for an open Senate seat since there wasn‘t one in Arkansas.

Al Hubbard says that Americans are wiser than they are given credit.

“They seem to know that if you restrict supply and tax production, prices go up.”

But Al, that gives Washington more reasons to bail out the voters to build a bigger, more helpless base!

Ellen Goodman compared Bristol Palin to Jamie Lynn Spears and calls Sarah Palin a bridge to nowhere. If both teens had been pro-abortion and acted on those values, Goodman would have been applauding.

Does Ellen know Biden and Obama both voted for “the bridge to nowhere.” Governor Palin stopped them.


" ’I kissed a girl and I liked it;’ Then I went to Hell" is a church sign in Columbus referring to a tune by Katy Perry about lesbian love. Equality Ohio has identified 300 churches in Ohio that welcome gays. Must be a part of that whopping 8% of the population that belongs to Main Line protestant denominations. Nothing is killing Protestantism like the incessant pressure from liberal members to ordain and marry gays. My church welcomes gays too--and the divorced and shacking up, and the embezzlers and wife beaters, and the druggies and alcoholics, the gossips and snipers. God doesn’t grade on a curve, but gays will need to go elsewhere to marry. I’m sure there are ELCA pastors in Ohio who will violate their ordination oath, or whatever that is called--or do violence to the meaning of marriage in scripture. But it won’t happen at UALC (3 campuses, new service times).

Not even Bill Ayers, Obama’s mentor, used this excuse

Two men charged with the beating death of a homeless man with a baseball bat to the head repeatedly, say they “never meant any serious harm.” Contrast this lame excuse with Bill Ayers saying his bombing of the capital didn’t do enough (as reported in the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001) “I wish we’d done more,” he complained.

84.7% of the U.S. population is covered by health insurance, which obviously is no guarantee that you’ll survive a trip to the hospital. 2,000,000 people acquire bacterial infections in U.S. hospitals each year, and 90,000 of those patients die as a result. (Seen in WSJ )

I see that Chicago children are boycotting their schools this week. A little help from a community organizer, I suspect, because usually children don't think these things up. What happened to all those millions that Bill Ayers poured into Obama’s career to look into the school problems in Chicago? Wasn’t anything corrected during Obama‘s leadership from 1995-1999 of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and sitting on the Board of CAC until 2001?

Equal pay for equal work? Is that tired canard coming up again? Yes, ladies when you also relocate as often as men, publish as much as men, join as many organizations, play as much golf (yuk) with your enemies and friends, and learn to negotiate your FIRST salary (on which all else builds), and don't stop out for 4 or 5 years, then we’ll talk equal work.

In March 2005, what about unequal pay among women workers of different ethnicity?: "A white woman with a bachelor's degree typically earned nearly $37,800 in 2003, compared with nearly $43,700 for a college-educated Asian woman and $41,100 for a college-educated black woman, according to data being released Monday by the Census Bureau. Hispanic women took home slightly less at $37,600 a year."

Did you hear that John Edwards is charging more now for speaking engagements than before the scandal. Well, he does have an ill wife and three frightened children to support. Speaking of multiple homes. . .

That tingly guy, Chris Matthews on August 10 (video) "called the question, “What has he done?”, a show-stopper. No one could point to a single effective action Obama has taken to cross the aisle, while everyone acknowledged that John McCain has taken actual risks to do so. David Brooks tells the room that Republican Senators and staffers insist that Hillary Clinton works across the aisle and keeps communication open, but Obama has never bothered to do that, and both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill agree on his arrogance." from Hot Air. So why is Obama and staff outraged to be the butt of do-nothing jokes at the Republican Convention?