Wednesday, October 22, 2008

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.

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