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Obamas Challenge
The campaign speaks to Radicalism.
By Stanley Kurtz
Today, in a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools, I offer a report on my research into the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), an education foundation once headed by Barack Obama. As I explained in Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown? the Richard J. Daley Library of the University of Illinois at Chicago first agreed to grant, then abruptly denied me, access to the files of this foundation. Subsequently, the Daley Library again reversed their decision and made the CAC files available.
As I note in todays Journal piece, Ive conveyed the gist of my Annenberg findings to the Obama campaign and offered them a chance to respond. In reply, the Obama campaign has sent me an extended on the record statement about Obamas role at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and about the nature of his relationship with Bill Ayers. I present that statement in its entirety here:
The Annenberg Challenge records only serve to establish clearly that while Barack Obama and Ayers had occasional contact during Obamas 6 years of service on the bipartisan board, they did not work closely together to exchange and develop policy ideas. In fact, as these records show, Ayers attended a total 6 meetings of the Board during the 6 years of Obamas Board service. And, as these same records also demonstrate, the advisory committee that Ayers co-chaired played no operational role whatsoever once the Challenge hired its Executive Director at the end of its first year.While Ive addressed this statement in the Radicalism piece, Ill extend my response here.....
Ayers had nothing to do with Obamas recruitment to the Board. Barack Obama was encouraged to run for Chair by Deborah Leff, with whom he served on another board, recommended by Pat Graham, and elected by the bipartisan founding board members: Susan Crown, Pat Graham, Stanley Ikenberry, Ray Romero, Arnold Weber, and Wanda White.
Barack Obama months ago confirmed that he had contact with Ayers during the course of his foundation work, and he pointed out that We served on a board together that had Republicans, bankers, lawyers, focused on education. Senator Obama also said earlier this year that Ayers was not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis, a fact that is not in any way contradicted by their contact through the Annenberg Challenge which ended 12 years ago, or by any of the Challenge records.
The suggestion that Ayers somehow dominated the policy or direction of the bipartisan Challenge Board, imprinting it with radical views, is absurd. The Annenberg Challenge was funded by Nixon Ambassador and Reagan friend Walter Annenberg. Republican Governor Jim Edgar, who wrote to Walter Annenberg to encourage the creation of the Challenge, joined Mayor Daley to announce the formation of the Challenge and his administration continued to work closely on education reform with the Board. John McCain has praised an initiative funded by the Challenge. The Challenges work is still carried on today through to the bipartisan Chicago Public Education Fund, which coordinates closely Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley to improve teacher performance and has included such board members as Illinois Republican Party Chair Andrew McKenna.
The Challenge was established to allocate grants targeted to improve student performance and promote teacher training and leadership development in the Chicago Public Schools. One objective of the Challenge was to improve education for the bottom quartile of students attending Chicago Public Schools whose reading, math, and basic skills scores improved markedly during the years in which the Challenge invested in city schools. Due to the work of the Challenge and the Fund, the number of board certified teachers in Chicago Public Schools has increased by the hundreds.
As is well known, by the time Barack Obama met him, Ayers was a faculty member at the University of Illinois, and he has held the title of distinguished scholar the University of South Carolina for many years Ayers held both positions at universities while Republican Governors served on their Boards of Trustees. The detestable acts that Ayers committed decades before occurred when Senator Obama was 8 years old and the Senator has condemned them in no uncertain terms.
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...The Obama campaign notes that during the CAC years, achievement test scores improved markedly in the Chicago public schools. Thats true, but deeply misleading. The real source of improvement was the leadership of accountability-oriented Chicago Public School (CPS) CEO, Paul Vallas, who began to reform CPS in 1995, the year of CACs founding. Vallas established clear standards, began high-stakes testing, ended social promotion, forced thousands of students to attend summer school to advance a grade, and put failing schools on probation. Thats what pushed up Chicago test scores. CACs own final evaluation carefully compared students at schools with Annenberg projects and schools without. According to CACs own report: There were no statistically significant differences in student achievement between Annenberg schools and demographically similar non-Annenberg schools. This indicates that there was no Annenberg effect on achievement. It also indicates that Annenberg failed, not because its altogether impossible to improve urban schools, but because CACs heavily politicized community-organizer partners werent any good at doing so.
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge stands as Barack Obamas most important executive experience to date. By its own account, CAC was a largely a failure. And a series of critical evaluations point to reasons for that failure, including a poor strategy, to which the foundation over-committed in 1995, and over-reliance on community organizers with insufficient education expertise. The failure of CAC thus raises entirely legitimate questions, both about Obamas competence, his alliances with radical community organizers, and about Ayerss continuing influence over CAC and its board, headed by Obama. Above all, by continuing to fund Ayerss personal projects, and those of his political-educational allies, Obama was lending moral and material support to Ayerss profoundly radical efforts. Ayerss terrorist history aside, that makes the Ayers-Obama relationship a perfectly legitimate issue in this campaign.
the national review?really?
