The Times Discovers The Chicago Annenberg Challenge

[Steve Diamond is the dean of this story - do see his excellent post.]

Barack Obama wants to talk about education reform and has realized he can't duck his history with unrepentant Weatherman Bill Ayers and the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.  Fortunately the Times is here to help:

CHICAGO — Senator Barack Obama learned how hard it can be to solve America’s public education problems when he headed a philanthropic drive here a decade ago that spent $150 million on Chicago’s troubled schools and barely made a dent.

Ahh, the old "I learned from my mistakes and occasional successes" spin I had suggested a few weeks back.  Let's watch the Times hone in on the Bill Ayers connection - regular readers will recall that Bill Ayers co-wrote the grant proposal that led to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, then worked for years with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge through a group he formed and led called the Chicago School Reform Collaborative.  There is an excellent chance that Obama and Ayers first partnered up on public school reform back in 1988, during an earlier city-wide push for hope and change in the Chicago schools.

The Times takes this up beginning at paragraph seventeen:

Mr. Obama immersed himself in education issues after his return to Chicago, where he began lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School and joined the boards of two education foundations.

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.

Several board members, including two university presidents, far outranked Mr. Obama in education experience.

“Let me say the room had no shortage of egos, including my own,” said Stanley O. Ikenberry, a board member who at the time was president of the University of Illinois. “It was unusual: here you had a person trained in the law chairing a board on school reform.” Still, he said, Mr. Obama won his colleagues’ respect.

Obama's role was unusual?  Dare someone ask him whether Ayers lobbied for him based on a joint effort in 1988?

Supporters of Mr. McCain have been trying to taint Mr. Obama by highlighting his ties to William Ayers, a member of the violent Weather Underground in the 1960s, by pointing out that they worked on the Challenge project together. Mr. Ayers was indicted on conspiracy charges that were later thrown out for prosecutorial misconduct.

Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he is a friend of Mr. Ayers but has sought to minimize their interactions.

Note:  "Minimize their interactions" is awfully polite - "lie by omission" would be more accurate but improbable given the source.

Records show that Mr. Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, helped write the Challenge proposal. The records also show that he and Mr. Obama worked on the Challenge project together and that they attended some of the same meetings.

The Challenge’s overall approach — supporting many diverse education projects rather than a coordinated school improvement strategy — had been established before Mr. Obama was named board chairman, and the board came under immediate pressure to approve grant proposals quickly.

No Maoist left behind - one of the first grants went to Michael Klonsky, a Maoist and former SDS colleague of Bill Ayers.

“If you throw $10 on the table in Chicago, people are going to fight over it, and we had $50 million,” Mr. Rolling recalled.

Proposals poured in and the board eventually financed projects involving 210 schools. Some were imaginative: one, for example, connected schools with museums in the Chicago area so that students learned science from a paleontologist at the local dinosaur exhibit. But many were not.

“The project proposals by and large were awful,” one board member told an evaluation team in 1998.

Relations with school authorities were difficult. Just as the Challenge got under way, the Illinois Legislature gave Mayor Richard M. Daley control of the school district, and he began an improvement campaign based on high-stakes testing and other measures. Annenberg’s let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach often seemed at cross-purposes with that strategy.

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the reading and math scores of the lowest-achieving students improved in the years when the Challenge was investing in the Chicago schools.

But a final report on the Challenge concluded that the huge effort had brought little change.

“The Challenge’s ‘bottom line’ was improving student achievement,” the report said. “Among the schools it supported, the Challenge had little impact on student outcomes.”

But the experience gave Mr. Obama an appreciation for the multiple problems facing urban schools, Mr. Rolling said. The city has been a pioneer ever since in exploring ways to recruit, train and support teachers.

Left unmentioned - the Ken Rolling quoted here is the same Ken Rolling who tried to get the Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives locked down.

And what about an examination of Bill Ayers' hard-left educational philosophy?  I love his speech to Hugo Chavez while down Venezuela way in which he explained that "La educacion es revolucion!".  Get 'em young.

The Times won't attempt to follow the trail back to 1988 or ask the Obama campaign to explain their misrememberings and deceptions, but perhaps real reporters will.

MISREMEMBERING:  I love this candid disclosure from Team Obama last February to Ben Smith of The Politico:

I didn't get to ask Obama about his relationship with Bill Ayers today, but did ask his chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago's political tribes), David Axelrod, about the two men.

"Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school," he said. "They're certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

Their kids go to the same school!  By April The Politico knew more:

Information about the pair's connection has been dribbling out over the past few months. Obama first met Ayers in 1995, during Obama's first state Senate campaign, and the two met with a small group of local liberal activists at Ayers' house. Exact details of the meeting are unkown because Obama and Ayers have declined to discuss it.

Bzzzt!  Wrong again!  That fundraiser was in the second half of 1995, well after Obama had taken his seat as board chair.

Why the cover-up Team Obama?  Why the enabling by the Times? Why the absurd rhetorical questions with such easy answers?

UPDATE:  Steve Diamond has an excellent post.  I picked up the probable Obama/Ayers 1988 connection from him, and we both flogged it today.  I also got Klonsky from him, but he let that slide - score one for the MinuteMan (OK, I was kitchen-sinking it, but still...).  His background on Chicago school politics is helpful but beyond my pay grade.

BACKGROUND:  Lots of research links in this old post, including to this panning of Obama's school reform efforts by Alexander Russo, writing in Slate.  I'll snip this:

The story of Obama's involvement suggests that on similarly contentious fronts involving national education policy, like the No Child Left Behind Act, he might respond the same way—holding back when powerful interest groups collide, only to support the status quo of local control in the end. The candidate's Chicago record on education also raises questions about his much-vaunted ability to bring different sides together to find lasting solutions.

He did not bring people together nor did he bring real change. 

PILING ON:  WLS from Patterico's Place notes the story, as does Jeff G of Protein Wisdom.  Jeff's Big Finish:

Attempts to tether Governor Sarah Palin to Pat Buchanan (along with other supposed anti-semites) and a secessionist party have both proven unremarkable — largely because they were so easily debunked.  Attempts to tether her to cuts in funding for special needs children, or to economic mistreatment of rape victims, have, too, proven feeble — though I suspect that the goal here is to tarnish her in the aggregate by throwing anything and everything against the igloo wall and see what blubber happens to stick.

And yet here we are, months away from a presidential election, and the mainstream press has only tangentially and defensively explored the connections between Barack Obama and an unrepentant (and largely unreconstructed) domestic terrorist — even though Obama has lied both about the extent and  duration of that relationship.

And that strikes me not only as proof of a partisan bias, but also as a failure of due dilligence — and even on the more extreme end, a dereliction of its duty.

Well, yes - they don't even know if there is a story there before deciding there is no story there.

Comments

[Chris]

Obfuscation is the sincerest form of flattery at the NYT.

[bio mom]

The NYTimes is also trying to use Fannie and Freddie in a deceptive way against McCain. Despite the federal election committee data showing Obama at number 3 in contributions from them and McCain not even there at all, they have a graph up showing individual contributions from people who have had or still have some involvement with freddie/fannie and their contributions. Obama shows quite low, McCain quite high. I have written a complaint to the public editor about this advocacy journalism.

[RELIAPUNDIT]

quote:

"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."

This deliberate sentence uses the passive tense, and it's very VERY VERY vague.

EXACTLY WHO NOMINATED HIM?

[Neo]

Whatz Happin'n

This isn't in his resume. The Times must be lying.

[Sue]

At least one of the members of the board thought it odd someone with a law background ranked higher than those in education. I wonder if he said more that wasn't used?

[clarice]

I thought the Times story was unusually deceptive--I said on another thread I'd use it to teach a course in propaganda, and I meant it.

[bgates]

Barack Obama’s education plan reflects his own work with Chicago’s public schools....when he headed a philanthropic drive here a decade ago that spent $150 million on Chicago’s troubled schools and barely made a dent.
I'm sold.

[bgates]

oops. Fixed?

[bgates]

.

[clarice]

bgates you are so PICKY...........

[Ranger]

Global Labor makes this interesting observation in the latest post there:

(By the way, how about that Ken Rolling - he was at the Woods Fund that helped finance Obama's position at the DCP in the mid-80s and later funneled the DCP money in the 87-88 school wars, then was recruited by Ayers and Obama join them running the CAC and most recently has been the lead Plumber trying to prevent public access to CAC records held at the University of Illinois. None of this is yet on the record, though, at the Times.

Funny how the files Rolling specificly tried to block were the ones directly dealing with how he came to be hired for the position at CAC.

An interesting coincidence that two people will no major experience in education were selected as chairman and the head of day to day operations. And those two seem to also have direct connections to each other. A nice cozy set up there. Very Chicago style.

[MayBee]

Don't you all see? Obama has learned his lesson. He has experience. You can't put a newbie like McCain in charge of education. He might make the mistakes Obama has already learned from.

[JB]

"Obfuscation is the sincerest form of flattery at the NYT. "

Don't you mean obamafuscation?

[steve sturm]

You've probably covered this, but just how did Obama's young kids (born in 1998 and 2001) go to school together with Ayers' now-adult kids?

[Semanticleo]

More Annennothingberger carp.........

Maguire;

You and McCaine have a lot in common;

Monomania........

Ahab's motivation for hunting down the white whale;

"The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil; -- Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, where visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it."

Ahab saw all the worlds' evil personified in the mammalian mute. God had made him Grand Inquisitor, and he is determined to carry out his mandate for the good of mankind....

Here's Maguires Evil One.....

from the article;

In the two decades since Mr. Obama arrived in Chicago, its public schools have undergone a sweeping turnaround, from an education wasteland to a district that, while still facing major challenges, is among the most improved in the nation. The city has closed many failing schools and reopened them with new staffs, making it an important laboratory for one of the country’s most vexing problems.

[bgates]

Clarice, it's amazing that even while going through such contortions to protect their candidate, the Times leaves a McCain ad embedded in the text.

I'm starting to wonder if O might lose bad enough that the whole Annenberg story could come out. As much as the press loves Democratic winners, they hate Democratic losers. Remember that Newsweek hit piece on Kerry after he lost? If Obama loses by 3, they'll blame racist America, but if it's a blowout, I think they'll turn on him.

[clarice]

They'll take him apart in that event, bgates..still he'll never have to worry about money again. He'll go on lots of boards and perform as well as Gorelick did at Dannie Mae and he'll speak, write and be considered some sort of guru.

[DebinNC]

Senator Barack Obama learned how hard it can be to solve America’s public education problems when he headed a philanthropic drive here a decade ago...

How can anyone know what Obama learned from CAC when his website doesn't mention anything about CAC in his bio, in his voluminous education policy page, or in his big "education speech" in Dayton this week?

Obviously, if he were proud of his CAC tenure or learned valuable lessons from it, we'd have heard long before now.

[Appalled]

leo:

TM's single-minded persuits are a feature, not a bug. It appeals to the Sherlock Holmes or the oppo-researcher in all of us.

I actually think finding out more about Obama in an executive role in school reform is actually relevent to the campaign.

[SWarren]

Quite a gloss-over article by the Times. So Obama and Ayres first met in 1988?

Still obfuscating? This would be just after Ayres returned from Columbia U. with an Ed.degree in 'curriculum evaluation'

I still think they met in NYC, where Ayres shared his dreams of indoctrinating youn g minds on "social justice" and his plans for the 'la education revolucion' and it was Ayres who got him set up as an organizer with the $25,000 Woods grant.

[MayBee]

How can anyone know what Obama learned from CAC

Excellent point.
But the Times knows, because that's what they want him to have learned, and that's what they want us to learn. Obama didn't have failure that he's trying to hide, he had a learning experience that....he's trying to hide.

[clarice]

**Fannie Mae**

Hey, remember when Hillary took O apart in the debate and he then made a speech where she claimed he was giving her the bird? Many claimed it was simply an inadvertent gesture..Here are two speeches he gave at the same time in which he did the same thing..It wasn't inadvertent--look for the spinning hands "tell"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoOFp-RDpvM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zhkq11UExcw

[Sue]

Clarice,

That is wild. He did it on purpose.

[Enlightened]

Oh wah. Cleo is on the poo-flinging squad today I see - Team Bambi must have had a vey bad night.

[clarice]

I think it's clear that he did, Sue.

[kim]

And now Leo's pushing Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc fallacies to try to prop up Obama. Hasn't anybody told you, or the Times, that Obama's work was a huge waste of money and counterproductive?

Obama knew it; that's why it's not on his resume. I predicted a long time ago that education was going to be a winner issue for the Repubs, and now the Old Grey Lady has stumbled down the stairs into the pit of the Annenberg Challenge.
=============================

[Barney Frank]

Sue,
Could you post a link to clarice's vids?
I tried following her links and found nothing. Thanks.

[Barney Frank]

He'll go on lots of boards and perform as well as Gorelick did at Dannie Mae

clarice,
I still hold out hope Gorelick (and Frank Raines for that matter) will get their just desserts for the Fannie Mae fraud. Bernie Ebbers and Worldcom had nothing on those grifters. The justice dept. investigation continues I believe.

[Sue]

I think it's clear that he did, Sue.

In the exact same spot in the speech, he makes the exact same movements? That just happen to flip Hillary the bird? It's very clear. I didn't realize it happened the 2nd time.

[Sue]

Clarice's links:

1

2

[clarice]

Here, Barney:
Finger

hFinger II

[Neo]

It's real cute that with the slow motion Obama sounds like Bill Cosby.

[Neo]

It's pretty amazing that the NYT didn't mention that Obama seems to have left out this job from his resume ... I wonder why ... this would be an excellent comeback for Obama to all those complaints by McCain and Palin that he never had executive experience or handled a payroll.

[clarice]

Well, Barney--we'll see. Gorelick IIRC fronted for the phony audits of the organization.
Raines is getting a divorce. He lives down the block and his house was for sale for over $11 million. There's a sign out front that says its under contract. I hope someone gets the money he and Gorelick and the others stole . (Didja notice how much of that was finneled back to Dems? A lot but heck it was small potatoes compared to their own haul.)

[Neo]

You've probably covered this, but just how did Obama's young kids (born in 1998 and 2001) go to school together with Ayers' now-adult kids?

Quite possibly Ayers kids are "Challenged" ?

[bad]

Quite possibly Ayers kids are "Challenged" ?

Ayers for Palin!!!

[Tom Maguire]

You've probably covered this, but just how did Obama's young kids (born in 1998 and 2001) go to school together with Ayers' now-adult kids?

The fu continued with an UPDATE to the Politico piece first mentioning the kids:

UPDATE: There's been a bit of confusion about Axelrod's line on the kids, who -- as the Guardian's Daniel Nasaw noted -- aren't the same age. Obama's kids went go the the University of Chicago Lab Schools, where Ayers kids, who are much older, had gone. However, Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection.

Lies clarified by more lies.

[DrJ]

Bernardine Dohrn is still active at the school, and an Obama aide said that was the connection

Hey, that's the connection to have!

Isn't Dohrn at Nortwestern? That's a good bit removed to Chicago. What exactly does her involvement entail? Serving on the board? :)

[bgates]

What exactly does her involvement entail?
When they need to demolish old buildings, she plants the charges.

[bad]

What exactly does her involvement entail?

When its done she sticks a fork in it.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the reading and math scores of the lowest-achieving students improved in the years when the Challenge was investing in the Chicago schools.

So Team Obama HAS reviewed the CAC material. Why isn't the CAC executive experience on Barack Obama's resume?

The only information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge I can find on Barack Obama's campaign website is posted by his supporters.

[bad]

Here's a PTA mom in the New York Times talking about Obama's education choices.

Let us not even touch the term “community organizer,” so buffeted about, by both sides, like a balloon at a rock concert. Let us just say that if Mr. and Mrs. Obama — a dynamic, Harvard-educated couple — had chosen public over private school, they could have lifted up not just their one local public school, but a family of schools.

LUN

I posted this on another thread before the education thread materialized.

[Neo]

In defense of the Times (God forbid), the writer of this piece, SAM DILLON, seems to right mostly education pieces so he many not be "up to speed" on the politics of all.

[DrJ]

the reading and math scores of the lowest-achieving students improved in the years when the Challenge was investing in the Chicago schools.

Unsurprisingly, this is completely non-responsive. Improved by how much? In comparison to what control group? When those are included, the CAC was judged to be a failure.

Interesting that Team Obama now is starting to talk about the topic.

[Neo]

.. seems to right write ..

[DrJ]

I was going to give you a dig for that, Neo, but let it pass.

[GMax]

Didja notice how much of that was finneled back to Dems? A lot but heck it was small potatoes compared to their own haul.)

Actually I dont begrudge them funneling their own personal contributions to the democrats, that is part of free speech.

But I am pretty sure that FNMA and FHLMC funds went to the Democrats and that really really frosts me. It aint their pigbank.

[M. Simon]

It's OK my girly man leo,

The NYTs has covered it. It is now a valid topic for conversation.

BTW when are you going to man up and apologize?

[M. Simon]

50+ days left to go and the hits jusyt keep on coming for ∅. Lucky he has supporters like girly man leo.

I'm betting that 75,000 is the largest venue he will ever see again. I think by Nov he will be lucky to draw 100 girly men to his rallys.

[bad]

Here are EXPENSE FIGURES from the $49.2 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

$151,124 1995 from 1996 Program Report, pg 57
$340,559 1996 from 12-96 Program Report, pg 38
$622,150 1997 prop budget Prog. Rep. pg 37
$1,506,176 1998 tax return, pg 1
$1,808,325 1999 tax return, pg 1
$1,862,572 2000 tax return, pg 1
$1,844,123 2001 tax return, pg 1
$19,492 2002 tax return, pg 1
__________________________

$8,154,521 Total Expenses (non Grant)

That's a huge amount of cash that wasn't given as grants toward the education of disadvantaged minority children.

LUN