Tom Maguire at Just One Minute blog has a rundown on a large education initiative where Obama headed an education effort that got a $50 million grant and basically, achieved nothing. The best of all is that the prime mover of this grant was William Ayers, the education prof & ex Weatherman whom Obama is now claiming to scarcely know:
In a White House ceremony in December 1993, philanthropist Walter Annenberg announced the Annenberg Challenge, putting $500 million towards efforts to reform public education.
Bill Ayers and two others formed and led a "Working Group" that produced Chicago's grant application; in 1995 Chicago was awarded $49.2 million, creating the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Fund ("CACF") in a well-publicized civic event.
The first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Fund was Barack Obama. This is disclosed on Obama's Senate forms and he is mentioned in a history of the CACF [link, p. 54 of the text]. The board was responsible for hiring an Executive Director, Ken Rolling, who should have been involved on a daily basis (and does anyone know anything about Mr. Rolling?).
The "Working Group" mentioned above morphed into the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, co-chaired by Bill Ayers and one of his two co-founders of the Working Group. The Collaborative then worked closely with the CACF for several years. Ayers' role is noted in this history and at his own website on his resume.
A sidebar - my guess is that this link between Ayers and Obama has gone unreported because of the name game; despite a close working relationship, the Collaborative and the CACF don't leap off the page as being obviously associated, although the Ayers resume is clear enough - "The Annenberg Challenge" appears in parentheses right next to "Chicago School Reform Collaborative".
...So what does it mean? Well, it is not going to be possible to evaluate this Obama/Ayers link until Obama is a bit more forthcoming about it, so having him or his campaign provide some basic facts would be an excellent starting point for some enterprising reporter.
One might well ask - how would Obama characterize his involvement with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Fund? This story says he was involved; this one, also by Alexander Russo of the later Slate piece, says Obama was a non-player in Chicago school reform.]
How closely did Obama work with the fund's executive director, Ken Rolling (and what does Mr. Rolling have to say about this)?
What did Obama know of Bill Ayers' involvement (which the rest of us now know to be extensive)?
Eventually, the CACF was viewed as a failure (the final report says it had "little impact") - what did Obama learn from that?
Finally, there is a question of shared values; setting aside Ayers' bomb-tossing proclivities of the 70's, he has a very hard left approach to education; for example, he explained to Hugo Chavez and a Venezuelan audience that public education was a way to promote the revolution [and lots more here from Ed Lasky]. How much of this did Obama know then? Or is this just another situation, as with Jeremiah Wright, where Obama simply didn't know anything about the fellow with whom he was associating?
In some ways, Obama's experience is analogous to Hillary's failed health care initiative of the mid 90's - he tackled a publicized, important, politically charged topic, and belly-flopped. The obvious difference is that his failure is not being discussed. And it's possible he was merely a figurehead who was hoping to take credit for success but distanced himself from failure; I leave it to his spinners to present that lack of interest in education reform more positively.
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