Reclaim Conservatism

Or at least some of the papers from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that both Obama and Ayers were a part of. It goes to show that Obama and ayers were more than just casual aquaintances and were political allies in taking control of Chicago schools. Flopping Aces has got a good post on this.

I will post a few excerpts from the post, but you should go to Global Labor and Politics, by Steve Diamond for the whole post.

….
As I have argued elsewhere on this blog, I do not think that the link
made here between the LSC’s and “democracy” is, in fact, accurate. I
think that such “councils” look eerily similar to efforts by regimes
like those in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Venezuela under
Chavez to impose control over teachers and their independent unions by
an authoritarian regime. Thus, it is not a surprise to me that Bill
Ayers has traveled several times in recent years to Venezuela where he
has spoken in front of Hugo Chavez and has enthusiastically applauded
that regime’s efforts to link education policy to the Chavez
“revolution.”….

…
It is interesting to note that very few black Chicago organizations
were willing to back the LSC reforms precisely because they targeted
the Teachers’ Union and the School Board – two of the few places in
Chicago life at the time where blacks could pursue a secure middle
class profession…..

…
The CAC Structure: The Board and the Collaborative work hand in glove

The
Ayers/Hallett proposal described a three-piece structure established to
carry out the CAC. The three “over-lapping entities each of which has
clear tasks and responsibilities” included:

“The
Chicago Annenberg Challenge Board (the Board); the Chicago School
Reform Collaborative (the Collaborative); and the Consortium of Chicago
Schools Research (CCSR).”

The Board would handle “all fiscal matters” including raising the
required 2:1 matching funds (nearly $100 million required in a five
year period) and “creating a grant-making system to disperse monies to
schools and networks.” The Board would hire the Project Director, a
full time professional staff position.

The
first chairman of the CAC Board was Barack Obama, at that point, 33
years old and a third year associate at Davis, Miner, Barnhill &
Galland, a small Chicago law firm.….

The second operating entity of the CAC would be the Collaborative that
would represent various constituencies in the Chicago schools and wider
community. It would be:

“A
clearing-house for ideas, for resources, for information – the place
where strategies are created, successes and failures analyzed, and
plans made and shared. The Collaborative under the leadership of the
[Project] Director will publicize the Challenge, develop the RFP
[Requests for Proposals] and application criteria, host seminars to
inform and assist schools through the process, select participating
schools, establish working groups, oversee program evaluation, develop
the metropolitan strategy, broker waivers and resources, and provide
services for networks. In other words, the Collaborative is the place
where the Challenge digs its deepest roots into the community and the
schools – and it is the heart of the operational work.”…

….
The CAC also funded a third arm, the Consortium of Chicago School
Research (CCSR), in parallel with the two operational arms, the Board
and the Collaborative. This arm was to conduct research on the impact
of the CAC’s funding.

In 2003 the final technical report of the
CCSR on the CAC was published. The results were not pretty. The “bottom
line” according to the report was that the CAC did not achieve its goal
of improvement in student academic achievement and nonacademic
outcomes. While student test scores improved in the so-called Annenberg
Schools that received some of the $150 million disbursed in the six
years from 1995 to 2001,

“This
was similar to improvement across the system….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.”…

Conclusion: an academic failure but political success?

The
Challenge allowed Barack Obama and Bill Ayers to work together, no
doubt closely, in the heat of political battle to help disburse more
than $100 million to allies, particularly in the LSCs, in the Chicago
School system.

Under the circumstances, it
seems more than a bit disingenuous of Senator Obama to dismiss Bill
Ayers as “some guy who lives in my neighborhood.”