“In a Sense, All Education is About Power.” -William Ayers
Steve Diamond, at the Global Labor and Politics blog, has some analysis of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which the University of Illinois is currently stonewalling attempts for reporters to see what six years of Obama’s leadership (twice his meager three years in the Senate) did for education in Chicago.
…the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (“CAC”), the education reform project founded by Bill Ayers and which he led with Barack Obama from 1995 until 2001. The Challenge spent some $160 million in the Chicago Public School system during that time period with the explicit goal of improving educational outcomes for students. The Challenge failed in that attempt.
So, if this analysis is correct, the only administrative position in Obama’s short, short career cost the taxpayers millions and produced inferior results?
…My analysis of the history of the CAC can be found here. The key to understanding the CAC is its political context. The CAC was established to shore up support for the Local School Councils established in 1988. The LSCs were a new power center set up to watchdog teachers, principals and school administrators. While Ayers celebrates it as a form of battling “bureaucracies” and as a democratic reform, in fact it has disturbing authoritarian overtones…
Former domestic terrorists, who would bomb you if you did not agree with them, displaying authoritarian overtones…who woulda thunk it?
…Mayor Daley was leading the charge to gut the entire LSC structure that Ayers, Obama, Mike Klonsky* and others had fought to create and build. The CAC was seen by Ayers as a way to protect and sustain the LSCs against the attempt to re-centralize power over the troubled schools in the hands of the Mayor.
Because education is about power!
*Mike Klonsky was a former SDS comrade of Ayers and later helped found a maoist party in the United States, travelling to meet with Chinese leaders in 1977 for their endorsement of his effort here. Klonsky’s Small Schools Workshop received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CAC headed by Obama and Ayers.
Oh, good! We’ve got the maoist wing of the former terrorists to help balance out the black nationalists and flag stompers.
Ah, multiculturalism! No wonder they don’t want us to see those records!
Hat tip Patterico’s pontifications
Cross posted at Proof Positive
