Monday, September 10, 2012

Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

link - Stanley Kurtz/Wall St. Journal

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists....

CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement....

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Figures. Chicago Teacher’s Union President Linked to Former Communist Party Chief and Barack Obama - Jim Hoft/Gateway Pundit

More Hope and Change…
Mike Klonsky, an Obama supporter and former associate of the radicals who formed the terrorist group the Weatherman, received a $175,000 grant from the William Ayers/Barack Obama-led Annenberg Challenge to run the Small Schools Workshop....

So it should come as no surprise that Mike Klonsky, the former Communist Party leader, is a huge supporter of Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union. Chicago teachers went on strike today for the first time in 25 years despite the fact that the average teacher salary in Chicago is $74,839 a year.

U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading - CNS News