Chicago Annenberg Challenge

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge ( CAC), also Annenberg Challenge to Chicago, was part of the national Annenberg Challenge ( like with " Annenberg Challenge" translatable ), which was founded in 1995 as a public- private partnership in the United States. She aimed at reforming the elementary schools. Their performance should be increased by means of basic investment in the form of professional development programs and technical assistance. The CAC was funded by a foundation of conservative friend of Ronald Reagan publisher, billionaire patrons and Walter Annenberg. The Annenberg Foundation should be added in a 2:1 ratio of other private donors.

The CAC received from the National Initiative 1995, a total of 49.2 million U.S. dollars. By 1999, succeeded to the Chicago Challenge, to raise additional $ 60 million from private donors. The CAC existed until January 2002. The remaining assets were on a follow-up project, the Chicago Public Education Fund, transferred. The records of the CAC were asked the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago for the research.

The successful grant application to the Annenberg Foundation in 1993 was Bill Ayers asked, co-founder of the militant U.S. underground organization Weathermen, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois in Chicago and now president of the Elementary Teachers Association " era "; later the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform and the Joyce Foundation were involved. Ayers was an activist group Alliance for Better Chicago Schools (ABC) within this reform movement. At ABC also scored the Developing Communities Project, at the time Barack Obama board, as well as coming from the business side group Chicago United chaired by Thomas Ayers, father of William Ayers. An important achievement of the Chicago school reform movement was a law enacted in 1988, the installed counterweight to represent the interests of teachers and school administration in all schools of Chicago local councils, parents and political activists procured impact on the schools. As of 1995, the mayor of Chicago undertook increasingly successful attempts to undermine the influence of the councils. The CAC resisted by the councils put millions of dollars. Among other things, $ 175,000 went to the founded in the 1990s by Bill Ayers Small Schools Workshop, recruited for the Ayers Mike Klonsky. Klonsky was one of the founders and leaders of the Maoist- oriented Communist Party ( Marxist-Leninist ) of the United States. The activities of the CAC were at times also internally controversial. A Challenge board member Arnold Weber, representative of the Economic Sector and former president of Northwestern University, criticized the award of $ 2 million to local school councils as potential "political threat" to the headmaster.

At the beginning, the CAC was composed of three parts:

• The Chicago School Reform Collaborative as the operating arm, consisting of representatives of the school reform movement formed in 1987 under the co-presidency of Bill Ayers. As part of the CAC it was the object of the Collaborative to seek out potential grantees to prepare application proposals and to develop further ways of supporting the example supplied by the school boards of the reform process for the CAC.
• A Board, which was initially appointed by the Chicago School Reform Cooperative. The Board was entrusted with raising donations and approval of grants. He also appointed an Executive Director, Ken Rolling, from the Woods Fund of Chicago. Board members were DERS Chicago celebrities both from the economic and from the social sphere. From 1995 to 2000 Barack Obama (then a practicing lawyer ) Chairman of the Board. As a candidate for the organized Parliament of Illinois Obama one of his first donations dinner at the home of Ayers, who lived in South Chicago in the same neighborhood. Shortly after Obama was chairman of the " Annenberg Challenge to Chicago ." Cooperation with the militant Bill Ayers was Obama in the CAC held in pre-election campaign for U.S. Presidential Election 2008 by journalists and in the main campaign itself from the Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Obama was indirectly assumed - but without being able to prove this - that he could have shared the radical political views of Ayers, and Obama's election as Chairman of the CAC may go back to Ayers.
• The Chicago Schools Research Consortium, a research branch of the CAC. The Research Consortium was responsible for assessing the impact of the expenditure of the funds granted by the CAC. Ironically, the panel came to the conclusion that the output during more than six years in Chicago $ 110 million little or no impact on the performance of the students would have had.