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| 5/24 |
| 2008/9/4-8 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Computer/HW/Memory, Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:51059 Activity:nil |
9/4 Someone asked yesterday about the Obama/Ayers link. It took me a while
to find a link I was happy with, this one is ok. This guy goes into
excruciating detail about the Annenberg Challenge and CAC over a
number of blog posts. The full Annenberg documents were only recently
released, and this post predates the release. The documents are still
being digested, so this is far from the final word.
Anyway, it is pretty obvious that Obama and Ayers had a close working
relationship for at least 6 years (the real relationship almost
cetainly predates this), in which they funneled millions to Ayers'
causes and students. It's also quite obvious that Obama has been
highly disingenous about this relationship, and many of his statements
about it have been blatant falsehoods. ("Our kids went to school
together", etc)
http://csua.org/u/m9b
\_ Yes, Obama supports terrorism and wants to KILL WHITEY.
\_ It looks like Obama has really been trying to improve the schools,
which is great. I think I am going to give him another $2300.
\_ Might want to look into what he was spending that money on
first. The challenge itself was deemed an utter flop. $100mil
down the hole.
\_ Deemed an utter flop by who? This guy is not a reliable
source.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/554pov
The Annenberg Challange is hardly the radical far-left
proposal this guy makes it out to be.
\_ Sorry, it was a flop _in Chicago_. That is, it had no
effect on student performance in Chicago. Your link is an
overall evaluation, so not really interesting for this
discussion.
Also, it was deemed a flop by the Consortium of Chicago
School Research (CCSR) in 2003.
\_ Yes, that is interesting. I will have to do some more
research. But I think it is amusing that an effort to
try and weaken the hold of the teacher's union is called
a communist tactic by this guy.
\_ I with you agree there. -op
\_ I agree with you there. -op
here are some new numbers (VM Size in MB reported by Task Manager):
2.0.0.16 3.0.1
- Startup, empty the cache. 13 23
- Go to http://www.yahoo.com 17 40
- Open 6 news pages in 43 69
6 new tabs.
- Close the 6 tabs above. 35 54
- Open the same 6 news pages 44 71
in 6 new tabs again.
- Close the 6 tags again. 38 53
So, after opening and closing the same tabs a second time, Firefox 3
still uses more memory than Firefox 2. Any idea? Thanks.
\_ The delta between 2 "close the 6 tabs" lines is 3 megs for FF2
and -1 megs for FF3. The general problem with FF2 was it tended
to leak memory over time. For a desktop app, an extra 10 megs
is minimal, but since people like to have long lived browser
sessions, FF2's habit of slowing growing up to 2 gigs of memory
is a real problem.
\_ Dunno, I notice better memory usage with lots of tabs open.
Firefox 2 used to go into the 500 MB range after a while,
Firefox 3 typically doesn't go above 400 MB.
\_ I used to have to restart my browser every day. I don't have to
with FF3.
\_ FF3 does seem more crashy though.
\_ Anyway, you made your point. He has extensive political connections
to an ex-WU guy. A big yawner to me, but perhaps middle America
cares. I kind of doubt it. |
| 5/24 |
|
| csua.org/u/m9b -> globallabor.blogspot.com/2008/08/behind-annenberg-gate-inside-chicago.html Global Labor and Politics The end of the cold war ushered in a new era for the global labor movement. This blog attempts to provide a forum for exploring the complex issues that globalization poses for the international labor movement. blocking access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an Illinois non profit corporation, established in 1995. The records are held by the University's Richard Daley Library. Instead, he again today attempted to mislead people into thinking that Ayers and Obama are just "friends" when, in fact, as we will show here, they have been long time political allies. Brown housed the national Annenberg Challenge program that was set up in 1993 by a gift of $500 million from Walter Annenberg. While the material I was provided is helpful it is no substitute for the complete documentary record that is apparently housed at the University of Illinois (some 70 linear feet of documents according to the library's public records) and thus that public University should immediately make available to the public those records. Below is an analysis of what I found in the documents I was able to obtain. They evidence: 1 the leading role that Bill Ayers played in the Annenberg Challenge; Bill Ayers and Anne C Hallett co-signed a letter submitting the grant proposal to Brown University President Vartan Gregorian on November 8, 1994 where the national Challenge office would be headquartered. The letter was on the letterhead of the University of Illinois at Chicago ("UIC"). Ayers identified himself as representing the UIC and the "Chicago Forum for School Change." Ms Hallett is identified as the Executive Director of the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform. At the bottom of the letter, a parenthetical states: "On behalf of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative." The letter and the attached detailed proposal grew out of a process that began in December 1993 when a small group led by Ayers, Hallett and Warren Chapman of the Joyce Foundation "met to discuss a proposal to the Annenberg Challenge for support of this city's public school reform efforts." This group became the nucleus of the larger Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one of the two operational arms of the CAC, which Ayers would co-chair and on which Hallett and Chapman would serve. The letter makes the goal of the grant proposal explicit: "Chicago is six years into the most radical systemwide urban school reform effort in the country. The Annenberg Challenge provides an unprecedented opportunity to concentrate the energy of this reform into an educational renaissance in the classroom." The attached proposal is titled: "Smart Schools/Smart Kids: A proposal to the Annenberg Challenge to Create the Chicago School Reform Collaborative." The six year old "radical reform effort" that Ayers/Hallett refer to, of course, was the establishment of local school councils ("LSC") as a new center of power in the Chicago Public Schools ("CPS") in 1988, in the wake of a 1987 teachers' strike that proved unpopular to parents and reform activists in both community groups and business groups. The Alliance for Better Chicago Schools ("ABCs") was formed then to push for the LSC idea in the Illinois state legislature. Active in the ABCs was Bill Ayers, Barack Obama's Developing Communities Project, and Chicago United, a group of businessmen concerned about race and education issues founded by Bill Ayers' father, Tom Ayers, once CEO of the large Chicago utility, Commonwealth Edison (now Exelon). By the early 1990s there was controversy about the LSC idea from many directions. At one point the 1988 law was actually declared unconstitutional and it had to be restructured. Another effort was underway to re-centralize control over the schools in the hands of the mayor's office when the possibility of the Annenberg grant arose. This counter-reform effort, if you will, partially succeeded in new laws passed in 1995 and 1999. But in 1993 the CAC grant proposal was seen by Ayers as an attempt, in part, to rescue the LSC's. are important both for guiding educational improvement and as a means of strengthening America's democratic traditions." 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." As Ayers stated in a speech there in November 2006 "La educacion es Revolucion!" the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution." When the LSC reform was put in place Bill Ayers wrote an opinion piece for the Chicago newspapers that spoke of combatting the "bureaucracies" that he felt blocked true reform in the school system. I believe he meant by this both the Chicago school board and the Chicago Teachers' Union. This use of the word "bureaucracies" as his target is, again, evocative of the attempts of figures like Mao Tse Tung to combat "bureaucracy" in the Chinese cultural 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. Thus, in the midst of an intense political battle in Chicago over the LSC role in the schools, securing the CAC money was very important to the LSC reform effort backed by Ayers and Obama from the late 1980s. This is the critical step, that must be taken now, and the time is now." Indeed, the CAC proposal effort led by Ayers and Hallett was a critical part of what the Project Director of the CAC, Ken Rolling, described as the "political wars" being waged over schools in Chicago at that time. Ken Rolling was a veteran of those wars because in his previous role he had been a program officer of the Woods Fund, which supported the school reform effort through its grants, including grants to Barack Obama's Developing Communities Project. Other groups in other cities were competing for the same pool of funds (a total of $500 million made available by philanthropist Walter Annenberg) and, perhaps even more importantly, other groups in the city of Chicago with different policy views were applying to receive funds. That money would have to be matched by contributions from the private and public sector 2:1 for a total amount over the life of the project of approximately $150 million dollars to be disbursed in Chicago. In fact, by the end of 1999 the CAC had raised slightly more than $50 million from public sources and nearly $60 million from private sources, for a total of $160 million to be disbursed in Chicago area schools. The CAC set up an office in rent-free space at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in the same Department of Education building where Bill Ayers taught. 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); 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. Obama took over the reins of the Bo... |
| preview.tinyurl.com/554pov -> www.annenbergfoundation.org/news/news_show.htm?doc_id=209657 org WASHINGTON, DC: Citing improvements in some of the nation's most troubled schools, the Annenberg Challenge today released the final report on its historic effort to improve public education in America. "The Challenge did not flinch from tackling some of the toughest problems in education," said Warren Simmons, executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. "It worked in inner cities and isolated rural areas to improve education for children who were most often poor or minorities. The Challenge did not work miracles, but it frequently beat the odds and helped public schools do better. The Challenge reached 15 million children and 80,000 teachers in 2,400 schools in 35 states. It was launched in December 1993 when Ambassador Walter H Annenberg, founder/donor of the Annenberg Foundation, announced a $500-million gift to public education at a White House event and called for a "crusade for the betterment of our country." The gift was the largest ever made to public education at that time. Ambassador Annenberg challenged others to match his gift and over 1,600 businesses, foundations, colleges and universities, and individuals responded, contributing an additional $600 million, creating the largest public-private partnership to improve public education in U S history. Eighteen school improvement projects were created across the country; It reports that the Challenge: * Expanded professional development opportunities for tens of thousands of teachers. Improving teaching was the largest and most productive Challenge activity. In Chicago, elementary school students in Annenberg schools went from a half-grade behind the city average to a quarter-grade ahead. In New York City, 50,000 students now attend smaller schools. Lessons and Reflectionsalso describes some of the Challenge's disappointments. "We learned the hard way that if you seek to change the public schools, you must be prepared to deal with repeated setbacks, rapid turnover in leadership and sudden changes in direction," the report says. "We encountered problems and policy reversals in some places that took everyone by surprise. The report also notes that while the Challenge made large grants, nearly every site reached out to hundreds of schools, and the sums that ultimately went to individual schools were modest. Some Challenge sites spread themselves too thin by trying to do too much in too many schools, and that hampered the work. "Even large gifts like ours are no substitute for adequate, equitable, and reliable funding" of public schools, the report says. Grants ranging from $10 million to $53 million were awarded to sites in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, the San Francisco Bay Area, South Florida (encompassing Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties), and the Rural Challenge, which worked in hundreds of communities. Smaller "opportunity grants" of $1 to $4 million were awarded to sites in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chattanooga, Chelsea (MA), and Salt Lake City. Three additional Challenge sites focused on enhancing arts education: The Center for Arts Education in New York City, the Arts for Academic Achievement in Minneapolis, and the national Transforming Education through the Arts Challenge, comprised of six regional consortia members in California, Florida, Ohio, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas. To coordinate and support the reform projects, the Annenberg Foundation provided supplemental funding to staff a small national Challenge office at the Annenberg Institute. The 18 sites embraced many different approaches to creating good schools, based on local needs and priorities. An independent, non-profit entity ran each project, which was designed by a local planning group comprised of educators, foundation officers, and community and business leaders. The Challenge was never intended to produce systemic reform, and as the report points out, it was "never just about money... It sought to change the minds of teachers who had come to accept mediocrity and failure, and to change public attitudes about what is possible in public schools." The report acknowledges that "public schools in most major cities are still not doing the job they must," but schools "are better today than they were a decade ago and teachers are better equipped to help children overcome obstacles and achieve higher standards." Gail Levin, executive director of the Annenberg Foundation, said, "The Challenge is a great tribute to Ambassador Annenberg, who recognized that improving public education is the surest way to preserve our democratic values and ensure the future of our country." |
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