Chicago Annenberg Challenge

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) (also referred to as the Annenberg Challenge to Chicago) was a public-private partnership founded in 1995 to improve school performance by what it called "on the ground" investments in the form of professional development and technical assistance. Sponsored by the Annenberg Foundation, the CAC received a charter grant of $49.2 million in 1995. The CAC was formally dissolved in January, 2002. It handed over its remaining assets to its successor, the Chicago Public Education Fund, on whose board sit Susan Crown and Penny Pritzker. The CAC donated its records to the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago to be made available for public research.

Beginnings

The CAC's successful grant application was written in 1993 by William Ayers, co-founder of the militant organization Weatherman and professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After extensive community-based discussions also involving Anne Hallett of the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform, and Warren Chapman of the Joyce Foundation.

At its founding, the Annenberg Challenge was made up of three constituent parts:

• The Chicago School Reform Collaborative, co-chaired by William C. Ayers;
• a Board of Directors initially recruited by the Collaborative, which was chaired from 1995 to 2000 by Barack Obama, at the time a practicing attorney.
• The Chicago Schools Research Consortium, a research arm of the Challenge.

The Collaborative was the operative on the ground body of the Challenge. It was made up of representatives of various constituencies in the Chicago school reform movement. That reform movement had begun in 1987 in the wake of an unpopular strike by Chicago teachers. Bill Ayers was active in that reform effort through a group called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABCs. ABCs was an alliance of various activists and reform groups that included the Developing Communities Project which Barack Obama headed up at the time as well as Chicago United, a business sector group, that was headed up by Thomas Ayers, father of Bill Ayers.

A key accomplishment of the reform movement was the passage in 1988 of a new state law that established local school councils in every school in Chicago as a competing center of power relative to the teachers union and the Chicago school administration.

The Collaborative's responsibility was to help identify potential grant recipients, prepare requests for proposals and develop other means for the Challenge to intervene in supporting the local school council-led reform process in Chicago. In 1995 the mayor of Chicago succeeded in the first of several efforts to undermine the power of these councils. But the Challenge fought back by funneling millions of dollars into the councils and associated reform groups, including $175,000 to the Small Schools Workshop. The Workshop had been established in the early 1990s by William Ayers who hired Mike Klonsky, a Chicago cab driver who had earned a Ph.D. in education from the University of South Florida, and former activist with Ayers in Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. Klonsky had achieved limited notoriety in 1977 when he traveled to Beijing to seek the endorsement of Communist China for a political party he had helped establish in the United States, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).

At times the attempt by the Challenge was controversial. An effort to funnel $2 million to the Local Schools Councils was criticized by one Challenge board member, Arnold Weber, a business sector representative and former President of Northwestern University, who saw the Councils as a potential "political threat" to school principals. Of course, the councils were formed precisely to provide parent and political activists with the power to influence schools.

The Board would engage in fundraising and approval of grants. The Board also hired a Executive Director, Ken Rolling, from Woods Fund of Chicago.

The Research Consortium was responsible for assessing the impact of the expenditure of the Challenge's grant money. Ironically, they concluded that the $110 million spent in Chicago over six years had little or no impact on outcomes for students.

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge received a grant of $49.2 million from the national Annenberg Challenge based at Brown University. The grant was to be matched 2:1 by private donors. By 1999 the Chicago Challenge succeeded in raising an additional $60 million.

Other CAC board members were prominent Chicagoans from both the private and non profit sectors.

Legacy

The project appears to have failed to achieve any of its stated, measurable educational goals. For example, a comprehensive study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research concludes:

"Results suggest that among the schools it supported, the Challenge had little impact on school improvement and student outcomes, with no statistically significant differences between Annenberg and non-Annenberg schools in rates of achievement gain, classroom behavior, student self-efficacy, and social competence."

The CAC managed to build a successor organization, the Chicago Public Education Fund, with a focus upon principal and teacher leadership. The Fund has supported such programs as Teach for America, Golden Apple Teacher Education program (GATE), and New Leaders for New Schools.

2008 presidential election

Main article: Obama–Ayers controversy

The CAC would come under scrutiny during the 2008 Democratic Primary presidential primaries, when, during a debate with Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia, Barack Obama was asked by George Stephanopolous to explain his relation with William Ayers, with whom he served on the board of CAC from 1995-2002 and traded board chairmanship. Obama described Ayers thusly:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis."

As a State Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama listed among his credentials, chairmanship of "The Chicago Annebery [sic] Challenge."

Records in UIC Special Collections

A large collection of internal records from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge are currently housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The document cache is extensive, consisting of 132 boxes containing 947 file folders.

The University of Illinois at Chicago released the following statement on Aug. 19, 2008:

"The University Library supports the teaching, research, and service missions of the University by acquiring, organizing, preserving, and providing access to information. The Library is open to the public and dedicated to free inquiry. The University has not received ownership rights to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge collection. The University is aggressively pursuing an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is finalized, the collection will be made accessible to the public."

When these records were not open to the public some people wondered if there was a cover-up of something related to Barack Obama, even though Obama "does not have control over these records or the ability to release them". A spokesperson for the museum stated that the donor's concern "regarding the collection are due to personnel information that could include names, confidential salary information and even Social Security numbers," and that this delayed the release of the records.

The UIC says it now has legal authority to allow public access to the collection and made the records public starting Aug 26, 2008.

See also

• Obama–Ayers controversy‎

External links

• The Chicago Annenberg Challenge
• "Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?" by Stanley Kurtz
• Access to Chicago Annenberg Challenge Records
• Chicago Annenberg Challenge Files