So, I’m a Little Concerned
December 16, 2008
Whenever I do “investigative reporting,” by which I mean “conduct a Google search for information before actually sitting down and writing something,” it usually comes back to bite me in the ass, but here goes nothing.
This Arne Duncan guy that everyone is all excited is going to run the nation’s public schools as Secretary of Education? He’s not exactly a proponent of secular education in the city of Chicago, and by that I mean, he’s very fond of inculcating Chicago students with more than just a top-notch education.
For starters, he’s behind this little idea:
So, how often do you think that the Old Media will mention that Barack Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education, Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan, supported to be opened in Chicago a gay, lesbian and transgender high school? Any takers?
I have looked over many of the stories on Obama’s pick for Sec of Ed, but seen mention of his support of the gay high school only a few times. Only three stories mentioned it out of the first 20 I checked. Even the Wall Street Journal didn’t mention it in their announcement of the Obama pick.
Now, in the end, I’m not THAT opposed to this. As a kid who was bullied for most of my life (yeah, glasses, braces, even a retainer that covered both the top AND bottom teeth and was attached with a joint at the ends, like one of those plastic skulls they use in high school anatomy classes will get you that), I can understand why kids who find themselves “different” from other kids would want to have a school all their own. Granted, once in a separate school, those kids will quickly form a food chain and beat up on kids who don’t fit in with the crowd THERE, but suffice it to say, the idea, in its conceptual form, makes some sense somehow. The proposal eventually became a proposal for a school for kids who were bullied. Okay, big deal, right?
Well, that’s not really the end of it. In fact, its just the beginning. My favorite subject in all of this Chicago mess is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the project on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together. I love this project because right up the street from me, I have an Annenberg Challenge school, which I think is known in the community as the “Peace School,” and is very interactive with residents of my little neighborhood. They hold peace studies rallies, drum circles, indoctrinate children in what appear to be Marxist values and hold the weekly farmers market (who said communism couldn’t taste fresh?). They are a continual annoyance to me, particularly because, in the summer, my favorite Thai restaurant has a mini-cafe right across the street and I have to stare at their peace signs and “Vote” posters until I seethe, and it ruins my basil chicken.
Anywho, Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools. From an official statement by the Annenberg Challenge:
The Challenge’s work is still carried on today through to the bipartisan Chicago Public Education Fund, which coordinates closely Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley…
In that piece, Stanley Kurtz carefully outlines how Ayers served on the board of and influences the activities of the Annenberg Challenge. According to Kurtz, Ayers had much more control over the direction of the project than either then Annenberg Challenge or Duncan will ever be willing to admit. And the Annenberg Project, according to Education Week, which is a go-to resource on all things curriculum related in public schools, had a heavy influence on Duncan’s curriculum agenda.
If we were to assume Kurtz did due diligence, which I think we can, and then look at Kurtz’s investigative reporting together with the spotlight article for Education Week, we could logically conclude that some, if not much, of what Bill Ayers placed into the stream of action at the Annenberg Challenge was implemented, even officially, in the Chicago Public Schools. CAC and Duncan worked hand-in-hand to the point where they and the greater educational community viewed the partnership and its resulting curriculum modification in Chicago’s schools as a success. And to add insult to injury, his greatest cheerleader? The NEA.
I’m not one to normally make weird connections, but this one seems logical. If there’s one person I don’t want influencing nationwide educational policy, that person would be Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, the creators of Still Standing, Margaret Sanger, or, for that matter, Kirk Cameron, but lets just say that Bill Ayers is near or at the top of that list. As much as I love a good protest, I’m not entirely sure teaching a generation of children that the Weather Underground had the right ideas about domestic terrorism, or really ANYTHING, is a good idea.
Posted in Uncategorized
December 16th, 2008 at 9:18 am
OMG
December 16th, 2008 at 9:38 am
But ADN, what of the role of the evil bankers and the tyranny of fiat currency?
December 16th, 2008 at 9:42 am
A gay, lesbian and transgender high school…sounds “separate but equal” to me.
December 16th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Far be it from me to venture a legal opinion on this blog, but wouldn’t the fact that enrollment was voluntary be germane?
regards,
December 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
[...] E.M. Zanotti connects the dots. [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Well isn’t that special…
I guess we know how the public school system will be fixed now. Add more of the same BS that has already reduced public education to something less than an un-funny joke. Special indeed.
Thanks for having the courage to write about it EM.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Oh, and nice to see MM giving the shout out.
December 16th, 2008 at 10:35 am
[...] E.M. Zanotti did a little investigation into just what we’re getting into with Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. My favorite subject in all of this Chicago mess is the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which is the project on whose board Bill Ayers and Barack Obama served together. I love this project because right up the street from me, I have an Annenberg Challenge school, which I think is known in the community as the “Peace School,” and is very interactive with residents of my little neighborhood. They hold peace studies rallies, drum circles, indoctrinate children in what appear to be Marxist values and hold the weekly farmers market (who said communism couldn’t taste fresh?). They are a continual annoyance to me, particularly because, in the summer, my favorite Thai restaurant has a mini-cafe right across the street and I have to stare at their peace signs and “Vote” posters until I seethe, and it ruins my basil chicken. [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 10:50 am
[...] Duncan is, however, a proponent of the “Everyday Math” curriculum which is, so far as I can tell, makes students significantly more innumerate while making them feel ten kinds of good about how stupid they really are. Duncan has also worked very closely with the Annenberg Challenge, which is the educational program on which Barack Obama and cop-killer scumbag Bill Ayers worked as partners for many years. [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am
[...] Via Michelle Malkin (who’s also pretty pissed), E.M. Zanotti connects Arne Duncan to the infamous Annenberg Challenge. You know, the same challenge that both Barack Obama and some guy named William Ayers worked on together. Anywho, Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools. From an official statement by the Annenberg Challenge: [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Perhaps I missed it, but there’s nothing about the abysmal literacy rates that the Chicago schools produce. They turn out kids who aren’t ready for college, and their dropout rates are some of the highest in the nation.
Of course, Obama kids go to private schools, so perhaps he simply isn’t aware of these things.
December 16th, 2008 at 11:56 am
I limited this to what I can get through a Google search and what Stanley Kurtz researched. I come from Detroit, so everything is better than that, but yeah, the schools suck here, too.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
The other interesting note on the Duncan “promotion” is that Chicago has among the worst public schools systems in the country. What’s the sort of “change” this is supposed to bring about? We’ll have a federal appointee who is in charge of making sure that students don’t have hurt feelings when they can’t read, write, or do basic math. Take it from a fellow Chicagoan, this is probably one of the worst appointments so far in the Change O Matic administration.
December 16th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
[...] E.M. Zanotti connects the dots. [Must read this.] [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Jim, as we say around here:
Dare to hope, prepare to be disappointed.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Why isn’t this considered ‘tracking’? Won’t some kids inevitably doomed to untold years of heterosexuality because of administrative screw-ups?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
What’s up with your comment about Kirk Cameron?
December 16th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
I would chill on the Bill Ayers thing - he was on the opposite side from Duncan in the great schism about Chicago school reform.
A good summary of the history of the reform efforts in the Chicago public school system appeared by Russo in Slate. The gist - in 1988 Chicago tried transferring more control to Local School Councils, which could fire principals. Bill Ayers backed this approach, as it was one way to gain control of individual schools. (Obama, in his ‘community organizer’ days, backed this approach as well.)
Set against that were the mayor and the school commissioner, who favored strong central authority. Vallas, school commissioner and the guy who hired Duncan in 1998, led the charge for central power. His strategy with Ayers was lifted from the Godfather - friends close, enemies closer.
So Duncan would not be a pick Ayers would prefer - in fact, he had a candidate, who lost. Steve Diamond, a lefty law prof has followed this story better than anyone for months and sees the Duncan pick as a disappointment for the Ayers camp.
[Note - I guess preview is for sissies... Here we go.]
December 16th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Last last thought - Mike Klonsky, Bill Ayers SDS bud and fellow school reformer, is disheartened by this pick.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Thanks for the thoughts, Tom. I feel…um….slightly better. But I’ll be honest…I don’t feel comfortable with anyone from Chicago going to Washington, and the schools are no exception. To me, the fact that there was any connection bothers me, and the fact that the Annenberg Challenge is in any way associated with the Department of Education is not cool. Its not really the Bill Ayers thing or the fact that he likes or dislikes Bill Ayers that I’m really stressing here…just that he managed to create a viable partnership with the Challenge and implemented some of those practices in the Chicago schools. Ayers or not, the CAC isn’t a great thing.
December 16th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Carlos, I don’t like Kirk Cameron, but that is a longstanding issue on this blog. To be blunt, I think he contributes to the degradation of intellectual conservatism and the concept of Fides et Ratio. One day, I’ll blog about it again and we can hash it out in those comments. I have a lot of opinions on the state of conservative culture.
December 16th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Obama and Ayers did not serve on this board together.
Ayers was on a grant proposal board to secure the funds for the Annenberg program in 1993.
After the program was approved Obama served on its Board of Directors in 1995.
This Annenberg program was actually not too bad. Billionaire Walter Annenberg [former ambassador to the UK under Nixon] gave a lot of his money to funding public education because he felt the government had a responsibility to it’s children. Especially those in impovershed neighborhoods. The Ayers connection is being exploited here. It would be like saying Annenberg and Ayers were connected. A stretch to say the least.
There are also no ‘Marxist’ values. This isn’t an economic school. And the farmer’s market quip is rather silly. What’s wrong with fresh food grown and sold by farmers?
December 16th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
But ADN, what of the role of the evil bankers and the tyranny of fiat currency?—->
their role is simple and it is somewhat analagous to the time the romans supposedly outlawed marriage and the legend of st valentine arose…because married men are more for liberty….and and another level it is analogous to the libertine who wants to encourage your vice to pick your pocket
lets get something straight
you dont need a law to protect an inch or a foot or a meter
if you DONT see that the law to protect the price of money is a ROOT CAUSE of all the violence in the world and benefits some at the expense of most….moving control of the money supply OUT of the hands of its shareholders…you and i….and violating all accounting rules and rules of accoutability….thats fine….i am totally happy with fractional reserve anything as long as the profits redound to the shareholders…and that is you and i……otherwise it remains “opm” other people’s money and we are slaves….
that very same bunch wants to enslave you and encouraging vice is in the arsenal
i will never forget sitting in a high level board meeting where the chairman spoke of controlling someone by perhaps setting them up with a hooker…..and what do u think of television ?
last but not least if you have read anything i have written or understood anything i have written
well i will repeat it so you get it….i 100% approve of and endorse 100% http://www.community-exchange.org which is 100% “fiat” money…..but because the money is created in purchase
and not in borrowing and because all accounts are public, that type of system is going to save the
world
so dont raise false intellectual shibboleths with me…i am much too stupid for that….just show me
where the money comes from, where it goes, and how it got there…..that’s all that counts…
if YOU run that excercise, you may discover you know less than you think
December 16th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
actually richard if you wish we can run that exercise now …. please explain to me how money is created on our planet, how does it spring into existence ?
and speak in plain terms, as if i did not have a ba from columbia and ma from fordham, but as if i was an illiterate person subsisting on less than $1 per day, with no jargon
jargon like “debt is monetized” is not acceptable because i dont tolerate masturbation in-transitive or transitive
so let me answer it for you…..govt borrows money which it guarantees by its power to tax you from an entity that prints it out of nothing and charges interest on it, without creating enough instruments for the interest to be repaid
that is done worldwide
if you do not see yourself as a screwee from the above, there is not much i can say
creating money from debt is diabolical and creating money from nothing is counterfeiting
December 16th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
[...] Consider the most recent picks. New Education Secretary Arne Duncan is the CEO of the Chicago school system and a man with ties to Bill Ayers’ Annenberg Challenge. I’m not sure where Chicago schools rank in the nation, but this Wikipedia snippet on their performance isn’t encouraging: The April 21, 2006 issue of the Chicago Tribune revealed a study released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research that stated that 6 of every 100 CPS freshmen would earn a bachelor’s degree by age 25. 3 in 100 black or Latino men would earn a bachelor’s degree by age 25. The study tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999. 35% of CPS students who went to college earned their bachelor’s degree within six years, below the national average of 64%.[1] [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
MONEY ON OUR PLANET IS CREATED LIKE THIS …..more accurately…..
govt borrows money which it guarantees by its power to tax you…..
from an entity that prints it out of nothing and charges interest on it, without creating enough instruments for the interest to be repaid
creating money from iou’s is diabolical and creating money from nothing is counterfeiting
December 16th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
My wife is a teacher here in Southern Illinois (as defined by Chicagoans as anyplace in Illinois south of Joliet and west of Rockford). Every other year she has to jump through more legal hoops and over more regulatory hurdles all because new laws get passed because somebody sued another school in Chicago for screwing some poor kid up. Ever since Bag-o-chips took over as governor, the Illinois teachers retirement system has been raided to help pay off the lawsuits. There would be more noise made about it, but the Chicago teachers still have their pensions guaranteed - unlike downstate teachers, who now have the same likelihood of getting their retirement as I do of actually seeing Social Security.
The saddest part of it all is that the solution presented to this problem is still “Punish the school and the teachers”. Ask anybody who teaches what their biggest problem is when it comes to teaching problem students and they’ll tell you it’s problem parents. My wife is a special ed teacher who is on her second generation of troubled children (her school was sued recently by a parent she had when he was in high school — he had an annoying habit of setting other children on fire. Literally, pulling out a cigarette lighter and lighting the clothes on fire.) Until you get an education czar with the guts to say that we’re going after parents who don’t take an interest in their kids education, and holding them accountable for their kids performance (along with the schools), public education will continue to decline.
December 17th, 2008 at 5:49 am
[...] OK, well at least Duncan can do for America’s schools what he did for Chicago’s schools, and that’s a good thing. Or not. [...]
December 17th, 2008 at 9:25 am
[...] One can’t blame the Obama’s for not wanting to put their schools into a system that boasted 8 of the 10 worst schools in the state. But you would think Chairman 0 would give Comrade Duncan a little slack. According to American Princess, they have some close mutual friends. Arne Duncan is Bestest Buddies with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. In fact, he worked with the Annenberg Challenge to program curriculum in Chicago Public Schools. [...]
December 17th, 2008 at 10:02 am
No to interrupt all the superfluous noise about Ayers and homo-schools, but did anyone bother to look up Duncan’s stance on No Child Left Behind and standardized testing. Or doesn’t he have one?
December 17th, 2008 at 10:37 am
No, but I noticed you (1) didn’t read the post, and (2) list Andrew Sullivan as a daily read.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
He also lists Aljazeera.net as the first source under his “Read the Real News” sidebar.
regards,
December 17th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
You beat me to it… I’ve been too busy this week to write about this. I find it odd that Obama has selected the leader of some of the worst schools in the nation to lead our national education efforts. I also find it odd that the ONLY experience Obama has had as a leader was his five year stint as Chair of the CAC. Perhaps the fact that they wasted well over $100M failing to improve Chicago schools is the reason that Obama fails to mention this leadership position in either of his two memoirs. (how can a man write not one but TWO memoirs without having done anything?) America is barely large enough to contain the man’s ego.
Thanks for your work.
December 18th, 2008 at 9:29 am
Lighten up on Ayers? Are you serious?
The only difference between him and Tim McViegh is that Ayers sucked at making bombs. The group he founded is directly responsible for the death of seven people. They fire bombed a judges house (fires at the front and back doors, plus at the garage door so that they couldn’t get out). You lefties are absolutely insane if you think this was just a rebellious vandalism phase.
Furthermore, Ayers was a co-founder of the CAC. If you know ANYTHING about business you know that people are selected to corporate boards based on how they can help the business, and how well they blend with your preferred mindset and objectives. The fact that Obama was selected to CHAIR the board for five years tells me lots. It tells me that he shared the same radical, Alinsky-based disruptive attitude toward change. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Ayers actions are what he needs to be held accountable for, not embraced for.