Ayers and comrade Klonsky had great praise for Arne Duncan, Obama's pick for Education Secretary

"Ayers and his co-author Michael Klonsky responded to [Arne] Duncan in an article published in Phi Delta Kappan -- a professional journal for education -- describing him as 'the brightest and most dedicated schools leader Chicago has had in memory'"
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/16/duncan-praised-bona-fide-reformer-chicago-educators/
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"The Small Schools Workshop was founded in 1991 at the University of Illinois at Chicago to provide support for teachers who were trying to create new smaller learning environments. Its director is Michael Klonsky, a former professor of education at UIC."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Schools_Workshop
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Some background on Bill Ayers' SDS comrade, Michael Klonsky
(Chicago Annenberg Challenge-related)

"One of Bill Ayers’ and Bernardine Dohrn’s comrades in the late 60s Students for a Democratic Society was Mike Klonsky. When Dohrn and Ayers moved in one direction toward the violent tactics of the Weather Underground, Klonsky, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, dropped the pro-Russian communist politics of his parents and became a committed Maoist. As leader of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) in 1977 [not to be confused with Communist Party USA. CPML no longer exists, CPUSA formed decades earlier and is still around-ETL], he travelled to Beijing and was toasted by the senior Beijing leadership.

When the crazy left of the 70s died in the 80s, Klonsky went to graduate school in education in Florida and then moved to Chicago.

While driving a cab there he [Michael Klonsky] was recruited by his old friend Bill Ayers to head up a new project called the Small Schools Workshop in 1991. It’s offices were in the Department of Education building at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus where Ayers taught.

In 1995 the newly formed Chicago Annenberg Challenge headed by Ayers and Obama gave the Workshop a grant of $175,000.

The Annenberg Challenge also had its office space in the same building as Ayers Department and the Workshop, rent free courtesy of the University.

In 2008 Klonsky ran a blog on the official Obama campaign website on education policy and “social justice” teaching. When discussion of the Klonsky blog emerged in the blogosphere, it was promptly shut down by the campaign and all of the posts made by Klonsky were removed from the site."

In 1977, the October League was reorganized as the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) [again, not Communist Party USA (CPUSA) -ETL] and former SDS activist Michael Klonsky became party chairman. Also in 1977, Klonsky traveled to China and the CPML was recognized by the Chinese Communist Party as its official sister party in America.

In January 1981, Michael Klonsky resigned as party chairman, and the CPML disbanded that same year.

The previous Red Encyclopedia description of the CPML was incorrectly combined with that of the Communist Party USA (Marxist-Leninist).

"Ayers, now a tenured distinguished professor of education at UIC, works to educate teachers in socialist revolutionary ideology, urging that it be passed on to impressionable students.

One of Ayer's descriptions for a course called 'Improving Learning Environments' says prospective K-12 teachers need to 'be aware of the social and moral universe we inhabit and ... be a teacher capable of hope and struggle, outrage and action, teaching for social justice and liberation.

The Annenberg papers are quite extensive — 132 boxes containing 947 file folders with 70 linear feet of material. They undoubtedly contain more surprises regarding Obama's relationship with Ayers, one of many relationships Obama has sought to hide.'..."

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA [Maoist]
Revolution #63, October 1, 2006

Interview with Bill Ayers:
"On Progressive Education, Critical Thinking and the Cowardice of Some in Dangerous Times"
http://rwor.org/a/063/ayers-en.html
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[Obama] is named Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge founded by Bill Ayers
(article typo has Ayers instead of Obama)

In late 1993, Bill Ayers, now an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, organized a team to put together a grant proposal to secure nearly $50 million from the Annenberg Challenge. The money was to be used by Ayers and co. to bolster the radical Local School Councils reform project that Ayers and Obama had championed back in 1988 through the ABCs.

The grant application was successful and in early 1995 Barack Obama was named chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Ayers was named co-chair of the Challenge’s operative and strategic body, the Chicago School Reform Collaborative. Ayers and Obama work together for the next five years on raising an additional $60 million in matching money from local foundations and corporations and using the money to intervene in the governance of the Chicago public schools.

The Challenge through a multi-million dollar Leadership Development Initiative intervened in the School Council elections in the middle of what was known as the Chicago School Wars. At the same time Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was pushing, successfully, to gut the power of the Councils.

"This is a guy [Bill Ayers] who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English..."

Arne Duncan
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Arne Duncan

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- United States Secretary of Education-Nominee Taking office on or after January 20, 2009

Succeeding Margaret Spellings

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C.E.O. of the Chicago Public Schools
Incumbent Assumed office June 26, 2001
Preceded by Paul Vallas

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Born November 6, 1964 (1964-11-06) (age 44)
Chicago, Illinois
Nationality United States
Political party Democratic
Alma mater Harvard University (B.A.)
Arne Duncan (born November 6, 1964) is an American education administrator who is the current Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools. He is President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for Secretary of Education.

1 Early life, education and basketball career
2 Education career
3 References
4 External links

Early life, education and basketball career
Duncan was raised in Hyde Park, Chicago, where his father Starkey Duncan was a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, and mother Susan Morton runs The Sue Duncan Children's Center for African American youth on Chicago's South Side. Duncan spent a great deal of his free time at his mother's center tutoring children and sharpening his basketball skills with the neighborhood children. Some of his childhood friends were John W. Rogers, Jr., CEO of Ariel Capital Management (now Ariel Investments) and founder of the Ariel Academy, Illinois Senator Kwame Raoul, actor Michael Clarke Duncan, singer R. Kelly and martial artist Michelle Gordon. Duncan's spoken accent at this time led at least one college basketball coach to assume that he was of African-American descent.[1]

Duncan attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where he aspired to a future career coaching basketball or playing the sport professionally.[2] He then graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in sociology in 1987. His senior thesis, for which he took a year's leave to do research in Kenwood, in inner-city Chicago, was entitled The values, aspirations and opportunities of the urban underclass. Though unpublished, it was later cited by other authors. [3] [4] [5]

At Harvard, Duncan was relegated to the junior varsity basketball squad his first year by coach Frank McLaughlin, but later became co-captain of the varsity team and named a first team Academic All-American. [6] [7] As a freshman, Duncan narrowly lost to a Duke team that included future NBA player and Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins, as well as Tommy Amaker, who was himself later to become Harvard's basketball coach.[8][9] As a senior and co-captain, Duncan scored 20 points against then nationally-ranked Duke team, while Duke's Danny Ferry, a future NBA star (and brother of Duncan's former Harvard teammate Bob Ferry) was held to a mere 15 points.[10]

From 1987 to 1991, Duncan played professional basketball in Australia with the Eastside Spectres of the National Basketball League,[11] and while there worked with children who were wards of the state. He also played with the Rhode Island Gulls and tried out for the New Jersey Jammers.[12] While in Tasmania he met his future wife, Karen.

He currently resides with his Australian wife, Karen, and his two children in Hyde Park.

Education career
Duncan has extensive experience in educational policy and management, but has not been a teacher. In 1992 Duncan became director of the Ariel Education Initiative, a program to enhance educational opportunities for children on Chicago's South Side that was started by John W. Rogers, Jr., and in 1998 he joined the Chicago Public Schools.[13] He became Deputy Chief of Staff for former Schools CEO Paul Vallas in 1999.[14] In 1996, along with Rogers, he was part of a network that funded and supported Ariel Community Academy.[15]

Mayor Richard M. Daley appointed Duncan to serve as CEO of Chicago Public Schools on June 26, 2001.[16]

He was a fellow in the Leadership Greater Chicago's class of 1995, and a member of the Aspen Institute's Henry Crown Fellowship Program, Class of 2002. In May 2003, he received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Lake Forest College.

Mr. Duncan as of December 16, 2008 has been tapped to be the Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration.[17] ____________________________________________________________ Lord spare me another freaking sociologist.

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