"By offering support through professional development and technical assistance, teaching and learning improved, the quality and quantity of professional development increased, and the community became more knowledgeable and better equipped to create successful school reform."
Sounds great, except that there was no measurable success in improving education. For an objective, non-political assessment of both the national Challenge and the Chicago Challenge by professional educators, see this link.
As the case studies reveal, expecting reformers outside the system to work with that system to reform the system itself proved to be a tall order -- especially when the outside reform groups also had their own ideas to implement, agendas to advance, and budgets to worry about. The experiences of New York and Chicago show that even reformers armed with $25-50 million are no match for school districts with budgets in the billions. There turned out to be no practical way to get a district to cooperate with a reform plan if the district didn't share that plan's philosophy -- and its theory of change....
As we read these case studies, we imagined going on a treasure hunt, carefully following the map one is handed, and eventually arriving at the location marked with an X. Yet there's no treasure to be found. For it turns out that one was handed the wrong map. It was said to lead to a stash of diamonds but in fact it led to a picnic table, a bicycle repair shop, or the road out of town....
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, supervised by Obama and Ayers, made most of its grants to those "outside reform groups." Who and what these "reform groups" were is the question. Only one is known for sure: The Small Schools Workshop, headed by former SDS radical Mike Klonsky, an avowed Maoist Communist in the '80's, but a Chicago cabdriver in the '90's.
Kass is correct -- these records will never see the light of day.