Chicago School Chief on Annenberg: 'There Was a Total Lack of Accountability'

Raise you hand if you're surprised the Barack Obama-William Ayers multimillion dollar Annenberg Challenge was a bust? Let's hope by failing miserably it means the kids weren't successfully indoctrinated into America-hating Marxist bilge.

Chicago's former schools chief has flunked the education foundation headed by Barack Obama and founded by 1960s terrorist Bill Ayers - saying it failed to monitor projects and funded school "reform" groups that campaigned against boosting academic standards.

"There was a total lack of accountability. If you went back and asked, you'd be hard-pressed to find out how the money was spent," said Paul Vallas, the city's school superintendent when Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Foundation from 1995 to 1999.

Annenberg spent $49.5 million, mostly on grants to 211 public schools that partnered with community-based groups. But despite collecting millions, those schools performed no better than other public schools, a study found.

Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois and an ex-Weather Underground bomber, wrote the grant that won the Windy City funding from the national Annenberg Challenge. He was a key adviser to the Chicago Annenberg board.

While much debate has centered on Obama's relationship with Ayers, there's been virtually no discussion about how the Annenberg schools performed.

"Very little of the money found its way directly into the classroom," Vallas said.

Hmm. So where did the money go? To community organizers?

Ironically, Colin Powell stressed education when he endorsed The Messiah.

POWELL: I think the American people and the gentlemen running for president will have to, early on, focus on education more than we have seen in the campaign so far.

America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don’t finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don’t finish high school. We’ve got to work on this, and my, my wife and I are leading a campaign with this purpose.

Let's hope he has better results than Obama and his terrorist pal. Meanwhile, Obama has continuously lied about how close he was with Ayers. More on that here.

Instapundit links. Also at Hot Air. Thanks for the links!