Vallas joins the McCain/Palin slime-fest

Grabs chance to hit back at Daley

Former Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas, has been waiting in the wings for a chance to jump in on the Ayers, Annenberg slime-fest. Vallas, who was pushed out of his Chicago post by Mayor Daley, leaving the city's 70 high schools on the brink of collapse, then left Philly's school system as a financial basket case after opening the door to Edison and a host of failed, privately-run charters. Now he's preparing his exit from his post in New Orleans to become a high-priced ed consultant (and here) and possibly run for office in Illinois as a Republican (oops, bad timing).

You can tell by the N.Y. Post's lead, that this was never intended to be serious assessment of the Annenberg grant--the largest single private grant ever made to public schools, nationwide. I think it's just Vallas' way of trying to salvage some of his rep here and hit back at the Mayor.

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.

A couple of points here. First, the Annenberg grant wasn't "founded" by Bill Ayers, as we have pointed out here and which has been confirmed by leaders of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC's) many times over. Secondly, unlike Vallas' $4.5 billion/year financial debacle in Chicago, the CAC's grants were made public and are out there for all to see.

Not that there weren't lots of problems with the CAC's initiative. The biggest one was its board's inability or unwillingness to let one penny of its funds fall into Vallas' hands. They were repelled by Vallas' top-down approach to reform. This led to an ego-maniacal Vallas lashing back at the entire Chicago foundation community and causing a rift that would ultimately lead the Mayor to give Vallas the boot. While many positive improvements happened during the Annenberg years, the lack of a partnership between the CAC and district leadership created impossible conditions for any real reform.