Public secondary education

As head of Triangle Publications, Walter Annenberg started two new hugely successful publications, TV Guide, America's best selling weekly magazine, and Seventeen magazine, and continued in his father's path as a media mogul. In 1988, Rupert Murdoch, a leader in the media industry, purchased TV Guide, Seventeen, and Daily Racing Form from Annenberg's company for $3 billion. The following year, Annenberg established the charitable trust known as The Annenberg Foundation. Its current assets are listed as $2.6 billion. According to the Foundation Directory, the Foundation's current primary purpose is to support "early childhood and K-12 education (including public school restructuring and reform)." In 1993, Annenberg announced a $550 million gift, the largest private donation ever to benefit education, providing a series of grants for school reform projects geared toward improving elementary and secondary education. Regarding this donation, the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 17, 1993) reported: "Although White House officials refused to give details of the awards, three groups are expected to get a major share of the money: the New American Schools Development Corp. in Alexandria, VA [which is not far from the CIA's Langley headquarters]; the Coalition of Essential Schools at Brown University in Providence, R.I.; and the Education Commission of the States in Denver [boy, that area has been in the news recently, first, the JonBenet Ramsey murder mystery and now the Littleton school massacre] ...»