Rahm Emanuel is “100% hand in glove” with Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett who “spoke eloquently” in rejecting the notion that it’s racist to close 54 mostly black elementary schools. (Chicago Sun-Times, 4-5-13)

Here’s how the Free Dictionary explains the idiom Rahm chose: “If one person or organization is working hand in glove with another, they are working together, often to do something dishonest.”

You know, like dismantling public education using the excuse that these schools didn’t get what they needed before so they must now be closed, children dispersed and teachers fired. Coupling that with a promise that this time the surviving schools will get all the resources they need.

You know, dishonest -  like the indignant claim that there’s nothing racist about any of this.

Here’s another useful idiom for this situation: “One hand washes the other.”

The corporate reform-backed media is  doing its “Education Nation” best to prop up Rahm Emanuel’s union busting efforts, with a lot of help from Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Parents Across America’s Leonie Haimson was put up against three white male corp reformers on CNBC yesterday. I know, not fair that the men were  so overmatched, but one of them still managed to suggest that the parents supporting the CTU are victims of Stockholm Syndrome (I’m now cursingoin Swedish…ooh – guess they’re right!).

ABC News (we watch broadcast news at my mom’s house) did a story claiming that Chicago charter schools (which are, you know, open now) are better than comparison schools.

Here’s what Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin quoted today from someone who actually knows the truth about Chicago’s charter schools:

“I ran the numbers when I was at CPS,” said Terry Mazany, former interim CPS superintendent and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust. “Charters, based on . . . being freed from restrictions of bureaucracy, should be knocking the socks off neighborhood schools. But they’re not. It’s a dead heat.”

Corp reformers can’t have it both ways.

If CPS schools are so awful, why  isn’t that the fault of mayoral control and Arne Duncan?

It all started 12 days ago with this image in the business section of the newspaper.

When I saw it, I knew I had to use it on my blog. Figuring out how it related to a timely education reform topic was secondary.

Yes, folks, that’s right. Baby cheetos. Gerber calls them “Graduates.”

That’s about as far as my thought processes had gotten when my computer decided that it could not process that or anything else, and it up and died.

So, I had a lot of time to think about Baby cheetos. I spent a lot of that time reading a lot of articles which I had printed out and stacked up to read “sometime.” I took handwritten notes.

And it didn’t take too long for me to read the sentence that made sense of Gerber Baby cheetos. It was in a 2009 masters’ thesis by Chandra Nerissa Larsen which reviewed President Obama’s early education policies and proposals as an example of neoliberalism. It’s a line she quotes from Henri Giroux that “neoliberalism capitalism performs the dual task of using education to train workers for service sector jobs and to produce life-long consumers” (emphasis added).

“Graduates” indeed.

A few days later, I actually saw a little bag of Gerber Baby cheetos hanging at the check-out line at Target. You know, in the “impulse buy” spot. Just to help the little ones start out early developing that all-American snacking habit.

And yes, reader, I did buy them. Just to taste them so you won’t have to. And yes, Baby Graduate cheetos taste just like grown up idiot drop out cheetos.

You see, for the neoliberals, or the corporate reformers, it’s not about quality, it’s about choice. Your choice of the c#@p they want to sell, that is.

What’s the connection to corporate school reform? Well, for example, when Catalyst asked how Chicago Public Schools justifies $76 million in increased funding to charter schools despite their lackluster performance and the district’s enormous deficit, spokeswoman Becky Carroll said that “our job is to not only help build high-quality schools, but expand the number of choices.”

It’s not really about quality, it’s about quantity and about selling the product.

And that may be good enough to produce junk food “graduates,” but not educated citizens.

For our nation’s birthday – let’s give some thought to what it really means to be a great nation.

(I’m trying to take a little work break in honor of July 4th so I’m just going to share the most recent Action of the Week from the Parents Across America June 28 newsletter.)

The Supreme Court has upheld the federal healthcare reform law. My long-time friend and PURE colleague Johnny Ho;mes said to me that by next year, people will simply be calling Obamacare “healthcare.”

Can we really turn the corner and become a nation that offers its people medical care regardless of status or situation? If we can do that, can we also turn off the message from the “reformers” that it’s OK to offer children different educational opportunities based on their status and situation?

The so-called education “debate” is really just a one-sided propaganda campaign waged by privatizers who see public education as an investment opportunity, not a service that a great nation provides to all its people. Our “side” of the debate has mainly consisted of exposing the lies behind the propaganda and reacting to its ham-fisted attempts to turn public opinion in favor of privatization and school closure.

It’s time to turn the discussion back to what we expect of ourselves as a great nation when it comes to educating our children. The discussion should start with the promise of equal opportunity and end with ways to assure that every child is prepared to live a rich, engaged civic life.

What can you do? 

Send a birthday card like this (or a paper card!) to at least one of your elected officials. Start a new conversation about what we really want for our children, and the equal educational opportunity that a great nation must provide.

Dr. Joyce Epstein, who heads the National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University, created the gold standard for parent involvement programs – a comprehensive set of practices that encourage good parenting, strong home-school communication, volunteer opportunities, support for learning at home, a parent voice in school decision making, and community collaboration.

Last night’s parent forum at DePaul really made that package come to life.

On the panel were (right to left in photo) Monica Espinoza and Joanna Brown from Logan Square Neighborhood Association, Lynn Morton from Community Organizing and Family Issues, yours truly, Wendy Kattan from Raise Your Hand, and Latrice Watkins, LSC chair of Piccolo Elementary, who led the Occupy Piccolo protest earlier this year (Cecile Carrol from Blocks Together arrived after this pic was taken).

Together, we represented that full package of parent involvement activity, and, as I pointed out to the audience of about 100 teachers and students studying to be teachers, you get the whole package with parents. We want to be involved in all those areas and woe to the school principal, school CEO, or US Education Secretary who tries to relegate us to cookie baking, science projects, or cover for a school privatization and union-busting agenda.

I talked about the importance of the parent voice in the context of the critical need at this time for parents and teachers to have a united front. PURE was founded by parents and teachers together during the last Chicago teachers’ strike in 1987, to help parents and teachers speak with one voice about who was failing our children: not the greedy teachers or the lazy parents, but the politicians and bureaucrats whose neglect and poor management was forcing failure on our schools.

Things are much worse today. Now, in addition to lazy, greedy politicians and bureaucrats, we also have to deal with the multi-million dollar attack campaign against teachers and public schools coming from the corporate sector, and from both the right- and left wing. Propaganda against public schools and teachers is turning up everywhere – on fashion designers’ billboards, in major Hollywood movies, etc. So the truth has got to be told more loudly. PURE has a long track record of speaking the truth and sharing it in the media, in workshops, and in clear fact and tip sheets so that the public is better educated about education issues. Students and teachers need to help spread the word – your reach is vast and we all need to be on message together.

I assigned homework, too, starting with asking everyone to sign and share the National Resolution against High-Stakes Testing.

My colleagues all had amazing stories to tell. All in all, it was a very inspiring evening.

Today’s Chicago Tribune editorial board fronts an attack on corporate reform’s next target: elected school boards.

Yep. The privatizers have decided that democratically-elected school boards just get in the way of “real reform” like privatization, expanding charter schools, and replacing experienced teachers with deer-in-the-headlights Teach for America kids.

PAA co-founder Leonie Haimson wrote about this in a recent Parents Across America blog post, referencing an article by Matt Miller called “First Kill All the School Boards” that argued that “local control has become a disaster for our schools.”

The Tribune calls for a “game change” in North Chicago, and wants the Illinois State Board of Education to “fire” the elected school board for refusing to hire the Chicago-based LEARN charter school network to open a new school.

The school board voted down the proposal, citing a concern about the loss of funding for the rest of the district’s schools.

Seems legitimate, given the tough economy and the cutbacks in state funding for schools.

If I were a North Chicago school board member, I would also ask about the rate of teacher turnover at LEARN, which has a 7.5 hour day and a 200 day school year. I’d review the personnel budget for the extra time as well as the lower class size the network boasts, to see if it could be supported.

Yes, LEARN’s test scores are impressive, but I might want to know more about numbers like these enrollment figures, from LEARN’s Interactive School Report Card.

2006: 60 students in 3rd grade

2007: 59 in 4th grade

2008: 41 in 5th grade

2009: 43 in 6th grade

2010: 36 in 7th grade

2011: 32 in 8th grade

LEARN had only one school between 2002 and 2008, when it opened a second school beginning in the primary grades, so that would not have affected the number of 5th graders and older at that point. So, apparently the original LEARN school had an elementary “dropout rate “of about 50%, from 60 to 32 students. What happened? Did LEARN “lose” some less-wanted students as is so common in charter schools?

But the Tribune demands that State Superintendent Chris Koch overrule the school board and approve the charter (yes, he can do that!). And, since the Trib considers it a capital crime to oppose any charter school, they also demand that Koch remove the school board and install a “new authority” (I guess he can do that, too).

Maybe the Red Queen is available. That would be a real “game” changer, for folks of a similar temperament who think education is just another game.

Tonight, Monday Feb. 20 at 8 PM, Parents Across America will be sponsoring a conference call, open to all, to brief you on strategies you can use to fight back against the damaging tide of privatization wreaking havoc our public schools.

When: Monday, Feb. 20 at 8 PM EST.

Conference Dial-in Number: (424) 203-8075

Participant Access Code: 1037540#

First, Karran Harper Royal, a PAA founding member, will talk about what’s happening in New Orleans, where nearly 75% of the schools are charters and before too long, they may all be privatized.  Rather than the idealized picture portrayed by Sec. Duncan and the corporate reform crowd, this has led to nightmarish experiences for many children, who no longer have the right to attend their neighborhood school, and are often forced to travel hours each day on buses which their parents have to pay for. Hear what Karran and other NOLA parents are doing to fight back, and about the lawsuit they have filed with the help of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Dora Taylor and Sue Peters, founders of PAA- Seattle, will describe how they are experiencing the fourth push in 15 years to authorize charter schools in Washington, one of only about ten states in which charter schools are still not legal.  Parents are also facing a barrage of potentially damaging “teacher evaluation” bills in the legislature. Sue and Dora will talk about how they are organizing other parents throughout the state, working with other stakeholder groups, and helping to disseminate the truth about charters and teacher evaluation to prevent these bills from being passed – in Bill Gates’ own backyard.

When: Monday, Feb. 20 at 8 PM EST.

Conference Dial-in Number: (424) 203-8075

Participant Access Code: 1037540#

If you have a question in advance, please send it to info@parentsacrossamerica.org