Read: Teachers Union Spending Spree Division

Time to collect her dues. Van Roekel will join her with the collection plates.

What’s happening in the post-State of the Union dropout nation:

1. Politicians often double-talk their way out of trouble, but President Barack Obama has special reason to do so. Amid Democrat electoral losses — including scandal-tarred Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s defeat at the hands of Scott Brown — is stirring fears of widespread losses in November. So Obama is going to play nice with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. But at what price? Read more in my latest analysis in The American Spectator.
2. At Flypaper, Smooth Mike offers his own thoughts on last night’s State of the Union address. Unlike Obama (or yours truly), he doesn’t think that education is the best anti-poverty program around. Kevin Carey has different thoughts (of course). Meanwhile Bob Wise of the Alliance for Excellent Education calls for a quick reauthorization of No Child.
3. Monise Seward considers the problems of dropping out among special ed and ELL students.
4. The Economist takes a look at higher education spending and California’s peculiar problems in funding it. Should there be more funding? Less? As everyone knows, I’ve written a primer about the issues related to funding.
5. Tom Vander Ark notes what excites — and displeases — him about Race to the Top and the i3 education technology efforts.
6. The National Charter School Research Project comes out with its latest annual report on the state of charters. Interesting read.
7. The latest state applications for the federal stimulus’ State Fiscal Stabilization Fund are now available.
8. In the Detroit News, the head of the NEA’s Michigan affiliate isn’t too happy with accusations that her union allegedly bullied some districts into not signing onto the Wolverine State’s Race to the Top initiatives. Iris Salters declares that the reform effort is merely “a catchy name.” Except for coming from a traditional education perspective, her argument is no different than that of a few libertarian and conservative reformers who will not be named.
9. At EducationNews, Michael Shaughnessy interviews school activist Jim Freeman, who gets it right when it comes to overuse of suspensions and expulsions, and wrong when it comes to testing. Once again, perpetuating the myth of high-stakes testing.
10. Martin Haberman offers some more reasons why many urban districts are failing. He notes that more than half of aspiring teachers taught by university ed school programs never enter the profession. Astounding.
11. The Dallas Morning News‘ William McKenzie notes the latest NCTQ survey of teacher preparation at the state level. Texas doesn’t come off looking good — especially after Gov. Rick Perry decided to ditch Race to the Top participation.
12. In Rochester City Paper, the upstate New York city’s mayor’s effort to take control of the district is dissected by Tim Louis Macaluso. Let’s just say Mr. Macaluso isn’t impressed with the mayor’s talking points.

Don’t forget to check out this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, which focuses on the high cost of teacher compensation and tenure for America’s taxpayers — and how it will drive the efforts to revamp how teachers are paid and evaluated. Also read last week’s Dropout Nation articles, including yesterday’s This is Dropout Nation report on Cleveland’s special ed problem.

This is Dropout Nation: Cleveland Public Schools’ Special Ed Population

With two of every three of its high school freshmen dropping out before graduation, Cleveland Public Schools is one of the nation’s worst traditional public school systems. But the extent of the district’s academic failure extends beyond its regular classrooms. The district labels far too many of its children — especially young men — as learning disabled and keeps too many of them out of regular instruction. Considering that the “learning disabilities” are mostly issues that don’t prevent them from learning at the same rates as their peers, this means that many Cleveland students are being condemned to dropping out and lives of poverty.

Thirteen-point-five percent of Cleveland’s students in 2006 were labeled as learning disabled, according to the U.S. Department of Education. This is an increase over the 12 percent of students labeled learning disabled in 2000 — even as the district’s population has steadily declined. Even worse, almost all of them — 7,185 out of 7385 special education students — spend 60 percent or more of their school day outside of regular classroom instruction. This is important because special ed students are getting far-less-rigorous instruction than the already-abysmal instruction received by their peers in regular classrooms.

For Cleveland’s male students, being part of special ed is almost a way of life. Nineteen percent of the district’s black male students and 16 percent of their white counterparts are labeled as special ed cases.  This is versus (an almost abysmal) 9.9 percent of black females and 9 percent of white females. Latino male students fare no better, despite their sparse presence: Fourteen percent of Latino males are labeled as either being mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, stricken with a “specific learning disability” or considered developmentally delayed. Just 8 percent of Latino females are considered special ed cases.

As Cleveland debates a round of school reform measures — including the shutdown of eight local schools — the district and the parents who send their children to its schools should address this widespread condemnation of young children to abysmal education settings. The district’s status as a dropout factory won’t change until it comes to grips with the underlying reasons why so many students are being relegated to the proverbial short buses.