On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast — a continuation of last week’s podcast on Parent Power — I provide more questions for parents and other caregivers to ask in order to  improve education for their kids. Families must be treated as the kings — and lead decision-makers in education — that they should be, even when school officials and teachers attempt to treat them as afterthoughts. Asking the right questions will give caring adults the ability to improve education for their child and for all children — and further sustain school reform.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, Zune, MP3 player or smartphone.  Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also, add the podcast on Viigo, if you have a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone.

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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.

What’s happening in the dropout nation:

1. There are children such as this child in this photo (a sufferer from Shaken Baby disorder and blind) who need special education. But why is it that at least ten percent of black, white and Latino boys are routinely labeled as learning disabled and often landing in special ed? Especially when the nature of their “learning disability” is likely specious at best? I lay out the scope of the special ed crisis today in The American Spectator.
   
2. By the way, let’s be real: Special ed, along with alternative schools, is the black hole of public education. It is also the black hole  for the school reform movement; it isn’t as sexy to talk about as charters or vouchers or as dry and yet seemingly meaningful as national standards. The inaction by both traditional public school supporters and many school reformers speaks volumes about what they really think about improving education for every child. Badly.
3. The most-disappointing state competiting for Race to the Top funding? The dubious distinction goes to Maryland, according to Andy Smarick. But Texas — once a leading pioneer in school reform — may end up ranking a close second.
4. Kevin Carey analyzes the NAEP urban math results and notes how far down Detroit has gone.
5. Why the New York City Department of Education remains the gold standard for school reform: A willingness to shut down failing schools such as this one in Harlem, according to the New York Times (via EducationNews).
6. Like stopped clocks, Heather Mac Donald gets one right every now and then. This time, it’s on the decades-old move by California to make full immersion in English the standard for bilingual education.

Special education is the place where graduation doesn’t happen. Less than one-fifth of students ever graduate. Seventy-three percent of students with learning disabilities or emotional disturbances will end up being arrested and incarcerated over time. Yet despite evidence that overdiagnosis of learning disabilities is leading to more labeling of students, especially black and white males, there is ample fiscal incentive for school districts to engage in the gamesmanship.

A look at Atlanta’s public school district offers some clues as to what is happening to far too many young men and women, especially black and poor whites:

2,181: Number of special ed students in Atlanta’s public schools in 2005-2006, as funded by the Georgia state government. This doesn’t include kindergartners or elementary school students who are special ed, but are served under the state’s program for early intervention. About 3,035 students in Atlanta schools are diagnosed with a learning disability.

$7,550: The amount given for each special ed student by the State of Georgia. The state just provides $2,181 for each student in regular academic programs and $2,705 for every student in gifted and talented programs.

49: Percentage of special education/learning disabled students who spend 60 percent or more of their time outside regular classes, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Essentially, they are not likely to participate in academic courses that lead to college and beyond.

1,515: Number of special ed students (all served under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or other federal laws) either suspended, expelled or subject to corporal punishment  in 2005-2006. The more often children are suspended, the less likely they are to graduate from school.

9: Percentage of black males labeled with a specific learning disability — and likely in special education classes; this is three times higher than the likely occurrence of such disabilities.  Three percent of black females are labeled.

4: Percentage of white males labeled with a specific learning disability. Just slightly above the likely occurrence of such disabilities. Only two percent of white females were labeled.

92: The percentage of the labeled learning-disabled enrollment who are black; blacks make up 86 percent of all student enrollment overall in Atlanta public schools. Whites account for three-hundredths of one percent of learning-disabled students, despite making up eight percent of overall enrollment.

42: The percentage of Atlanta’s gifted and talented program students who are white; that is eight times higher than their overall enrollment. Blacks do account for 53 percent of students in the gifted and talented program; but that is below their overall enrollment in the school district.

It shouldn't take a cop to bring a kid back into school. We must all do our part to keep the kids in their seats and ready to learn.

Thinking — and writing — about the dropout nation. Updated throughout the day:

1. Figuring out ways to keep them in school: Or at least that is the plan for school districts in Montgomery, Ala., Skokie, Illinois, and California’s San Bernardino County. All the plans, however, seem like rehashes of earlier regimes of bringing in police officers to ticket students and charging parents with failure to send their children to school. Not to say it doesn’t have some value. But the plans really should address the lack of academic rigor, the achievement gap issues and the other underlying factors that result in chronic truancy and eventually, leaving school without a sheepskin.
2. How about raising expectations for special ed students: That’s the argument made by Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute in his San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, in which he criticizes the Golden Gate City’s school officials for opposing a state requirement — dictated by the No Child Left Behind Act — that those students must take the state’s high school exit exam. Given that the test only quizzes students on 8th-grade math and need only to get 55-to-60 percent of the answers correct, all but the most developmentally-disabled special ed students can pass it with some extra tutoring and help from their teachers and schools. Given that 28 percent of special ed students eventually dropped out during the 2004-05 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education, wouldn’t it make sense to figure out a way to keep those students in school?
3. A GI Bill for K-12 students? That’s what David Kirkpatrick suggests in his latest column at EducationNews.org. And he notes that not only did the original GI Bill plan work, it didn’t bring additional federal regulations as opponents of the idea feared at the time. Perhaps it is time to create a federal voucher program and expand the level of federal funding to public charter schools.
4. Are you kidding me? The College Board — the folks, along with Educational Testing Services, behind the Scholastic Aptitude Test — will roll out a version of the PSAT in 2010 designed to test 8th-graders and get them into college prep programs early. L.A. Unified may actually offer the new PSAT to all 8th-graders once it’s unveiled. That’s great news, especially for talented young black males and females, both nationwide and in the City of Angels, who often get shunted aside from such programs despite their high intelligence. But a few folks, according to the Los Angeles Times, think the tests should be given far earlier in 6th grade. They may be right, but 8th-grade testing is a start.
5. Sometimes, Sol Stern needs to put down his pen: Kevin Carey gives the education policy legend the business for misusing the phrase “Lake Woebegon Effect” in his piece on New York’s math scores. My big issue with Stern on this one is more of the put-up-or-shut-up variety: He doesn’t offer any evidence of whether the students are progressing over time, simply comparing scores of whole grades of students — in this case, grade 3-through-8 — instead of, say doing a value-added time series in which he compares 5th grade student scores to their scores as 8th graders three years later. This method would likely give a better picture of how much of the test score improvement relates to the lowering of standards, natural cognitive growth as students or more effective instruction.
6. Think before you speak?: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution takes a state education department official to task for declaring in a deposition that a school curriculum without a science component is an “adequate education.”
7. What do Cheech and Chong and Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers have in common: According to Matthew Ladner, both are, umm, up in smoke.