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"Gordon Lafer, a political economist and University of Oregon professor who has advised Congress, state legislatures, and the New York City mayor's office, landed at the airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, late last night bringing with him a briefing paper on school privatization and how it hurts poor kids."

A new report from the National Center for Learning Disabilities says too few students with learning disabilities graduate from high school, and some racial and ethnic groups are still disproportionately represented in LD programs, but early intervention strategies appear to be reducing the overall number of students who are identified as having a learning disability.

Despite all the money and effort devoted to developing the Common Core State Standards-not to mention the simmering controversy over their adoption in several states-the study foresees little to no impact on student learning. That conclusion is based on analyzing states' past experience with standards and examining several years of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

In this report I discuss why it is so important that authorizers close failing charters, review the facts about charter and authorizer performance, examine why some authorizers fail to close underperforming charters, and propose solutions to these problems. To answer such questions, I have reviewed the literature and interviewed fifteen current or former charter authorizers and another ten experts on charter schools. In addition, thanks to the generosity of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), I have reviewed the data accumulated by its annual surveys of authorizers.

The charter-run schools that are a part of the New Orleans Recovery School District have shown some dramatic gains in student performance, but the schools that are managed directly by the district have not shown the same level of improvement, according to a report on the tumultuous eight-year history of Louisiana's Recovery School District.

One of the most important trends afoot right now is the move to privatize as many government services as possible. Billionaires like Bill Gates, along with hedge funds, are pushing an agenda of privatizing public schools, and funding a PR push in support of that cause with films like "Waiting for Superman" and the NBC "Education Nation" that included a panel with the title "Does Education Need a Katrina?".