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Charter school advocates are asking Chicago Public Schools to give more money to charter schools in the coming school year.

At first glance, the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers and the Wake County, North Carolina, school board couldn't be more disparate. Charles and David Koch, the brains behind the massive Koch Industries conglomerate and the funders of so many right-wing political causes, are national figures, credited with (or accused of, depending on your political persuasion) launching the tea party movement and waging war on the Obama administration and its agenda. The Wake County public school board is, well, just that.

Why are schools in such fiscally dire straits, if all of this additional money is being made available for education?

As The Associated Press reported, the poorest school districts lost, on average, $581 per student to the budget ax, significantly more than the wealthiest 150 school districts that lost an average of $214 per student. Some poor districts lost more than 10 times more than some wealthier districts.

The grant is the largest yet to the California charter schools group and the biggest of its kind from the nonprofit set up by the founders of the Wal-Mart Corp.

"A good teacher is the most important factor in a child's academic learning" Every time I hear this statement, my blood pressure goes up. I usually respond by saying that yes, a child's teacher is very important. But teachers have a relatively small effect on children's academic success when compared to the effect of out-of-school factors like economic insecurity, poor health care, unhealthy diet, homelessness and all the other ills of society. Educational "reforms" that ignore these factors are tarnished silver bullets, doomed to fail. Years of this type of wishful thinking has diverted Americans from having the undistorted, fact-based conversation we must have before educational outcomes can improve.

A residency program in Denver, and mentorship and leadership-development programs in Georgia's Gwinnett County school system are among the projects getting a financial injection over the next five years from a $75 million investment from the New York-based Wallace Foundation that is aimed at improving the pipeline leading to the principal's office.

Amid the angst, however, public education in Florida is viewed as a growth opportunity by one group: charter schools.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the federal Department of Education has given school districts rather broad permission to cut special education spending and never restore it. The move alarmed some in the special education community. But one group of objectors broke the new guidance from the Education Department down into the simplest terms I've read on this somewhat complex topic.

As millions of students prepare to go back to school, budget cuts are resulting in teacher layoffs and larger classes across the country. This comes as the drive towards more standardized testing increases despite a string of cheating scandals in New York, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and other cities. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also recently unveiled a controversial plan to use waivers to rewrite parts of the nation's signature federal education law, No Child Left Behind. We speak to New York City public school teacher Brian Jones and Diane Ravitch, the former Assistant Secretary of Education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H. W. Bush, who has since this post dramatically changed her position on education policy. She is the author of "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education."

Public education was built on the philosophy articulated by Horace Mann, the Massachusetts reformer who pioneered the Common School: a system "one and the same for both rich and poor" with "all citizens on the same footing of equality before the law of land." Today, that vision of equality is in jeopardy.

Some of Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million gift to the Newark school system will be given directly to public schoolteachers, one year after the Facebook founder announced the donation, said three people familiar with the plans. The foundation that manages the gift will announce Wednesday a two-year, $600,000 program that provides $10,000 grants to teachers or groups of teachers who come up with innovative classroom programs, these people said.

It was only a few months ago that private school kids, some in ties and smart shirts, others in tartan skirts, filled the Capitol nearly every day to call on lawmakers to pass legislation that would radically reshape the way Pennsylvania delivers and regulates public education.

The party line for advocates of online learning is that virtual and brick-and-mortar schools should work collaboratively to find the best learning solutions for every student, which may or may not look like a traditional classroom experience. But in many places, the fiscal realities of state policy in a down economy can pit potential collaborators against each other.

This focus on improving teaching is evident in recent grants. A new report on foundation activity, Critical Contributions: Philanthropic Investment in Teachers and Teaching (www.criticalcontributions.org), released today by the University of Georgia and Kronley & Associates, found that foundations directed $684 million to teachers and teaching between 2000 and 2008.

In the final days of the session, lawmakers stripped more than $500,000 from the proposed budget that was intended to help implement Senate Bill 7, a sweeping education overhaul that would streamline the process of firing poorly rated teachers. By eliminating the money at the end of May, lawmakers put a crimp in the bill they had approved overwhelmingly a few weeks earlier and which Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had praised as a national model.

Today, President Obama hosts a meeting at the White House with CEOs to try to raise private cash for K-12 education.