While No Child Left Behind isn't perfect, said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, it's thrown a valuable spotlight on problem schools. She said giving districts and states more flexibility "without firm consequence" is not reform.

But even the best-planned charter school can fail to measure up, as evidenced in a recent study by The Center for Education Reform. It found that 15 percent of charter schools nationwide have closed since 1992.

Jeanne Allen, CER's president, says administrative problems indicate that a school isn't working long before test scores come out; the center's data, she says, shows that failing schools do get shut down even without the new regulations.

Charter advocates have long considered Virginia hostile ground, and that hasn’t changed under Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), who promised a major charter school expansion when he was elected in 2009. There were three charter schools in the commonwealth when McDonnell took office. Now there are four, according to the pro-charter Center for Education Reform.

Charter schools have been back on the agenda in many states without charter school laws, including bills introduced but not passed in four, while some of the 42 states with charter school laws have voted to expand their use, according to the Center for Education Reform.

“All too often, supporters and opponents of charter schools claim that bad charter schools don’t close,” said Jeanne Allen, the center’s president. “The truth is, charter schools that don’t measure up are closing. Regrettably, the same can’t be said for traditional public schools.”

Of roughly 6,700 charter schools that have opened in the United States, 1,036 have closed since 1992, says a report unveiled today by the Center for Education Reform, in Washington. "Performance-based accountability is the cornerstone of charter schools," the report says.

Forty other states allow charter schools, and most do not set an enrollment period, said Jeanne Allen, president of the national Center for Education Reform. "The schools do it individually, as should be the case," she said.

But even with the changes, Virginia"s charter school law was graded "F” by the Center for Education Reform, a group that advocates charter schools. In a 2011 report, the group said Virginia"s law was the second weakest out of the 41 charter school laws in the U.S.

School spending has gone through the roof and test scores are flat. While most every other service in life has gotten faster, better, and cheaper, one of the most important things we buy -- education -- has remained completely stagnant, unchanged since we started measuring it in 1970.