Previously Ladner served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Koch Institute and Senior Advisor for Research and Policy at Excel in Ed and Vice President of Research and Goldwater Institute. He has provided invited testimony to Congress, state legislatures, and the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Ladner has written numerous studies on school choice, charter schools and special education reform. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and received both a master’s and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Houston.