Part I. New Orleans: Katrina wipes the slate clean -- The revolution -- The schools -- The results -- Part II. A tale of two systems: education reform in Washington, D.C. -- The birth of charter schools in D.C. -- Michelle Rhee brings in her broom -- The charter board gets serious about quality -- Comparing the charter and traditional sectors -- Part III. Denver: an elected school board adopts a 21st century strategy -- The mile-high city embraces charter schools -- Delivering results -- Denver's remaining challenges -- Part IV. The revolution spreads -- Other cities embrace the 21st century model -- Part V. The keys to success -- The DNA of 21st century systems -- You get what you measure: defining school quality n 21st century systems -- Strategy: getting from here to there -- Appendix A. Measuring school performance in New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Denver -- Appendix B. What we should learn from Denver's experience with performance pay -- Appendix C. Other districts pursuing 21st century strategies.

"In Reinventing America's Schools, David Osborne, one of the world's foremost experts on public sector reform, offers a comprehensive analysis of the charter school movements and presents a theory that will do for American schools what his New York Times bestseller Reinventing Government did for public governance in 1992. In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, the city got an unexpected opportunity to recreate their school system from scratch. The state's Recovery School District (RSD), created to turn around failing schools, gradually transformed all of its New Orleans schools into charter schools, and the results are shaking the very foundations of American education. Test scores, school performance scores, graduation and dropout rates, ACT scores, college-going rates, and independent studies all tell the same story: the city's RSD schools have tripled their effectiveness in eight years. Now other cities are following suit, with state governments reinventing failing schools in Newark, Camden, Memphis, Denver, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Oakland. In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice."--Amazon.com.