The Portfolio Model in Practice: Lessons from New Orleans and Indianapolis

Two decades after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans operates the nation’s first unified, all-charter school district, and independent research points to substantial gains in test scores, graduation rates, and college-going rates.

After the storm, the city rebuilt its schools around one idea: the district’s job is to manage a portfolio of schools, giving them autonomy to run their classrooms while holding them accountable and stepping in when they fall short.

Join Education Reform Now for a conversation on our new brief, The Portfolio Model in Practice: What New Orleans Teaches Us About System-Level School Reform: what the rest of the country can learn from New Orleans, and what’s next as cities like Indianapolis try a similar approach.

What we’ll cover

• What drove the gains in New Orleans
• The problems the city had to fix along the way, from special education access to transportation
• What other cities can adapt without starting from scratch
• Indianapolis, where the new Indianapolis Public Education Corporation (IPEC) is taking on transportation, facilities, and accountability across all public schools in the city