Well-meaning education reformers are too often content to layer their new proposals atop outdated schools and systems. Unsurprisingly, school improvement efforts have repeatedly failed to deliver the results for which we hoped. Doing radically better will require state, civic, and system leaders to embrace a more coherent and comprehensive push to overhaul antiquated structures, regulations, policies, and practices.

To help spur such an effort, the American Enterprise Institute and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute have released eight new blueprints that, taken together, sketch a bold set of interlocking strategies for dramatically improving the entire educational ecosystem. The contributors, some of the sharpest minds tackling school reform today, use Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a city recognized for its pioneering school choice efforts, as a prism through which to examine what this overhaul can look like in practice.

FACT:
Fully 97% of what makes teachers effective is related not to their background and qualification but to what they do in class.

• In "From ‘Professional Development' to ‘practice': Getting Better At Getting Better," Doug Lemov, author of the nationally-recognized book, Teach Like A Champion, and a founder of Uncommon Charter Schools, outlines a whole new way to think about professional development.

The percentage of students attending failing schools in the nation's first Recovery School District has been reduced from 78% to 40%.

•   In "The Recovery School District Model," CEO of New Schools for New Orleans Neerav Kingsland, for the first time, sketches specific actions steps for how states can shape and adopt a turnaround district like the nation's first Recovery School District in Louisiana.

Remaining contributors offer recommendations on:

• Michael B. Horn and Megan Evans, new schools and innovative delivery
• Michael Petrilli, quality control measures
• Ranjit Nair, human capital strategy
• Karen Hawley Miles, Jonathan Travers, Genevieve Green, management of financial capital
• Jon Fullerton, research and development efforts
• Heather Zadavsky, governance and central management

This project, titled "Pathway to success for Milwaukee schools," and edited by Frederick Hess, director of Education Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, and Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, an assistant professor at Seton Hall University, can be found at www.aei.org. For more information about the project, please contact Lauren Aronson at lauren.aronson@aei.org. To set up an interview, please contact mediaservices@aei.org.