David Osborne releases new documentary about education reform in New Orleans

David Osborne — famous in EdNC circles for being the father of Molly Osborne Urquhart — is the director emeritus of the Reinventing America’s Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and the author of “Reinventing Government,” a New York Times bestseller, and “Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System.”

He is now the director of the recently released documentary, “Turnaround: The Reinvention of New Orleans’ Public School System.”

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana embarked on a total reinvention of New Orleans’ failing school system. Over the next decade, city and state leaders gradually converted the city’s public schools into charter schools, independent of district bureaucracy but accountable for their performance. They allowed families to choose almost any public school in the city.

When students thrived, leaders encouraged the school to expand and replicate; when students fell further behind grade level every year, leaders replaced the operator with a more successful charter network. The results — the most rapid academic improvement in the country — offer powerful lessons for struggling school systems across this country.

— Kinema

“David Osborne skillfully chronicles the dramatic transformation of the New Orleans public school system after Hurricane Katrina,” said Joel Klein, who ran New York City Schools under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, after watching the film. “Seizing on an opportunity enabled by the Katrina tragedy, visionary community leaders took a bureaucratic, dysfunctional, highly centralized education system and replaced it with the nation’s first all-charter-school urban school district.”

“This film is a portrait of a city rebuilding itself, and the resilience of educators and community leaders who are determined to improve the future for our children,” says The Rogovy Foundation, one of the investors in the film.