The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) designed the portfolio model based on the idea that we should move away from a "school system" to, instead, "a system of schools." In essence: school boards should focus on overseeing a "portfolio" of distinctive schools rather than directly running a set of one-size-fits-all schools. With real power over their curriculum and budget, educators would be able to do what was right for their students as long as they met their performance agreements. Now, after researching and observing more than two decades of strife and progress in portfolio implementation, the Center has some advice for both advocates and skeptics. Is a portfolio approach necessary? Yes. The Center believes now more than ever that 1) choice is not magic and can exacerbate inequality, and 2) strategies that concentrate money and authority in the central office are unlikely to work in large, diverse, and chronically failing school systems. Skeptics need to own up to these two very real problems that the portfolio strategy attempts to solve.