New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) commissioned this guide, in collaboration with the Louisiana Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District, to meet the Investing in Innovation (i3) requirement that grantees disseminate the lessons of their work. To create this guide, NSNO worked with Public Impact to build on prior research and conduct interviews with people across the New Orleans education sector: school leaders, state and district officials, charter leaders, support organization leaders, education reformers and experts, reporters, community-based organization leaders, and philanthropists. Specifically, the guide has two overarching purposes: (1) To capture the insights and lessons learned from the city's effort to develop a choice-based, predominantly charter system; and (2) To aid other cities' efforts to build on New Orleans' success by providing tools and resources to guide their initial thinking, early work, and longer-term planning. Many urban centers in the United States face similar academic crises to the one New Orleans experienced before Katrina: dismal academic results, entrenched district practices limiting opportunities for reform and innovation, and generations of students leaving school ill-prepared for college and career. New Orleans' current system of schools--unique in the country--has achieved strong academic gains and warrants a deeper look at what New Orleans-style reforms can teach other districts struggling to remedy widespread school system failure. This guide is intended for a diverse audience, including state, district, and city leaders, policymakers, and advisors in cities considering dramatic charter-based reforms. It will also be useful for cities considering more modest charter-based school reforms focused on steadily growing the high-quality charter market share by replacing low-performing schools. Preparedness Checklist is appended. (Contains 5 figures and 12 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Investing in Innovation (i3) Program. This guide was co produced/published by New Schools for New Orleans.]