This fall, more than 7,800 Indianapolis Public Schools students walked into schools run by outside managers, rather than the district.

Less than three years after the IPS board approved the first innovation school, only about 75 percent of IPS students attend district-managed schools. Innovation schools now educate 20 percent of the students, and another 5 percent attend schools under state takeover — a dramatic shift that may require the district’s central office to reshape itself in the years ahead.

Nearly every innovation school in Indianapolis saw a jump in its passing rates on state achievement tests — some by 8 percentage points or more — giving advocates hope that their management approach is working.

Of the eight innovation schools that took the ISTEP test last spring, seven had higher passing rates on both the math and English tests than in the previous year. Five had among the largest gains in the district. In contrast, the number of grade 3-8 students districtwide who passed both tests slipped 1 percentage point.

David Osborne, known for his best-selling Reinventing Government, is out with a new book, Reinventing America’s Schools. To promote it, he is blitzing the country and filling the nation’s newspapers with an argument that is familiar yet powerful: High quality charter schools are the best hope for urban education, so states and cities should do everything in their power to allow them to grow and prosper, and school districts should embrace them as well.

One of the most important events in the education reform movement in the last 25 years occurred last month in Indianapolis when a high school that had thrived as a charter institution gave up its autonomy from the school district. It’s a lesson in how excellence in education is defined by what occurs inside a school, not by its designation as a charter, a traditional public school or something else. And it shows how high standards and de-bureaucratization drive excellence.

PS has been working for years to find ways to improve test scores and graduation rates. When the most recent ISTEP results were released, one particular group of IPS schools showed improvement, those known as Innovation Schools.