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At this point, you should understand a few of the basic ideas of systems theory, including the characteristics shared by most dynamic systems. The next step is to apply some of these ideas to education--one system with a deep need for systemic change.
School restructuring is defined in many ways by different people. Traditional school reform leaves the basic educational system intact, while fixing up or adding on discrete parts. Often, such reform fails to consider how these parts interrelate to form the complete system in which they are intended to function. This frequently leads to superficial and short-lived change, as feedback loops--triggered by introduction of a change not clearly compatible with the rest of the system--reject it like a transplant patient rejects an incompatible organ.
Early advocates of systemic change often assumed this to mean that the only way to achieve lasting change was to discard the old system in its entirety and design a new one, meeting the new requirements, to take its place. Unfortunately, this ignored the practical reality that some existing subsystems remained a "good fit" with the new system's design,
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and would just have to be rebuilt if the new system started from scratch. It also neglected the political reality that those who control the existing system have a personal stake in the status quo.
Gradually, the fusion of the traditional school reform perspective with the radical paradigm of early systemic change led to the current systemic change movement. The Council on Systemic Change recognizes that effective, lasting change must be systemic; that is, it must reflect the interrelationships among education's stakeholders and subsystems. We also understand that it is often neither practical nor necessary to change the entire system at once--only to ensure that its old and new components reinforce rather than undermine one another.
Systems theory provides the strategy for educational change, ensuring that a "critical mass" of coordinated innovations is in place, and that stakeholders' needs are addressed. Aided by the tactics from decades of change research, today's systemic change practitioner has a versatile toolbox for transforming education to meet the needs of information-based society. The CHANGE Council's mission is to assist in this process.
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