ABSTRACT
Everywhere schools feel the pressures of social change and wonder how to respond to it. In this chapter we report briefly on a study of school system efforts to think about and cope with social change, and in particular we focus on our colleagues in five school districts. We found that educators see many social changes occurring around them which they believe make the work of schooling more difficult. They lack both an analytical frame and an effective set of responses. The districts we studied have been willing and able to take some internal steps toward coping, but have not been successful in building interorganizational linkages. They are willing to accept externally imposed change, but have shown little realization that changes in families require fundamental changes in schools.
