Current educational planning systems have often failed or been irrelevant because they have been based on inaccurate assumptions about educational organizations. Traditional planning models assume educational organizations are goal-driven, follow rational and sequential processes, operate in predictable environments, and have effective internal monitoring. In empirical reality, educational organizations are "organized anarchies." Their goals are not a priori but rather summaries of past activities; they follow trial-and-error procedures, allow multiple preferences and fluid participation, lack effective monitoring, and must operate in unpredictable environments. A more adaptive concept of planning would allow it to be more informal, diverse, multipurpose, naturalistic, and better able to handle contextual variability and multiple products. New frameworks for understanding planning's purposes, new bodies of planning procedures, and new types of sequencing of planning activities will help educational planning become a formal but goal-free activity. (RW)