Widespread educational reform will occur only if encouraged by a coherent policy environment that explicitly supports fundamental change and unleashes the imagination and energy of students, teachers, parents, and community leaders. To prepare students well for the 21st century, our education system requires an interdisciplinary environment, a curriculum stressing lifelong learning skills, varying teacher roles, increased student learning responsibility, improved assessment methods, creative use of time and space, more individualized instruction, diverse instructional methods, and more stakeholder decision-making authority. The current factory model system must be replaced by a learning organization system. Three critical components of a comprehensive reform plan include creating a vision, developing and linking policies, and laying out implementation strategies. New policies should create new academic standards, align curriculum and assessments with the new standards, create environments supporting reform, hold schools and districts accountable for results, transform professional development, involve the public, engage higher education's participation, reshape education finance, provide incentives for interagency cooperation, and restructure the state education agency. Although many states are working on systematic change, no state has put all the elements together. (MLH)