The Strategic System is ERS’s vision for how school systems can transform resources (people, time and money) to enable every school to prepare every child for tomorrow. It was developed over a decade of deep partnership with school, system, and state leaders.

The Strategic System is built around six transformational areas (the outer ring on the image to the left) which create the “enabling conditions” for what’s at the center – Strategic School Design. These areas should not be viewed as best practices or as success factors that can be implemented independent of each other. Instead, they are an integrated set of strategies, each needed to transform education.

In each area, we have identified best practices and related metrics, that we call the Strategic System Snapshot, that allow districts to understand their opportunities for transformation. From 2013 to 2018, we called this set of tools School System 20/20. We have changed the name, but the core principles are the same.