This brief argues that policymakers and educators must grasp the levers of organizational change inside education institutions to rethink goals and lift school quality. Systems thinking offers key tools for leveraging gains inside classrooms and enriching the quality of teaching and student engagement. This brief shares differing pathways for sparking systems change and details country and state cases that have raised student learning by deploying the powerful tools of systems analysis. The brief is arranged in the following four sections: 1. A short history of systems thinking, emphasizing the pressure points or organizational levers inside the education institution that touch classrooms. 2. How systems thinking moved into the education sector (from biology and mechanics), along with how differing versions of systems reform take root and are conceptualized. 3. Clarifying the various concepts and pathways associated with systems thinking in the education sector. 4. Concluding reflections, informing how education leaders might interrogate system improvement and transformation efforts.