This unit is concerned with problems and strategies involved in achieving systemwide improvements within a school district rather than having such improvements occur only in a fraction of classrooms or schools. A person who completes this unit should be able to accomplish the following objectives: define diffusion within a school system and indicate patterns in which changes can spread, illustrate needs for change that usually are systemwide and others that may be confined to one school, justify the spread of change programs across levels to meet the needs of students as they progress through the grades, identify reasons why a successful pilot program may fail to spread on a systemwide basis, state the conditions under which a pilot test approach to a change program is indicated and state its advantages, state the conditions under which an initial systemwide adoption of a change program is indicated and state its advantages, demonstrate the advantages of combining an initial pilot project with systemwide participation in planning toward eventual diffusion, define and illustrate the theme approach to systemwide change and state its advantages, list the advantages of a homemade product or program for systemwide diffusion, critique a local change strategy and outline a superior strategy for meeting system needs, and outline a plan for introducing and diffusing an innovative program systemwide. (Author/IRT)