In the absence of a planning strategy, politics and expediency will take over an educational innovation and lead it astray. Formal planning is in many ways a controlling device, but it is also a potential enabling device through which participants can affect their futures. One academic year was spent studying three suburban or rural schools' political clientelism among the professional structures both on the school level and on the centralized planning level of the district; two of the schools were junior highs, and the third was a high school. Forty percent of the teachers, the principals, and other administrators were interviewed. The order observed in the schools' planning was as much a product of the political structure within the school--the irrational--as it was a product of the rational structure; the compelling local interest in the schools was a defense of the status quo in terms of the principal's authority and the existing planning structure. In conclusion, it possibly is better not to conceive of planning as a rational process, but as a contention around which interests are expressed and alliances are formed. (10 references and 2 tables) (KM)