As a result of the evolving concept and practice of the Comprehensive System of Personnel Development (CSPD) required by federal law, this resource has been produced to introduce leaders of special education and related services to the concepts of strategic planning and planned change for the CSPD. It contains information, resources, and examples that will assist state leaders to position themselves to plan for and manage change, rather than react to it. Chapter 1 provides background information and an evolutionary description and definition of the CSPD. Chapter 2 presents context information and a general discussion of the principles of strategic planning and change, and it describes how these concepts apply to aspects of the CSPD. Chapter 3 discusses implications of realizing the CSPD through strategic planning and planned change for state education agencies. Chapter 4 provides a general scenario for applying strategic planning and planned change principles to the CSPD. The last section, practical resource materials, contains a number of practical resources (short activities, checklists, sets of questions, visuals, and other practical instruments) summarized from the literature on strategic planning and planned change. Among the topics of these resource materials are the following: an eight step strategic planning process, parallel architecture, action research, trend analysis, the concerns-based adoption model, and screening promising practices for adoption. (45 references) (RR)