This paper compares the two educational sectors in Romania K-12 schools and higher education seeking to understand why reform in the K-12 educational system has failed while higher education reform has been more rapid and effective. The analysis uses concepts from U.S. organizational theory, such as school climate, school culture, and permanently failing organizations, to compare the healthiness of the two educational sectors. Several failures of K-12 school climate are identified, including: teacher disengagement, principals' low position in a bureaucratic hierarchy; deterioration in the social status of teaching; poverty; and a communist history of suspicion and terror. To counter these problems the authors call for reevaluation of the paradigms of educational administration, for a new school culture, for a rebuilding of the relationships between administrators and teachers, and for redefinition of the concept of performance in education. In contrast to the K-12 failures, the paper reviews some of the successes of the healthier higher education sector, where reformers have concentrated on changing administrative and managerial practices in colleges and universities, noting changes in admissions, curriculum and academic programs; in faculty hiring and evaluation and academic accreditation, in student services; and in funding mechanisms (Contains 6 references.) (CH)