American public schools are in clear need of real school reform centered on leadership style and organizational structure. To help bring about such reform, lessons taught by the new sciences and through the lens of critical theory need to be considered. At the beginning of the Industrial Age, businesses organized their burgeoning systems using military counterparts for examples, and public schools soon followed suit. That model, called "classical organizational thought" or "scientific management," remains the predominant feature of school systems today. With the lessons we are learning from the new sciences, open systems theories should become more central to all educational administration preparation programs. Likewise, the tenets of critical theory, bolstered by the new research, should no longer be just an interesting and fashionable topic in administrator preservice programs. If schools continue to teach what has always been taught, educators will always get what they have always gotten. A truly critical look at the need for current hierarchical structures must be taken. Are they the most effective and efficient models possible? What better ways can be created in this postmodern world?