There are very real barriers to using people, time, money, and technology well in today's public schools systems. To begin to break down these barriers, the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) has created a framework to prioritize seven urgent restructuring priorities. The authors have found that these areas represent the largest opportunities for freeing unproductive use of resources and at the same time moving toward higher-performing designs for schools and systems. The popular press is full of discussion about some of these areas, especially with regard to teacher compensation, including easing restrictive teacher tenure and dismissal policies, rethinking how teachers are evaluated and compensated, and addressing the challenges of escalating benefits and pension costs. For the purposes of this paper, in order to ensure that declining resources are used most effectively, the authors have focused on four priority areas that states will have to address in order to ensure that declining resources are used most effectively: (1) How schools organize personnel and time; (2) How districts and schools spend special education dollars; (3) How districts allocate resources to schools and students; and (4) What information districts gather on resources and spending. (Contains 10 figures and 21 footnotes.) [This paper was written with Elliot Regenstein. For "Restructuring Resources for High-Performing Schools: A Primer for State Policymakers. Summary," see ED541789.]