The United Nations has set forth an ambitious vision for education systems around the globe: cultivating life-long learning from early childhood through an individual's civic and work life. Schools must support children and youth in basic learning--including crucial socio-emotional, literacy, and numeracy competencies--to contribute to sustainable societies. However prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a severe learning crisis held back hundreds of millions of children. Analysts project that 9 out of 10 children in low-income countries and 5 out of 10 in middle-income countries will not develop core secondary education skills in literacy and numeracy by 2030 and the pandemic has only deepened the learning crisis and widened achievement gaps. Students also face daunting global challenges: rapidly evolving job demands, worsening inequality, and doubts over economic sustainability. This brief argues that policymakers and educators must grasp the levers of organizational change inside education institutions to rethink goals and lift school quality. Systems thinking offers key tools for leveraging gains inside classrooms and enriching the quality of teaching and student engagement. This brief shares differing pathways for sparking systems change and details country and state cases that have raised student learning by deploying the powerful tools of systems analysis.