Drawing on these substantive and methodological developments, the following analysis considers school organization and adaptability from two general frames of reference that, together, include several theories of organization and change drawn from each of the modes of theorizing found in the social disciplines. The structural frame of reference includes configuration theory (Miller & Mintzberg, 1983; Mintzberg, 1979) and what will be referred to as "institutionalization theory " (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1978; Meyer & Scott, 1983). By combining these two theories, we can understand school organization as an inherently nonadaptable, two-structure arrangement. The cultural frame of reference includes what will be referred to as paradigmatic (Brown, 1978; Golding, 1980; Jonsson & Lundin, 1977; Rounds, 1979, 1981) and cognitive theories of organization (Weick, 1979, 1985), which, when combined, provide a way to understand school organizations as cultures or corrigible systems of meaning. The two frames of reference are presented separately below and then integrated in the next major section where the relationship between organization structure and culture is used to reconsider the four grounding assumptions of special education as an institutional practice of public education.38 Although the reader no doubt will begin to see in the following analysis some of the organizational implications that I will emphasize in subsequent sections, at this point I will refrain from commenting on those implications. My aim here is merely to set the stage for the sections to follow.