The creation of regional educational networks has an increasingly important role in Germany’s centralized school system.  Central to these are the development and distribution of innovations aimed at improving school and instructional quality, as well as the cooperation between schools and external partners within support systems or cross-over managements.  The institutionalization of school networks presents itself as the political administrative steering level’s  reaction to the poor performance of German students in international school achievement studies as well as, to the socio-economic and socio-cultural selectivity of the educational system.  Networks are, in general, ascribed to have a high potential to solve problem oriented issues, as they, compared to bureaucratic interventions, have more flexibility at their disposal and are closer to the problem at hand.  Before problems are effectively able to become a motive for action and learning, they must be, in the first but deciding step, defined and specified.  With this, it arises that the interpretation of relevant problems between schools and administration, as well as within schools, vary and conflict, and that these have expected consequences for the processes in goal-oriented school governance.  On the basis of empirical data collected in the scope of the evaluation of the model project “Regional Educational Landscapes“ in Baden-Württemberg, the question as to what  implications divergent problem definitions within institutional networks have for the implementation of reform goals on the school level will be pursued.