Implementing survey recommendations is a perennial administrative problem. This article suggests that giving more attention to the methods of conceiving, commissioning, and conducting surveys and communicating survey results could produce more effective implementation of the findings at the decisionmaking level. (Author)

Reviews the history and conclusions of school effectiveness research, which focuses on student achievement, and of school improvement research, which emphasizes educational innovation per se; analyzes the methodologies of these two lines of inquiry. Distills from both bodies of literature seven school characteristics that constitute excellence.…