ABSTRACT
Starting out from common sense notions of an effective school being roughly the same as a “good” school the more precise meaning of school effectiveness used in empirical research studies is developed. Perspectives from various disciplines, most notably economics and organizational science, are used to render nuance and difference in focus. Despite various perspectives a relatively simple scheme consisting of a set of malleable conditions of schooling (causes) and a small range of types of criteria (effects) is considered as the core of the concept.
