ABSTRACT
The school effectiveness rationale, promulgated in the 1990s, is unwarranted. Its claims to be authoritative do not succeed; its prescriptions cannot be justified by appeals to the canons of science; it embraces an unconvincing rhetoric redolent of Bacon’s idols of the market place. This chapter focuses upon these weaknesses. It constitutes a response to two aspects of the school effectiveness rationale. The first part-Peddling Feel-good Fictions (see also Hamilton, 1996)—addresses the logic of an argument which, in its turn, generates policy prescriptions cast in the form of ‘key characteristics of effective schools’. And the second part of this chapter-Fordism by Fiat-examines the consequences of such a rationale, in this case focusing on the distributive assumption that effective schools are necessarily effective for all pupils.
