ABSTRACT
Nearly three decades have passed since the first study of school effects. The impact of the hundreds of studies conducted in those intervening years has been felt at the level of government, local authority, school and classroom. School effectiveness research has fundamentally changed the way we think, introduced a new lexicon of terms and ensured that, for good or ill, schools will never be the same again. But what has that movement contributed to our understanding of democratic learning? It is a highly pertinent question for the future of effectiveness and improvement research. It is time to remind ourselves of what schools are for and what they may become-with a little help from their critical friends.
