ABSTRACT
The subject of this chapter stems from a presentation I made at the 1990 meeting of the school effectiveness Special Interest Group (SIG) at the American Educational Research Association in Boston. My brief was to identify some of the key issues that needed resolution if school effectiveness research was to flourish. With the experience of both the Fifteen Thousand Hours and the School Matters studies still fresh in my mind, this was an opportunity to identify some longstanding but unresolved weaknesses and to feel our way towards solutions. As the SIG was a meeting of professional researchers, I tried to focus on matters with practical significance for American and British colleagues. It was an opportunity for all of us to learn from the totality of our research experience.
