This paper is part of a symposium focusing on the Safe School Study recently completed by the National Institute of Education. The symposium attempted to delineate the critical methodological problems arising from ethnographic research in the school setting on school violence and delinquency, and to report recent findings from studies using ethnographic methods conducted in several geographic settings. The author examines the appropriateness of ethnographic research for education and argues that positivistic designs do not establish interpretive understanding that is necessary to satisfy the duality of scientific proof. The Safe School Study is used as an example of the significance of qualitative research. (Author/MLF)