This book examines the American and British perspectives of effective schools to answer the following questions: How effective have schools been? Are they effective now? How do we know? and What do we mean by "effective schools"? The book analyzes the changes and reasons for the changes in ways in which schools have been considered effective. A major focus is the research-based movement that developed in the 1970s in Great Britain, the United States, and elsewhere. The book traces the development of the American and British research and the ways in which it affected American school policy and practice, and failed to do so in competition with national policies aimed at a national curriculum and assessment. To understand the nature of effective-schools research, the book places it in the context of 19th- and 20th-century assessments of what, in Great Britain, has constituted a good school. The book describes the power of inspectors, examinations, governments, managers, and others to make judgments and to define evaluation criteria, and discusses ways in which research became influential. Each chapter contains references. (LMI)