In the context of heightened policy expectations for research use, there is a need to better understand how schools enact these expectations. However, normative models for research use do not fit with longstanding empirical evidence about research use. This a) means that schools are likely to implement evidence use expectations in diverse ways that do not necessarily fit with policy expectations, b) creates challenges for developing meaningful guidance on improving research use in schools, and c) makes it difficult to assess the outcomes of, and ultimately improve, evidence use policy. This work is part of a unique, national study of schools' use of research conducted by an IES-funded knowledge utilization center, the Center for Research Use in Education. Through the purposeful selection of cases that engage in what the authors call "deep use" of research (see Farley-Ripple, et al, 2018), the present study links the Center's large scale, national survey data with interview data to explore how research use expectations are enacted in schools. The guiding research questions for this work are: (1) What does deep use of research look like in schools?; and (2) What conditions support deep use of research and how do those conditions come to exist?