What constitutes a good and an effective school? How have judgements of school effectiveness changed, and why? This book examines these questions, focusing on the development from a research-based movement in Britain, the USA and elsewhere in the 1970s. The author sets this development against a background of 19th- and 20th-century factors affecting judgements of what has constituted a good school in the UK. He traces the power of inspectors, exams, governments, managers and others to make judgements and to define the criteria for these judgements. He also looks at how research became influential. The book looks at issues of central importance in current schools policy and practice internationally.