This paper addresses issues related to the possible inclusion of items in the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to measure instructional practices and teaching effectiveness. The SASS is a national survey of schools and teachers conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. This report explores the purposes that can be served by measuring instructional practices on a national scale, and then examines how teaching effectiveness is conceptualized. Another section describes some strengths and limitations of observational studies of classroom instruction and makes a similar assessment of survey studies. Some attention is given to curricular reforms and how their impact might be assessed. The last sections of the paper suggest specific ways in which instructional practices and curricular content might be measured through the SASS, including the selection of specific school subjects and grade levels for attention. A number of large survey studies have already provided valuable information about curriculum and instruction in U.S. classrooms, and the SASS could join them. There does not appear to be any federal program in which instructional practices and opportunities to learn will be monitored in the future and the SASS, with its large sample of teachers, seems to be an excellent vehicle for the measurement of both curriculum and instructional practices. The SASS also seems ideally suited to monitor the classroom consequences of reforms such as curriculum standards. (Contains 50 references.) (SLD)