The validity of the Secondary School Improvement Program Effective Schools Survey (SSIPESS) was studied, which is based on the Santa Clara County School Effectiveness Program. The SSIPESS, designed for the secondary school level, is an 85-item survey designed for teachers; and it varies from a three- to five-point scale, with eight underlying factors. The purpose of the study was to determine if: (1) the theoretical factors that underlie the instrument are identical to those empirically derived; and (2) the appropriate underlying factors maximize differences among schools. The SSIPESS was administered to 580 teachers in 11 senior high schools in the District of Columbia Public Schools. The matrix of intercorrelations of the items that make up the scale was subjected to principal components analysis with varimax rotation. Discriminant function analysis determined the discriminating power of the appropriate underlying factors. The results show that the theoretical factors were not identical to those empirically derived and that while only 42.8% of the variance was explained by the seven extracted factors, the instrument has high reliability and great discriminating power. Implications for using theoretically derived factors in deriving meaning from scales are discussed. (SLD)