The possibilities of the school are not unlimited. For this reason, in order to answer the question of what the existing resources ought to be used for there is always the problem of the choice of goals of the school's educational activity. Different schools have different possibilities when it comes to achieving the desired results of educational activity. Or, alternatively, schools may possess identical possibilities but nonetheless achieve different results. Such variations may be due to differences in the goals of the educational activity. The national education initiative "Our New School," the conversion to the second-generation educational standards, and the mass adoption of the unified state examination all serve to create new conditions of educational activity. These conditions may or may not be used for the creation of new possibilities for the school. In such a situation, a number of questions arise: What results of educational activity may provide evidence of the school's new possibilities? Under what conditions could such results be achieved? What are the problems of today's school that have to be solved to create these conditions? What alternatives exist when it comes to solving these problems? What constitutes the tasks of the management of the educational process under the changing conditions of the school's activity? In this article, the author examines some possible answers to these questions. The author discusses the potential of the Russian school which consists of the ability to change and to achieve new results. This ability is determined by three factors: the school's resources; external conditions that may stimulate changes in the school's educational activity; and external conditions that block changes. (Contains 1 note.)