School climate is a significant way to predict school achievement as a positive correlation to students' standardized test scores and also teachers' perceptions of bureaucratic effectiveness and empowerment (Hoy, Tarter & Kottkamp, 1991; Sweetland & Hoy, 2000). Enabling bureaucracies are positively related to teacher empowering; however, hindering bureaucracies are negatively related to student achievement (Bohte, 2001). According to Hoy and Sweetland (2000), bureaucracies are measured along a continuum from hindering to enabling. Thus, it is not how much bureaucratic structure a school has, but what kind that predicts effectiveness. A key construct to study school effectiveness, and climate and bureaucracy, is Parsons' social systems theory. His paradigm that all organizations must adapt to their environments, attain goals, integrate internal and external components, and maintain latent patterns of tradition is a central claim in each of the instruments studied in this paper. This research represents an effort to further current understandings of school climate and bureaucracy and their impact on effectiveness. Three major purposes of this researcher are to examine (a) how school climate and bureaucratic orientation affect perceived school effectiveness, (b) whether climate or bureaucratic orientation has a greater influence over teachers' perceptions of school effectiveness, and (c) whether the Organizational Climate Index designed for high schools predicts equally well for elementary and middle schools. The sample includes 85 NYC public schools and 374 of its teachers. These schools represented 37 elementary, 35 middle, and 13 high schools. The data for this study were collected during the 2001 school year by Dr. Tarter of St. John's University. Permission to use his sample data from teachers' evaluations on the Organizational Climate Index, Enabling Bureaucracy Questionnaire, and Index of Perceived Organizational Effectiveness was graciously granted. A multiple regression analysis was performed on the four scales of school climate and bureaucratic orientation and regressed on the dependent variable, perceived school effectiveness. This investigator contributes to the research in the domain of social systems theory, in addition to school climate, bureaucracy, and effectiveness. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.