Perhaps the most crucial education question of the late 1980s involves the assessment and evaluation of teaching quality. To help identify quality of teaching issues, this paper poses three questions: (1) Why have teachers found research-based teaching quality indicators so hollow and unacceptable? (2) What role, if any, can the accumulated results of two decades of teacher effectiveness research play in quality-of-teaching evaluation? and (3) What will be the character of the evaluation trend which will emerge to champion the cause of teaching quality? A major difficulty arises from the misuse of two common terms: efficiency (achieving one's goal with the least resource expenditure) and effectiveness (the degree to which an organization realizes its goals). Several local evaluation instruments appear to measure efficiency rather than effectiveness. Instruments seldom accommodate context, teaching complexity, and the dynamics of teaching and learning. Teacher effectiveness research has succeeded in enlarging a rather sparse definition of teaching. A fuller understanding emerges when teaching is viewed as possessing both structural and functional aspects. Process-product research, however, is concerned only with the structure of teaching (involving classroom management and behavior control aspects). While teachers' mastery of structural competencies is essential, true quality-of-teaching assessment must measure the educational function of teaching and account for the quality of teacher-pupil interactions within a structurally devised environment. This type of assessment involves four principles: linkage of school purpose and teacher decisions, teaching as situation specific, quality teaching as educative, and quality teaching as a reconstructive experience. Included are 17 references. (MLH)