This report contends that current university-based research and development activities investigating successful secondary schools provide an exceptional mechanism for coordinating all three aspects of assessing successful schools: legal compliance, student performance, and quality of school life. A typology of schools is proposed to account for the schools' basic orientation toward administration and instruction. Administrative processes reflect one of three belief systems--the bureaucratic-rationalistic, the political-organic, and the cultural--that describe the ways schools go about making policy decisions and allocating resources. Based on this typology, seven core studies are proposed that would address the following school processes: (1) organizing, planning, and informing; (2) resource allocation; (3) curriculum and instruction; (4) managing co-curricular education; (5) guidance services; (6) monitoring and evaluation; and (7) adolescent enculturation. The report concludes by suggesting that renewed attention to school assessment processes could stimulate collaborative management that continuously assesses current practice based on a systematic data-based profile of performance-related school processes coupled with an aspirational model of the school's organizational culture. (TE)