Preliminary findings of a study of assistance personnel, or "change agents," in urban school improvement programs, failed to show an association between the effectiveness of educational change agents and any particular skills they employed. The study did isolate a nummber of general and specific skills that study participants identified in change agents. The study sought to determine styles and approaches typical of successful agents, skills essential to guiding change, and methods that had proved effective for training outstanding agents. A conceptual framework was developed that related agents' entry characteristics and behaviors with the outcomes of the school improvement programs. Data were collected through 137 semistructured interviews and observations focused on the activities of 17 experienced change agents. Five of the agents participating were engaged in one school improvement program and six each were engaged in two other programs, all in New York City. The interviews were conducted with the agents themselves, with their clients in the schools, and with their program managers. The skills examined were suggested by interviewees and were organized into clusters. Among the general skills observed were interpersonal, training, group-related, writing, listening, content-related, and communicating skills. More specific were initiation, rapport-building, task-oriented, social psychological, educationally focused, and autonomy-increasing skills. Two data tables are included. (PGD)