The role of the Iowa Ambassador to Education is to be a liaison between the state department of education and primary and secondary schools. To prepare for the year of conversations across the state, the ambassador formulated three questions that she asked everywhere she went: 1) What is good about your school? 2) What would you change to improve the quality of learning? and 3) Does the school have a school improvement plan? This report presents the information and thoughts that resulted from grouping the answers into categories and converting them to usable data. Six categories emerged from the first two questions: organizational structure of schools, quality of education and instruction, resources for schools, governance of schools, school culture, and people and relationships. Each category is discussed, beginning with a graph depicting items most mentioned in response to the first two questions. Themes raised by the third question include why some respondents had only a vague knowledge of a plan, the process involved in creating plans, the results of planning, ownership of the plan, and criticisms of school improvement plans. A fourth question was posed to approximately 30 administrators and teachers: How do we know when students learn? Eight vignettes scattered throughout the report provide insights into the issues discussed. An appendix presents the ambassador's schedule. (TD)