The objective of this study was to advance our understanding of educational effectiveness processes within contexts where they have seldom been studied before: rural and urban areas in China. Utilizing a "contextually sensitive" school effectiveness research design, we collected classroom observation data to address our research hypotheses and question. The research design called for crossing 2 levels of effectiveness status (more effective, less effective) and 2 levels of community type (urban, rural). Multivariate analyses of variance with traditional teacher effectiveness variables as the dependent indices yielded significant differences between more effective and less effective schools and between urban and rural schools. Qualitative results complemented the classroom observations by identifying unique characteristics of classroom teaching in the People's Republic of China. (Contains 2 tables and 13 notes.)