This study examined cooperative planning for change between educational linkers and 11 schools. Qualitative field research methods were used to determine the effects that school context factors, the school-agency relationship, and linking agent behavior had on project outcomes. Results showed that the school context and the school-agency relationship were more strongly related to how well planning progressed and the degree to which local project ownership developed than to the agents' behavior. However, the linkers performed a critical mediating function between the agency's planning procedures and school conditions. Differences in school conditions required the linkers to take different actions to carry out this function, and thus no uniform effects of linking agent behavior were found. (Author)