A study of four elementary schools in one large Texas school district found that cultural norms and traditions of educational administration set boundaries within which teachers chose from a limited set of "recipes" for teaching and other activities. The two-year study, using data from interviews, documents, and daily observations of teachers and principals, examined the effects of internal school coordination on classroom organization and the usefulness of analyzing schools as loosely-coupled systems. The factors investigated included the school district's resources, federal and parental involvement, principals' activities and their supervision of classroom teaching, the grouping of students among and within schools, the annual and daily rhythms of school activities, and teachers' classroom management and instructional performance. Among the study's conclusions were (1) that the similarity of the schools' purposes and values, state funding, textbooks, other resources, and classroom features and situations meant that teachers came to share common formal and informal "recipes" for teaching activities and classroom control; (2) that principals provided the stability and flexibility needed for teachers to use these recipes; and (3) that analyzing schools as loosely-coupled systems, while not irrelevant, was not as useful as had been anticipated. (RW)