The cooperative efforts of researchers and practitioners in building a model of essential teaching and classroom management skills as part of a process of educational reform are illustrated in this study by a local school administrator and university program directors and professors. The reform effort was part of the Arizona Career Ladder pilot program. The district within which the study was completed achieved great gains in restructuring and identifying needs concerning teacher performance characteristics and how they relate to student achievement. A model for profiling teacher characteristics and their relationship to student achievement was developed. The reliability and validity of the specially developed instrument, the Self-Perception Characteristics Survey, were established in close collaboration among school district and university personnel through a study involving 1,080 responses to the teacher self-description profile. Factor analysis of the 12 subsections of the instrument--setting goals and objectives, planning, making decisions, student assessment, self-assessment, time effectiveness, communicating, building and maintaining relationships, developing other staff, demonstrating commitment, improving instruction, and school effectiveness--indicated that in all cases, over 75% of the variance was accounted for by five or fewer factors. The results highlight the advantages of the collaboration between researchers and practitioners in the assessment and rebuilding of schools and in building and validating the connection between teacher characteristics and student achievement. An appendix contains 11 tables of factor loadings. (SLD)