Effective schools research, as elaborated by R. R. Edmonds and others, gives a picture of what successful urban schools look like and helps identify the characteristics that led to success. This paper offers the proposition that looking at a school as a caring community provides a way to show effective schools by providing a framework to make sense of their characteristics. The ethnographic case study of one urban, low-income, predominantly Latino, elementary school serves to illustrate what a caring community looks like in actuality, in terms of structural (formal) components and cultural (informal) attitudes. The school is also interesting in that overcrowding has resulted in the operation of three tracks on a year-round schedule. Findings from this study illustrate at least three ways in which community and effectiveness are related. In the first place, as a shift toward the valuing of persons occurs, student achievement and test scores come to be seen in the context of personal growth and development, resulting in more of a push toward achievement. Then there is a shift toward linking individual well-being with the well-being of the whole school. In the third place, the affective dimension of the school is valued and regarded as legitimate. To grasp what makes effective schools work, it is necessary to move beyond merely identifying their characteristics. (Contains 57 references.) (Author/SLD)