The focus of this study is the effects of a School Improvement Plan (SIP) on an urban elementary school. The school's regular education teachers were required to participate in one of five committees designed to prepare the SIP, which specified goals for improvement and the strategies for reaching them. Classroom observations were used by the researchers as the basis for teacher interviews and interviews with the principal. Interviews with nine teachers were used to create a survey for the remaining teachers to complete. Eighteen of the nineteen regular education teachers completed this survey, and their agreement with the opinions of the interviewed teachers was high. A list of factors that contributed to the ease and swiftness with which staff consensus was reached on restructuring activities was prepared. It includes: (1) increased staff collegiality; (2) increased interaction with community members; (3) increased teacher-student identification; (4) teacher participation in the reform effort; (5) consensus building workshops; and (6) the understanding that the SIP was not written in stone. Many of these factors reflect strong and effective leadership from the principal. Appendixes contain the coding schemes for the observations and the interviews. (Contains 1 table and 20 references.) (SLD)