Description: Within the realm of a school development program named "learning and living democracy" schools were externally evaluated with a special focus on their social and democratic aspects. In secondary schools all teachers, four classes of students and the head teacher were asked to fill in a questionnaire. Schools received feedback which differentiated according to these groups. Half a year later a follow up study investigated how school actors transform the newly generated knowledge from evaluation, what kind of internal and external circumstances of schools do stimulate transformations and which constraints have had an influence. Four areas of possible constraints were covered: The design of the feedback, the support by external counselling during the school development process, the support by the head teacher, and characteristics of the school. Information on these areas were partly derived from telephone interviews with school representatives and partly taken from the external evaluation in advance. Results show that factors of school governance, in particular the involvement of the head of school, the kind of agreements of the school with political authorities, and the type of counselling are important constraints for evaluation usage.