Symbolic politics make changes within the school systems difficult: When official programmes call for an “evidence-based policy” without giving empirical evidence of the usefulness of evidence-based quality management to the school leaders, teachers and parents the risk of (active or passive) opposition to this policy is quite high. This is also the case when enthusiasm and pressure are the substitutes for insight when trying to convince the relevant actors. Against the background of school development research and within the theoretical framework of governance analysis a group of researchers pursue a research project on “School Inspection as Management Impulse for School Development and the Conditions of its Implementation at the Level of Individual Schools”, funded by the German federal government (BMBF). The project explores how school inspection is planned and implemented in four Federal States of Germany and what intended/unintended effects arise from the specific constellation of actors at the levels of central administration, local school authorities and individual schools. The paper will focus on identifying differences of original conceptions and implementation policies. Case studies deliver micro-logical, sequence-analytical assessments of interviews with administrators. The data shows the – often not cognizant – differences in the way the evidence-based programme is disseminated.