Many Swedish schools are underperforming in relation to expected results. The aim of the paper is to understand what factors and relations that contributes to underperforming, so called cruising, schools. Schools are part of a larger governing system, in which there is a shared responsibility between different system levels. The system can be divided in a national and a local arena. The state governs the schools and the actors on local levels implement the policies. The project studies how local structures and cultures affect the performance of schools. The empirical focus of the five year study will be schools where the students have results clearly lower than expected. An important task will be to study the relation between different system levels. The empirical data is collected from official sources and information from actors on various levels in 6 municipalities and 12 municipality schools and 6 independent schools: politicians, superintendents, principals, teachers and students. The project has a mixed method design which opens up for a possibility to understand more about the complexity in why we accept schools to underachieve year after year. By studying cruising schools in this manor new knowledge about the steering and leadership processes related to school outcomes can be developed.