The “Strong Schools. Germany's best schools preparing their students for careers" project is organized and funded by the Hertie Foundation, the German Federal Employment Agency, the Confederation of German Employers' Associations, and the Deutsche Bank Foundation. The project’s goal is to reward outstanding ideas in education, provide advanced training for teachers, link up schools, and encourage their potential for innovation. In collaboration with the Education System and School Development Research working unit, Education Research working group, of the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Center for Educational and Higher Educational Research at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the JGU Center for Quality Assurance and Development conducts a formative evaluation of networking opportunities ("Internships at leading schools," "Networking conferences," "Advanced training and knowledge pay off," "Workshop discussion on the ‘independent school’," "Advanced training, Germany's leading schools for 2011 present themselves," "Promoting innovation in schools," Hertie Foundation "Strong Schools") between 2010 and 2012. The issues dealt with in the evaluation are a taking stock and estimation of networking opportunities in terms of the quality of their processes, structures, and results. Using quantitative assessment tools, the acceptance of these networking opportunities by teaching staff (reaction, Kirkpatrick, 1998), the need and potential for development of said opportunities as well as the options for communicating best practice solutions are all to be examined. Based on this, measures for quality assurance and development will be defined.