School identity management culture as a mythological discourse.As inter-related educational reforms spread, they permeate and re-orient educational systems in different social and political contexts. The new package of reforms is held against older policy technologies of professionalism and bureaucracy and thereby it helps to re-align the public sector towards the methods and ethics of private markets. The focus of this article is on displaying the strategies that school leaders of a suburban school in a low income and multi-ethnic area use. The article displays that the strategies employed are a strong leadership and the identity work of creating the image of the “successful school”. An important part of is to maintain and create good relations to media and municipal politicians. This article argues that this has resulted in that school leaders are paying less attention to the real pedagogical needs of their students and more attention to “impression anagement”.