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                     U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
            OFFICE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND IMPROVEMENT
              NATIONAL CENTER FOR EDUCATIONAL STATISTICS

                               JUNE 1991

                       A GUIDE TO IMPROVING THE
                    NATIONAL EDUCATION DATA SYSTEM
                           EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


Introduction

This document provides an overview of the GUIDE TO IMPROVING THE
NATIONAL EDUCATION DATA SYSTEM, the first publication of the newly
created National Forum on Education Statistics.  The GUIDE contains 36
recommendations for improving the Nation's elementary and secondary
education statistics system.  This proposed national education data
agenda is the product of a broad-based, consensus-building process that
brought together representatives of State and Federal education
agencies and of organizations with a major interest in education data.
Together they have agreed on the types of improvements that are most
important for enhancing the usefulness of the education data base.

The cooperative decisionmaking model that shaped the development of the
GUIDE and that informs other activities of the National Forum on
Education Statistics reflects the spirit of the National Cooperative
Education Statistics System, created by the Hawkins-Stafford Education
Amendments of 1988 (P.L. 100-297).  The Cooperative System provides a
legislative mandate and structure for the Federal-State partnership
that collects and reports elementary and secondary education statistics
under the auspices of the National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education.

Established in 1989, the National Forum is the principal mechanism for
implementing the goals of the Cooperative System.  The National Forum
is an independent body whose mission is to propose and support
improvements in the Cooperative System and the elementary and secondary
education data base through the collaborative effort of all of its
members.  Nearly a hundred individuals who represent State and Federal
education agencies and national education organizations make up the
Forum's membership.  The National Education Statistics Agenda Committee
(NESAC) of the National Forum prepared the GUIDE, which has been
endorsed by the Forum.  The GUIDE is available through the
Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C.  Please Check with GPO for the cost of the
publication.  See phone number on form below.

Executive Summary

Good data help to make good policies!  That simple credo embodies the
rationale for this document--the first "product" of the newly created
National Forum on Education Statistics.  Prepared by the National
Education Statistics Agenda Committee (NESAC) of the National Forum,
the GUIDE marks a first step in fulfilling the mandate to develop and
propose an agenda for improving the Nation's elementary and secondary
education statistics system in order to meet the needs of education
policymakers, planners, and practitioners in the 1990s and beyond.

The GUIDE examines the strengths and weaknesses of the current
elementary and secondary education data system and presents
recommendations for improving the system's usefulness. Much of what we
say is not new. In recent years scholars, policymakers, practitioners,
and others have devoted considerable attention to the question of how
to improve national education data.

What is unique, and even revolutionary, about the GUIDE is that it is
the product of a broad-based, consensus-building process. For the first
time, representatives of State and Federal education agencies, as well
as of organizations with a major interest in education data, have
agreed on the types of improvements that are most important for
enhancing the usefulness of the national elementary and secondary
education statistical data base.  Despite differences in data needs and
diverse constituencies, members of the National Education Statistics
Agenda Committee have worked cooperatively to develop a broad agenda
for action.

A useful and responsive national education data system must, to the
extent feasible, accommodate the high-priority data needs of its
various "education stakeholders."  Thus, the Guide offers a data
improvement itinerary for overcoming significant limitations in the
ability of the present data system to address important policy
concerns.  The recommendations represent destination points that the
system can, and eventually should, reach.

However, there is a difference between establishing a statistical
improvement agenda and implementing that agenda. Proposing an itinerary
of important statistical improvement destinations, while valuable, is
not the same as determining how best to reach them or even which
improvements to address first.

Taking those steps will require additional research that explicitly
considers the strengths and weaknesses of specific implementation
strategies from such perspectives as information quality, cost, burden,
and compatibility with current activities.  Thus, the National Forum's
next step will be to convene a special task force to develop a plan for
implementing the statistical system improvements recommended in this
Guide.


Key Principles and Precepts

To guide the National Forum toward the goal of creating a national
system of high-quality, policy-relevant education statistics, the Forum
developed the following key principles that define the critical
characteristics of data which the system should produce. The data
should:

o    provide valid measures of the underlying phenomena of interest;

o    provide reliable measures of the underlying phenomena of interest;


o    be reported at a level of aggregation consistent with the policy
     questions of interest; and

o    be reported in a timely fashion on a schedule that is consistent
     with decisionmaking calendars.

The National Forum also developed the following five core precepts
governing the creation of this statistical improvement GUIDE:

1.   to focus on the high-priority information needs of education
     policymakers;

2.   to focus on questions of what and why rather than how;

3.   to focus, initially, on education descriptors and indicators;

4.   to focus on four specific data domains--background/demographics,
     education resources, school processes, and student outcomes; and

5.   to focus on issues of data validity, reliability, level of
     aggregation, and timeliness in identifying current system
     limitations.

Organization of the Guide

The GUIDE examines the nature and adequacy of national data in the four
major domains of background/demographics, education resources,  school
processes, and student outcomes.  For each domain, the GUIDE:

o    discusses the potential importance of the data for policy
     purposes, including the particular questions that should be
     informed by such data;

o    discusses the nature and limitations of current national
     collections and reports;

o    discusses potential strategies for improvement; and

o    summarizes specific data improvement recommendations.

Rationale and Important Recommendations by Data Domain

The following sections of this summary explain the rationale for
requesting data in each of the four major domains included in this
study and list the specific statistical improvement recommendations
that grew out of the analysis of each data domain.

I.    Student and Community Background Statistics

To be truly useful, a national education statistics system must go
beyond collecting data about the education system itself. The
statistics system must also provide data on the demographic or
background "inputs" that are likely to affect the condition and
performance of the Nation's schools. The policy questions concerning
demographic statistics have a number of important implications for
data collection and reporting.

At the most fundamental level, policymakers must have the information
they need to discern broad trends and patterns in key demographic
characteristics of students, families, and school communities.
Given the mobility of student populations and the frequent changes in
their circumstances, data on such characteristics should be collected
often and reported with regularity.

In addition, accurate, reliable, and comparable data are needed to
allocate resources fairly. When jurisdictions employ idiosyncratic
definitions of student characteristics such as race, income, and
attendance that are used in allocating education program funds, the
integrity and fairness of the programs and their funding systems are
compromised.  Thus, whenever demographic data are used to allocate
program funds, it is especially important that definitions be
consistent and uniformly applied.

Finally, since demographic data are likely to be related to other data
in many types of analyses, policymakers should be able to look at
variables of interest by demographic subgroup, particularly in
addressing questions of equity.  Whether a policy question focuses on
individuals (e.g., Are students receiving instruction from "qualified"
teachers?) or aggregates (e.g., Are schools and districts employing
appropriately "qualified" instructors?), it is relevant to ask whether
the findings are consistent for all racial/ethnic groups and social
classes.

Recommendations.  The National Forum makes the following seven
recommendations for improving data collection and reporting in the
domain of student and community background statistics:

1.   Using data extracted from State administrative record systems on
     the universe of public school students, the National Center for
     Education Statistics (NCES) should annually collect and report
     State- and national-level aggregates on the following student
     background characteristics:

     o    Fall membership counts by race/ethnicity by grade; and
     o    Fall membership counts by sex by grade.

2.   NCES should annually report State- and national-aggregate
     statistics collected by other agencies on the following student
     subgroups:

     o    Handicapped students served, by type of handicap;
     o    Free-lunch participants; and
     o    Participants in compensatory, bilingual, and vocational
          education programs.

3.   NCES, in cooperation with other Federal and State agencies, should

     work toward the regular collection and reporting of the following
     State and national student background statistics:

     o    Limited-English-proficiency status;
     o    Student handicapping conditions by race;
     o    Participation in prekindergarten education programs;
     o    Student health status (e.g., nutrition, health-related
          absenteeism, and drug and alcohol use); and
     o    Student mobility and migrant status.

4.   The Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) should
     fund special studies investigating the efficacy of using free-
     lunch data as proxies for student socioeconomic status (SES) and
     the costs, benefits, and burdens associated with regularly
     collecting and reporting alternative SES measures.  These studies
     should specifically examine issues of validity, reliability, and
     usefulness of free-lunch and alternative measures for different
     types of reporting and analysis as well as administrative issues
     related to the collection and reporting of such measures.

5.   NCES should develop the capacity to collect and report data on
     private school student background characteristics that are
     parallel to those being developed for the universe of public
     school students.  Data might come from the NCES Private School
     Survey and the Schools and Staffing Survey, and they should be
     reported as national aggregates and, to the extent feasible, State
     aggregates.

6.   In reporting measures of education resources, school processes,
     and student outcomes from its sample and universe surveys, NCES
     should attempt, to the extent feasible and appropriate, to
     provide disaggregated data using the following student and
     community background characteristics:

     o    Sex;
     o    Racial/ethnic-group affiliation;
     o    Limited-English-proficiency status;
     o    Community wealth; and
     o    Family income.

7.   NCES should consider reporting distributional patterns for the
     following student and community background variables in
     conjunction with particular resource, process, and outcome
     measures:

     o    Public/private school enrollment;
     o    Student employment status;
     o    Measures of family background (e.g., parents' education,
          language spoken in the home);
     o    Student mobility; and
     o    Student handicapping condition.

II.   Education Resource Statistics

Education resources include both fiscal resources and human and
nonhuman resources.  States--and school districts within States--have
varying amounts of money available to them, governmental levels
providing funds (e.g., Federal, State, intermediate, and local), and
funding sources (taxation, aid, and nontax revenues).  In recent years,
education policymakers and the public have shown a growing concern
about how education resources are allocated and what the relationship
is between education spending and student achievement. Such concerns
focus on five key questions:

1.   What is the total amount spent on elementary and secondary
     education at the national, State, and local levels?

2.   What percentage of that amount comes from each source of revenue
     (Federal, State, intermediate, local, and private)?

3.   What do education dollars buy at the national, State, and local
     levels?

4.   How are education resources distributed among the States and
     school districts?

5.   How do States allocate education resources given differences in
     levels of student need, fiscal capacity, and cost?

The Federal Government already collects most of the data needed to
address these major education resource policy questions, at least for
reporting at the national and State levels of aggregation.  The
redesign of the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) has resulted in the
creation of the new "National Public Education Financial Survey," which
provides the most comprehensive and detailed data on education revenues
and expenditures that have ever been available. Thus, some of the
recommendations for this domain would require enhancements or
improvements in current data collections rather than new collections.

In other resource areas, much developmental work and examination of
alternative strategies will be necessary before implementation can
proceed.  For example, economists have developed a variety of
techniques for adjusting resource costs across States and over time (a
major improvement recommendation in this domain). Each model has its
strengths and weaknesses; each is appropriate for some purposes more
than others;  and each carries with it different cost and burden
implications. Thus,  considerable work is still needed before the
National Forum can recommend implementing specific nationally adjusted
education resource figures.

Recommendations.  The National Forum makes the following 12
recommendations for improving data collection and reporting in the
domain of education resource statistics:

1.   The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should collect
     and report a set of national- and State-level education revenue,
     expenditure, and human resource measures on an annual basis, using

     data items from the "National Public Education Financial Survey"
     and the Common Core of Data (CCD) Nonfiscal Surveys.

2.   NCES should continue to provide training and technical support to
     States to "crosswalk" data elements specified by the current CCD
     Financial Survey as well as other assistance necessary for
     meeting the Handbook 2R2 classifications.

3.   NCES and other Federal agencies should investigate the feasibility
     of developing a State-by-State statistical measure to adjust
     education resource data for differences among States and to report
     education resource trends over time in constant dollars.

4.   NCES and other Federal agencies should investigate the feasibility
     of developing a State-by-State statistical measure to adjust
     salary data for differences among States and to report education
     salary trends over time in constant dollars.

5.   NCES and other Federal agencies should engage in research and
     development efforts that will enable them to make accurate,
     comparable, and informative international comparisons of U.S.
     education resource commitments with those of other industrialized
     nations.

6.   NCES should continue to collect and report data from the CCD
     aggregated to the State level on an annual basis.  However, NCES
     should, over time, develop policies and procedures for the
     regular collection and reporting of district-level resource data.
     In moving toward district-level resource collections, NCES should
     be particularly cognizant of: (1) identifying potential reports
     that such data could generate and (2) the capacity of States to
     provide district-level data.

7.   NCES should expand the annual CCD "State Administrative Records
     Survey" to include: (1) an average teacher salary measure that
     takes into account contract, career ladder, and other special-
     incentive pay and (2) a teacher salary measure that takes into
     account degree status and experience.

8.   NCES should make a long-term commitment to establishing a program-
     and functionally based accounting system.  This will provide
     NCES, policy analysts, and other education researchers with
     better information about how education funds are spent and make it
     possible to relate program resources to the specific education
     needs of students.  The particular program levels to be collected
     should be determined after additional study, taking into account
     the costs and burdens associated with the development of
     comparable definitions of relevant program categories across
     different locales.

9.   NCES should expand the Federal Government's survey of private
     schools to include resource information.  Wherever feasible, NCES
     should report private-school resource data from its surveys on a
     State-by-State basis.

10.  NCES should establish, as a long-term objective, the collection
     of data regarding the status of buildings, including the number,
     age, condition, and facility needs of the Nation's schools.

11.  NCES should regularly report data on the number and descriptive
     characteristics (i.e., age, sex, race) of instructional,
     instructional support, and noninstructional staff in the Nation's
     schools.  Such data should be reported at the State level to the
     extent feasible.

12.  NCES should establish, as a long-term objective, measures that
     indicate total dollar investments in education personnel.  These
     measures should be specific to different types of staff (e.g.,
     teachers, administrators, instructional aides) and include both
     direct compensation expenditures (salaries) and indirect
     compensation (fringe benefits).

III.  School Process Statistics

School process measures address questions such as who provides
classroom instruction? what is being taught (and how well)? and what
are the characteristics of the teaching and learning environment?  It
is the view of the National Forum that school process measures
constitute a necessary and important component for monitoring the
condition of education; informing education policy at the national,
State, and local levels; and providing better mechanisms for
accountability.

For the policymaker, there are three purposes for regular collection
and reporting of school process measures. First, process measures can
describe instructional practice and, with this, the degree to which
quality education opportunities are available to all students in all
schools.

Second, process measures can monitor reform--the degree to which
recommended changes in education practice are actually being
implemented. Education in the United States is periodically subject to
reform efforts that call for substantial changes in current practice,
including changes in curriculum emphasis, organizational structure, and
teaching techniques.  Monitoring these reforms requires a regular
system of indicators.

Finally, process measures can help to explain discrepancies in
education performance and point to reasons why student achievement may
vary across locales and over time. For example, if student outcomes are
improving more in one State than in another, knowledge of differences
in curricula, instruction, and school organization can provide
policymakers with clues to explain these differences and point them
toward promising future policy directions.

We have divided our analysis of school process data into the following
three interrelated sub-domains that, taken together, comprise the
context of instructional practice:

o    implemented curriculum--including what is
     actually taught in classrooms: content and topic
     coverage, time and emphasis devoted to subject
     areas, course taking, and the context in which
     instruction occurs;

o    teaching quality--including professional
     preparation, use of appropriate instructional
     strategies, acceptance of responsibility for
     student success and failure, and certification
     in assigned subject field; and

o    school environment--including academic emphasis,
     school size and structure, curriculum offerings,
     discipline, staff development, and availability
     of high-technology equipment (e.g., computers).

Recommendations.  The National Forum makes the
following six recommendations for improving data
collection and reporting in the domain of school
process statistics:

1.   The National Center for Education Statistics
     (NCES) should regularly collect and report
     national and comparable State-level data on
     student enrollment in academic and vocational
     secondary courses by race/ethnicity, sex, and
     other demographic subgroups as feasible and
     appropriate.  To accomplish this, NCES must
     first develop procedures for ensuring the
     collection of broadly comparable data across
     States on secondary-school course offerings.
     The Office of Educational Research and
     Improvement (OERI) should also determine the
     usefulness of collecting State-level data on
     time allocated to subjects in the elementary
     grades (such as that currently collected in the
     Schools and Staffing Survey [SASS] of NCES).

2.   NCES should regularly collect and report data at
     the national level on broad indicators of
     teacher preparation (e.g., certification status,
     number of courses taken in teaching area, major
     field, and preservice and inservice development
     and training experiences) by specific teaching
     assignment.  Trends on these measures should be
     related directly to changes in the size of the
     teacher work force as well as student enrollment
     patterns (i.e., teacher supply and demand).  In
     addition, NCES should investigate the feasibility of
     regularly collecting and reporting comparable State-by-
     State statistics using such measures and of reporting on
     the numbers of new teachers certified via "alternative"
     routes.

3.   NCES should regularly collect and report data at the
     national level on student "opportunities to learn"
     specific instructional topics.  Work should begin first
     on the high-priority subjects included in the
     national education goals (English, mathematics, science,
     history, and geography) and then proceed to other
     subjects.  OERI should develop new measures of the
     depth and breadth of coverage for these topics for
     possible future collection and reporting at the national
     and State levels.

4.   NCES should regularly collect and report nationally
     representative data on the school environment including
     school-level measures of academic emphasis (e.g.,
     curricular offerings and enrollments) and
     decisionmaking practices.  To the extent feasible, NCES
     should relate such data to important background
     characteristics of students attending these schools
     (e.g., sex, race/ethnicity, handicapping condition,
     socioeconomic status) as well as to key demographic
     characteristics of the larger school community.

5.   In order to measure progress in meeting the national
     goal of "safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools"
     (goal No. 6 adopted by the Nation's Governors and the
     President), NCES or other Federal agencies should
     regularly collect and report national- and State-level
     data on drug and alcohol use and violence in the
     schools, as well as on policies and programs undertaken
     to prevent such occurrences.  To develop measures of
     these, NCES should proceed immediately to examine
     the feasibility of augmenting its current sample surveys
     (e.g., SASS),      mounting a new survey (e.g., using
     the Fast Response Survey System), or working in concert
     with other agencies concerned with these issues
     (e.g., Centers for Disease Control, Drug Enforcement
     Agency).  To the extent feasible, these data should be
     related to the background characteristics of students
     and their home communities.

6.   OERI should fund special studies to improve the
     measurement  of important school processes including
     academic emphasis, subject-specific instructional
     strategies, depth and breadth of content coverage, the
     use of new technologies in instructional programs
     (e.g., personal computers), and methods of training
     teachers and assessing their competence.  Newly
     developed measures created through such special studies
     may eventually be incorporated into future regular
     national collections and reports.

IV.  Student Outcome Statistics

In past years, parents, legislators, Governors, and leaders
of business and industry frequently asked questions such as,
"How are our education dollars being spent?"  Today, the
question is more likely to be, "What is the result of
spending our education dollars?"  The Nation's citizens and
policymakers increasingly demand information about the
results--the outcomes--of schooling.

The types of information sought by policymakers about student
education outcomes are reflected in the following questions:

o    What do our students know?  Do they know as much as
     students in other States and countries?

o    How many of our students complete high school?  How many
     drop out?   How do our graduation and dropout rates
     compare with those of other States and the Nation as a
     whole?

o    What do students do after high school?  How many attend
     postsecondary institutions?  How many enter the
     military?  How many enter the job market?  How
     satisfied are they with their schooling experience?

o    Are achievement levels, completion rates, attitudes
     about schooling, and the postsecondary-education
     enrollment and employment status of our students
     improving, staying the same, or declining over time?

These questions reflect the Nation's growing concern about
what students learn throughout their K-12 education and
whether students are being prepared for the transition to
postsecondary education, employment, and adulthood as
responsible and productive citizens.  The questions also
illustrate the need for accurate information that
policymakers can use in making decisions about allocating new
education resources or reallocating existing ones; continuing
current programs or developing new ones; and developing or
revising policies, rules, and regulations.

Because States have the primary responsibility for education,
it is important that they be able to assess and compare their
progress toward meeting important national goals such as
those established by the Governors and the President at the
1989 education summit.

Valid, comparable student outcome measures will improve
public understanding of the condition of education and may
help mobilize public interest in and support for the Nation's
schools.  Conversely, the inappropriate collection and
reporting of such measures may result in data that are not
truly comparable and that do not reflect how schools are
doing and what students are achieving.

We recommend that outcome measures be gathered and regularly
reported in four distinct areas:  student achievement,
student participation and progression, student status after
high school, and student attitudes and  aspirations.  In
addition, all outcome measures should be reported by
race/ethnicity and sex in order to shed light on disparities
in education achievement among important subgroups of the
population.

Recommendations.  The National Forum makes the following 11
recommendations for improving data collection and reporting
in the domain of student outcome statistics across the four
key sub-domains:

Student Achievement

1.   Comparable and uniform student achievement measures
     (using the State National Assessment of Educational
     Progress [State-NAEP], if proven valid and reliable)
     should provide State-by-State comparisons of knowledge
     in core content areas (reading, writing, mathematics,
     science, history, and geography) in grades 4, 8, and 12
     at least once every 4 years.  Knowledge in other subject
     areas such as literature, music, art, computer
     applications, and civics should also be periodically
     assessed to the extent feasible.

2.   Differences in performance among important subgroups of
     students should be examined and reported at the national
     and State levels.  Subgroups should include those
     traditionally associated with sex, race and ethnic
     origin, economic status, and language status.  Provision
     should be made for States, if they wish, to analyze the
     sample of the student achievement study in their States
     so that comparisons could be made among education units
     by significant subgroups.

3.   Trends in student performance over time should be
     reported for all grades and subjects in which the
     achievement data are collected at the national and
     State levels.  However, reporting trends over time
     should not restrict the development and use of new
     assessment forms that tap a broader range of student
     proficiencies than those typically associated with
     "paper and pencil" tests.

4.   The Office of Educational Research and Improvement
     (OERI), including the NAEP program, should give
     priority to research, development, and experimentation
     with new assessment techniques that can provide
     broader and more sophisticated measures of student
     performance.

5.   State-by-State student achievement measures should
     include, in each administration, a performance
     assessment component(s).  OERI should enter into
     cooperative research and development arrangements with
     State and local large-scale assessment programs.

6.   Student achievement results should be scaled in a way
     that allows comparisons with international achievement
     measures such as those from the International
     Assessment of Educational Progress (IAEP) and the
     International Association for the Evaluation of
     Educational Achievement (IEA).  Comparisons with
     international achievement measures should be made on a
     regular basis in order to monitor progress in meeting
     the recently developed national education
     goal adopted by the Governors and the President.

7.   Information should be collected on courses of study
     completed at the time of national and State student
     achievement assessments so that links might be made
     between courses/curricula completed and assessment
     results.

8.   Discussion should continue into possible linkages of
     specific features of the National Assessment of
     Educational Progress (NAEP) and the National Education
     Longitudinal Study (NELS) survey instruments as
     well as better coordination of the two surveys by the
     National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).  One
     possibility is to equate the NELS achievement
     instruments to the NAEP items.

Student Participation and Progression

9.   NCES, in cooperation with State departments of
     education, should obtain and periodically report
     comparable State-by-State data on school dropouts and
     completers by race/ethnicity, sex, and other
     important subgroups.  The specific measures calculated
     should include:

     o    An annual dropout rate as defined in the NCES
          Dropout Field Test or as modified by the results of
          the field test;

     o    A synthetic cumulative dropout rate; and

     o    A school completion rate incorporating, to the
          extent feasible, the recommendations of the Council
          of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) School
          Completion Task Force.

Student Status After High School

10.  NCES, in cooperation with other Federal agencies and
     State departments of education, should investigate the
     feasibility of obtaining and periodically reporting
     comparable State-by-State data on the following
     subjects by race/ethnicity, sex, and other important
     subgroups:

     o    The percentage of high school graduates who enroll
          in different types of postsecondary institutions
          within a year of graduation;

     o    The percentage of high school graduates who enter
          the military within a year of graduation;

     o    The percentage of high school graduates who enter
          the civilian labor force within a year of
          graduation; and

     o    The percentage of high school graduates in the
          civilian labor force who are employed/not employed
          one year after graduation.

Student Attitudes and Aspirations

11.  OERI should fund special studies related to the regular
     collection and reporting of data on student attitudes
     toward education and schooling and their future
     aspirations.  These studies should investigate both
     the technical validity and reliability of potential
     statistics of this type and their perceived usefulness
     for purposes of education policymaking and planning.

Expectations and Future Actions

The 36 recommendations contained in the Guide provide an
ambitious but essential initial blueprint for reform of the
national elementary and secondary education data collection
and reporting system.  Implementing these improvements would
substantially alter the landscape of this system.

It is important to make several points about the potential
impact of the recommendations.  First, many of the
recommendations can be implemented through enhancements or
modifications of existing surveys rather than through new
data collections.  In these cases, implementation is  likely
to be more feasible and less costly than might otherwise be
true. The tables that accompany this document identify the
specific agencies and national surveys that may be affected
by implementing the recommendations contained in the GUIDE.

Second, a basic data system infrastructure is being created
through the National Cooperative Education Statistics System
for implementing many of the statistical improvements we
contemplate.  Third, there appears to be a reasonable balance
of burdens between the States and the Federal Government
associated with implementing the recommended improvements.

Finally, although some recommendations can be acted upon
relatively quickly, others will require considerable time.

What are our expectations for this document?  First and
foremost, we expect that the Guide will begin a systematic
process of national reform in education statistics.
Specifically, we expect that:

o    all members and associates of the National Forum will
     commit their constituent organizations to investigating
     the possibility of making the improvements necessary to
     meet the objectives outlined in the data improvement
     recommendations;

o    this guide will serve as a basis for subsequent
     interchanges among members of the National Forum and
     relevant agency(ies) at the Federal, State, and local
     levels on strategies for implementing these
     recommendations; and

o    the National Forum will develop a strategic plan for
     implementing the recommendations based on the results of
     these discussions.

Our expectations for this report are ambitious. We believe
that the broad-based, consensus-building approach by which
the report was developed gives credence to its
recommendations.  We anticipate that those who develop and
implement education statistical policies will find this
improvement agenda useful and will take the agenda seriously.
We hope they believe, as we do, that creating a national
education data system based on a spirit of cooperation and
consensus building will result in the highest quality data,
superior policymaking, and, ultimately, a more effective and
efficient education system.



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