This report begins by considering the design of compensatory education evaluations. A professional evaluation of Elementary Secondary Education Act Title I must make a precise accounting of the relations among expenditures, implementation, outcome and impact; measure effectiveness over a long enough term to determine if the benefit and gain last; and explore alternatives to the assumptions on which the programs are based. The problems created by having to develop major evaluation studies quickly are examined. Conclusions about the way in which the National Institute of Education (NIE) handled these problems are reached: (1) The lack of time prevented NIE from securing the cooperation of a representative sample of school districts. (2) School districts should have been selected from demonstrations so that they would be representative of the nation. (3) All major contracts for program evaluation should have been competitively awarded. The report analyzes the original plan for the longitudinal evaluation of compensatory education by the Office of Education (OE). The scope of that study was being reduced to a half of its original scope when this report was being prepared. Although both the NIE and OE evaluations are supposed to assess the efficacy of compensatory education, neither study will do this. Problems in the coordination of the two studies are also discussed. (Author/JM)