Vocational educators, policymakers, and Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) service providers are developing an increasing awareness of the educational and economic benefits of joint planning and coordination between vocational education and the JTPA. However, some basic differences between the goals, planning procedures, and operating practices of the public and private sectors have, in many cases, made efforts to establish and implement cooperative vocational education-JTPA programs difficult. For example, vocational education's concerns for long-term educational development and its mandate to serve the general in-school population stand in contrast to JTPA's focus on short-term training programs that concentrate on job- or employer-specific skill needs. Research has revealed several steps that employers and JTPA trainers alike can take to improve intersector coordination. These include improving communication through such strategies as holding joint conferences or hiring staff members with experience in the other delivery system, reducing the risk of performance-based contracts to educational institutions by providing partial payment for outcomes (such as course completion) over which educational institutions have more control than they do over employment outcomes, and supplementing on-the-job training to broaden the preparation of clients and increase their attractiveness to employers. A national study of joint planning during 1986 found little in the way of coordination during that particular year. A second study undertaken the following year was more encouraging, however. (MN)