The CardPac System of Educational Accounting project developed instruments and procedures for collecting information about aspects of the elementary and secondary educational programs in Iowa. This project included the development of a bank of educational information that will transcribe, integrate, and store information centrally for purposes of research, evaluation, and service at the national, state, and local levels. Also developed were computer programs and data-processing systems for selecting, reducing, organizing, and disseminating the educational information needed by schools and other educational agencies to perform their basic functions more effectively. This includes retrieval of data in forms necessary to provide baselines statistics for program evaluation. Data collection cards that could be "read" by an optical scanner were used to gather curriculum, staff, and pupil information. (Author/MLF)